New York Times: Four executives of Google begin trial Tuesday in Milan on criminal charges of defamation and privacy violation in regard to a video posted on Google’s Italian site.

It’s because of cases like these that hosting companies want little or nothing to do with user-contributed content… the cost of having to monitor and control an upload feed is extraordinarily expensive in terms of resources but it’s also an extremely muddy pond to swim in. Imagine if you had to weed out every piece of video that everyone might find offensive… you’d end up a with Sputnik-like soundtrack and a test pattern for a display. Especially since this very thing has been proven over and over again with chatroom experiments: you always need moderation. Can’t be helped, but humans can’t be trusted if left to their own judgement – human nature, some call it.. It is further proven by into John Gabriel’s Internet Dickwad Theory…

Either way, it’s very weird to cheer for Google for a change.