• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, February 4, 2009

The Web might be worldwide in theory, but a hodgepodge of different laws about freedom of speech and privacy threaten to create vastly different versions of the Internet in different countries.

While companies tailored content to different countries in the past -- search engines, for instance, famously agreed to censor results in China -- the pressure to do so seems to have accelerated with video-sharing sites. Now, a criminal case in Milan against Google execs could well result in the end of video-sharing sites in that country.

Four Google execs -- including chief privacy officer Peter Fleischer, chief legal counsel David Drummond and former CFO George Reyes -- currently face criminal charges in Milan because the company hosted a three-minute video showing teens taunting a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome.

Theoretically, the execs face up to three years in jail under Italian laws.

Today, Italian attorney Rocco Panetta, who has served as a top lawyer with the Italian Data Protection Authority, told MediaPost there's virtually no chance a judge would imprison the execs given the "extenuating circumstances" in this case. Those include the fact that the executives themselves didn't upload the clip, and that any conviction would represent a first offense.

Of course, that latter factor will only be true once. YouTube doesn't have the manpower to screen videos in advance, which means people are likely to again upload offensive clips. When that happens, as it inevitably will, Google execs could again find themselves in the dock and facing jail time.