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Google faces problems related to privacy and copyright protection in Europe. Google's most immediate challenges may be in Italy. This month a decision is expected in a trial in Milan, where four Google executives have been charged with defamation and privacy violations in a case involving videos posted on a Google Web site showing the bullying of an autistic boy.Italian prosecutors accuse Google of negligence, saying it was too slow to remove the video. But Google sees a political dimension. One of the four executives, Peter Fleischer, Google's chief privacy counsel, called the case part of "an attack on a decade of progress" for Internet companies in Italy. In Germany, German publishers have persuaded the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to support a new kind of copyright protecting journalistic content on the Web. Analysts say the measure, which has not yet been introduced, could require Web companies like Google to buy special licenses to cite content published elsewhere.

"Social media blogs complain about too much advertising on NBC's Vancouver Olympics. And yet NBC has released new viewer data showing that in virtually every single category - including brand recall, engagement, and other marketing metrics - numbers are up for advertisers who bought into the winter games. Viewership is up right now, too: some 25% higher than the 2006 games in Torino, Italy."

Italy is trying to pass a law that holds Internet companies accountable for copyright infringement by users who post media.

ROME-Google Inc. on Wednesday said it will scan ancient Italian literary texts ranging from Galileo Galilei to herbal medicine manuals as part of the Internet company's first publishing partnership with a national government. The deal involves digitizing up to one million books held in the National Libraries in Rome and Florence.

An Italian case is decided against google, holding the company liable despite their removing the offending content. This challenges current understandings of liability, and raises profound concerns for Internet business models.

ROME - Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first case to hold the company's executives criminally responsible for the content posted on its system. Enlarge This Image Paolo Bona/Reuters Bill Echikson, a spokesman for Google, called a judge's ruling against executives "astonishing." Related New Complaints Filed Against Google in Europe (February 25, 2010) Times Topics: Google Inc. The verdict, though subject to appeal, could have sweeping implications worldwide for Internet freedom: It suggests that Google is not simply a tool for its users, as it contends, but is effectively no different from any other media company, like newspapers or television, that provides content and could be regulated.

Berlusconi looks to regulate Internet video by banning the uploading of violent or pornographic content. The move raises issues of freedom of speech, technical challenges of such regulation, issues of jurisdiction, and media ownership and consolidation concerns since some of Berlusconi's channels offer pornographic content for sale.