MILAN — Three Google executives were convicted of privacy violations today in Italy because bullies posted a video online of an autistic boy being abused — a case closely watched due to its implications for Internet freedom.

In the first such criminal trial of its kind, Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges. A fourth defendant, charged only with defamation, was acquitted. Google called the decision "astonishing" and said it would appeal.

"The judge has decided I'm primarily responsible for the actions of some teenagers who uploaded a reprehensible video to Google video," Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer, who was convicted in absentia, said.

The trial could help define whether the Internet in Italy is an open, self-regulating platform or if content must be better monitored for abusive material. Google, based in Mountain View, California, had said it considered the trial a threat to freedom on the Internet because it could force providers to prescreen thousands of hours of footage uploaded every day.