(by Denis Greenan).

(ANSA) - Geneva, March 9 - Web censorship is not confined to repressive regimes, Google's communications director said Tuesday in the wake of last month's conviction in Italy of three of its executives for violating privacy laws.

"Internet censorship is getting worse and more sophisticated," Robert Boorstin told an international conference in Geneva.

"More than 40 countries have resorted to censorship at one time or another and Google has been interrupted in 25 countries," he told the second annual Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, sponsored by non-governmental organisations like UN Watch and Freedom House.

Boorstin stressed he did not "want to compare repressive regimes like Burma with Western democracies". But he declared that the February 24 Milan verdict amounted to censorship.

In the sentence, which has been widely decried by advocates of Web freedom, a judge ruled that Google failed to protect the privacy of an autistic teenager who appeared in a 2006 video posted by school bullies.

"The content of the video is absolutely inexcusable and Google removed it as soon as it was alerted to its presence," Boorstin reiterated.

The ruling, which Google is appealing, constitutes "a danger" to Web freedom because it appears to establish the principle that preventive control is needed, Boorstin told the forum.

Every minute, the Google communications chief pointed out, some 20 hours of videos are uploaded onto YouTube.

The year-long trial in Milan was the first judicial proceeding anywhere against executives of the Internet search engine company.

It was seen as having implications for the way Google operates in Italy and for the wider debate over freedom of speech and legal responsibility for Internet postings.

Prosecutors hailed Judge Oscar Magi's ruling as "recognising that privacy rights trump business logic" while Google called it "an attack on the fundamental principles of freedom on which the Internet was built".

Former Google Italy president David Carl Drummond, now senior vice president, was given a six-month suspended jail term along with George De Los Reyes, a retired former Google Italy board member, and Peter Fleitcher, Google Europe's privacy strategy chief.

The three, for whom prosecutors had asked a year's term, were found guilty of invasion of privacy but not of defamation.

Arvind Desikan, head of the Google Video for Europe project, was acquitted because he only faced the defamation charge.

The convicted are entitled to two automatic appeals.

The defendants denied negligence, saying they could not have prevented the incident and stressing that the company took prompt action to identify the four bullies, who were expelled from their Turin high school as a result.

After the ruling, the United States ambassador to Italy, David Thorne, said "online abuses must not be an excuse to violate the right to a free internet".

VERDICT CRITICISED IN ITALY TOO.

Magi's ruling was widely criticised in Italy too.

Popular Web activist Beppe Grillo said it was tantamount to punishing the owner of a building on which offensive slogans have been painted or prosecuting a phone company when users violate privacy norms.

Instead of being found guilty, the Google execs should have been lauded for exposing bullying, said Grillo, 61, a comic and political activist who came seventh in Forbes' list of Web personalities in 2009.

Italian politicians of all stripes said the ruling could threaten the development of the Web.

The Italian section of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) voiced the same concern, calling Magi's ruling "a grave precedent, all the more so because it was taken in a democratic country".

"If the judges meant to start a debate on Internet privacy they picked the wrong case," RWB said in a statement.

"This sentence, unfortunately, establishes the de facto need for prior control of the publication of videos".

"It is a serious blow to freedom of expression".