Italian Ruling Shows Dangers Of 20th Century Laws In 21st Century

You're probably well aware by now that three Google executives have been given six month suspended sentences in Italy for failing to remove a bullying video from the company's YouTube website.
 
The video in question concerns an artistic boy in Turin being taunted by his classmates. Google took the video down after two months following an official request from the Italian authorities but the Italian courts found that the company should gave responded to requests from individual users much more quickly.

Without knowing how those request were made or investigated by Google its hard to say how appropriate the sentence is. 
 
My feeling is that Google needed a reasonable amount of time to receive, investigate and action the requests and given the number and variety of videos and (presumably) complaints two months doesn't seem an unreasonable amount of time to do that.

Italy needs to update its legal system to put the burden of responsibility on those who firstly were guilty of the crime and secondly made and distributed the video.

As it stands Google's guilt amounts to no more than London Underground's for muggings on the tube.  Let's hope Google's appeal leads to an outbreak of commonsense.