I salute the Brazil court for this action.
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan 4 (Reuters) – A Brazilian court ordered the popular video sharing service YouTube, a unit of Internet search provider Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile , Research), to be shut down until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial clerk said on Thursday.
Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site.
For days it was the most viewed video in Brazil.
Cicarelli and boyfriend Tato Malzoni filed to force YouTube to take the video down and demanded $116,000 in damages for each day the video remains up. Some copies of the video have been taken off the site but users have reposted it.
The case dragged on for several months before they filed a third suit in December requesting that YouTube be shut down as long as the video is available to users.
The court honored that request on Wednesday, but legal experts say the ruling by the Brazilian court could be difficult to enforce in the United States, where YouTube is based.
Last year, a Brazilian court demanded Google disclose data on local users of its social networking site Orkut who had pages with content supporting racism or child pornography.
Google took down some of those Orkut pages but has said that under U.S. law it could not reveal user data.
Google was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.
4 responses so far ↓
Jana Allard // January 4, 2007 at 2:27 pm
It is sad that people take great inventions and corrupt them with pornography.
Shirley // January 4, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Yes, it is, Jana, and it certainly puts a burden on people with righteous intentions. We must recognize that we live in an electronic age, and that these devices are here to stay. We are called then to scrupulously guard our own eyes and minds, and certainly to protect our homes and our children. It truly is a challenge, but one that we can meet when we are sincere, and are following after godliness, and when we put our trust and faith in Him.
Ben Franklin // January 7, 2007 at 8:45 am
Don’t forget, however, that the First Amendment extends to the Internet. If we remove pornography from the Net, what next? Political speech? Literature? I think it has to be up to us to determine what we will or will not search, banning material is never the answer and just threatens us all.
Shirley // January 7, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Ben Franklin, thank you for visiting my site and for commenting here. I certainly share your concerns about free speech. It’s a hard subject isn’t it, for certainly we want our freedoms protected, and yet there must be limits somewhere. What are your thoughts concerning the rights of the person videoed? Does she have a right to say I don’t want that shown on YouTube. I know people in the public eye give up many of their freedoms as far as pictures taken of them, etc.
The subject of freedom of speech has recently come up here on the WordPress forums where some quite objectional material is being discussed. It’s going to take the wisdom of Solomon to help us sort all this out. We need God’s direction.