Italian court overturns Google executives’ privacy convictions

I had tweeted the good news on Friday, but didn’t have print coverage to link to. Now I do:

Philip Willan reports that the convictions of three Google executives for breaking Italian privacy laws have been overturned. The February 2010 convictions, which included suspended jail sentences, were worrisome because they made individual executives of firms criminally liable for user-uploaded content. In this case, Google Video had removed the content promptly once it was aware of its problematic nature – a video showing a disabled youth being bullied by others.

Eric Pfanner of the New York Times also covers the welcome news.