Is the company liable for not taking down a violent video fast enough?

MILAN—Back in 2006, a group of four Turin youths insulted and physically abused a young classmate with Down syndrome so severely that the terrified boy soiled his pants. One of the four filmed 191 seconds of the unsettling episode and uploaded it to Google Video, where it remained for about two months before the company finally pulled it.

Now, two and a half years later, a judge working from a dusty and worn Fascist-era courtroom in Milan will help decide whether companies like Google Video should be responsible for the content they host. At stake could be the way business on the Internet evolves over the coming years. A hearing on Wednesday confirmed that Italy is a legitimate venue for the trial, and a further hearing is scheduled for next month.

The youths have been tracked down—with Google's help—and made to serve a year of community service in a center for children with Down syndrome. But the case has already evolved beyond an examination of the mistreatment of an unfortunate youngster: Five Google officials are in the spotlight for allegedly contributing to the defamation of Vivi Down, an advocacy group mentioned in the video, as well as for various privacy abuses.

At stake is whether the company should be governed by the same rules that govern media sites (like TheBigMoney.com), the ones in effect for pure search engines (like parent company Google.com), or something else entirely.

"If the argument is that they should have evaluated the video before it was posted, then that is a dangerous precedent," argues Gugliemo Pisapia, a former member of parliament and the lead attorney for the five Google officials in the case. "Preventive monitoring is the kind of censorship that could kill the Internet."

A Google spokesman from the company's California headquarters agreed, likening the suits against the company to the notion of filing charges against the post office for delivering hate mail.