AP Photo

In September 2006, four students at a school in Turin, Italy, beat and humiliated an autistic classmate. A fifth student captured the incident on her cellphone camera, then posted the digital footage to Google Video. It spent two months as one of the site's most popular clips before Google took it down at the request of Italian police.

The attackers were convicted and ordered to perform 10 months of community service; the girl who recorded the beating was convicted too, and given a similar penalty. But that wasn't enough for Italian authorities. On Wednesday, a court in Milan convicted three Google executives of violating the victim's privacy and sentenced them to six months in jail. Judge Oscar Magi suspended the sentence and imposed no financial penalty, so the conviction has...