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YouTube Blocked in Brazil
keeboo writes "The popular video sharing site YouTube is now blocked in Brazil due to a local court decision last Thursday. The site was ordered to block the uploaded sex videos of Brazilian media starlet Daniela Cicarelli and, although it complied, many users kept re-uploading it to the site. After the failure of YouTube to keep the video off of the site, the domain was blocked nationwide at a DNS level. Predictably, many Brazilians are annoyed and I've started to receive even SPAMs protesting on this blocking. From the article: 'The case now goes automatically to a three-member panel of judges who will decide whether to make the order permanent and whether to fine YouTube as much as US$119,000 (euro91,000) for each day the video was viewable, said Rubens Decousseau Tilkian.'"
If it was really on blocked at the DNS level, wouldn't running your own DNS server work? If youtube IP blocks were blocked, then obviously something more complicated would be needed. What about a proxy?
People are so weird. While I am aware of the social and economic problems that sexual promiscuity can cause (disease, unwanted pregnancy, etc.), the fact remains that most of the living creatures on the planet have sex, including most humans. We are built for it and driven to it. It's just a simple fact of life. I really honestly don't understand why we think it is so horrible to capture it on film. If you don't like watching, then don't watch.
If the video was filmed without her (and his) consent, then I will say too bad. If you are in public, people can see you. If you don't want to be filmed, get a room.
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You see, the thing is Brazil has an extremely convoluted legal jungle. It inherited this Portuguese culture of a love for all things legally convoluted and impenetrable. When Portugal colonized Brazil, for quite sometime the ruling elite was made of pretty much a bunch of aristocratic good-for-nothing lawyers/slackers that graduated from Coimbra University, in Portugal. The basic characteristic of such people were a basic lack of common sense as well as a despise for work. Instead of working, they made laws. And more laws. I mean, Portugal is notorious for having discovered America and then having ended up owing a huge amount of money to the Brits, as foreign debt, losing all the gold they had amassed, right? From that point on, they were basically a fishing village (until they joined the E.U.)
In Brazil, there have been over 3,510,804 norms and regulations published in the last 18 years alone. This averages 534 per day or 783 per work day (source,in Portuguese, here) (If you read Spanish, you read Portugese). Any corporation in Brazil is bound to have a gigantic body of lawyers. The whole system is about to collapse, but there's no sign of a legal reform. There are too many laws, and too many stupid decisions. Until recently, it was possible to maneuver in legal waters to a point that even trivial matters went to the Supreme Court. By trivial, I mean a dog biting the neighbour. Can you even imagine that in the U.S of A.? Also, judges here have too much power, it would seem. Even when they are complete and utter imbecils, as seems to be the case. Were I on a Brazilian blog, BTW, I would not dare say I thought the judge was an imbecil, though.
Also, there is such a thing in the civil code as "the right to one's own image." This means that you have the right to control the use of your image. However, it would seem that fucking in a public beach, when you are a celebrity of sorts would preclude to right to pledge the right to such right. Am I being clear? I mean, there have been all sorts of pornographic interpretation of individual rights. I recently witnessed a complete douchebag seriously threaten with a lawsuit a list moderator. The guy had been expelled because of bad behaviour, but he went on to take legal action on the ground his "right to expression" was being denied. I bet he's got a 50-50 chance of pulling it off, too. All sorts of weird shit like this in Brazil. Another fun one was a judge ruling spam was ok, because it didn't "waste any material resources" (that was circa 1996, though). Oh, yeah, and the Brazilian Constitution does not grant you the right to express yourslef anonymously. Huh.
There have been cases, for instance, of cartoonists being sued because of portraying politicians in what was judged to be "excessive" ridicule. Now, either that is the job of a cartoonist that specializes in political satire or I just really should be just as well living in Iran, Cuba or China. All this means is that Brazil, sadly, has little garantees of real freedom of expression. Just about every newspaper has to waste a huge amount of money and time in courts. I wouldn't say it would be wise to have a blog and express one's opinion as openly as people do in the United States, in Brazil. Chances are, they'll sue your pants off. Unless you are working in a big media outlet, you're dead meat. In a more shameful example, when NYT reporter Larry Rother suggested in an article that Brazil's president had a penchant for heavy drinking, the president and his acolytes considered actually banning Mr. Rother form the country. They went bananas.
We will live yet to see the day when Google gets blocked in Brazil, because they refused to remove a link to press material judged "offensive" to corrupt politicos. You'll see... There'll come a time I'll probably ask for political exile somewhere. When they ask me why, I'll answer: "Because living in Brazil fucks too much with my head and I'll become a mental case, sooner or later."
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