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In Brazil, Google Fined For Content of Anonymous Posting
Sabriel writes "Google's appeal against a 2008 defamation ruling in Brazil over an anonymous posting on Orkut has been denied, and Google has been fined $8,500US ($9,100) for the crime of being vandalized. In the words of the judge, Alvimar de Avila, 'By making space available on virtual networking sites, in which users can post any type of message without any checks beforehand, with offensive and injurious content, and, in many cases, of unknown origin, [Google] assumes the risk of causing damage [to other people].' I'd submit a blunter opinion of this farce, but it might be considered offensive and injurious content. ... I wonder if he's related to the judge in Italy?"
So... Brazil doesn't believe in freedom of expression on the Internet, nor do they subscribe to the "post anything, trust nothing" philosophy of the Internet. What a shame.
Yay America.
Probable end result from retarded rulings like this?
GeoIP-based blocks - if you live in a country with retarded judges, you get blocked from a bunch of services that like to shield themselves against lawsuits like this.
Stupidity is not illegal, or the jails would really be overcrowding.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When will people understand that freedom of speech is inherently linked to offense and injury on the side of the receiving part of any 'verbal abuse' or 'insults'... This is not something you can (or need to) protect against without sacrificing (or eroding) freedom of speech!
I hope judges in other countries (and perhaps Brazil too) will realize that this is not a matter of law, but a matter of common decency. If you insult someone willingly you're a dick and that's it, no need for laws, no need for convictions and most of all no need for a jihad or any physical harm.
Oh yeah, and people who believe they need (or have right to) legal protection against insults are dumbasses who are willing to sacrifice one of our basic rights for their own personal little feel-good gain. Grow some fucking self-confidence and just don't dignify some things with a response! Every time I hear someone proclaim 'the should be a law against saying X' a little part of me dies...
Guys, before you get all hot under the collar, please keep in mind that anonymity is forbidden in Brazil by her Federal Constitution; Title II, Chapter 1, Article 5, Paragraph 4:
IV - the expression of thought is free, anonymity being forbidden;
X - the privacy, private life, honour and image of persons are inviolable, and the right to compensation for property or moral damages resulting from their violation is ensured;
So, anonymously posting defaming material against someone else violates at least two of the victim's constitutionally guaranteed civil rights in Brazil.
For one time I RTFA before posting, it has little or no details about the causes.
I mean, the devil lies in the details... There is a law in Brazil that allows only registered posts? Or that IPs are logged? If Google operated their service disregarding the requirements of the country, then they got themselves in trouble. Or it was that the judge just make that decision by himself?
For an example of what it could be, I just want to recall that the "italian judge" mentioned in the summary fined Google not because someone had put a video of several people harassing and beating a mentally handicaped person. The real reason is that Google did refuse to retire something like that when they were notified that it was there, and they only did retire it when they were threatened. Of course, then TFS just wrote that Google was fined "because someone had uploaded the video".
If we have to debate about facts, it would be nice if we are informed of them with a little more depth.
Why can't
I'm adding Brazil to the blacklist, along with UK, Australia, China, Iran, and a few other places hell-bent on destroying free speech.
You can add America and most of our allies once ACTA is signed.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
A lie can cause serious damage to someone. Some neighbours of mine had their home vandalised because they had been falsely accused
So the lie jumped out and vandalized their house, did it?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Im sure there are cases where libel/slander comes into play (I can never get them straight),
but isn't the real issue that people are taking the law into their own hands?
Vigilante justice is a bad idea (as well as being illegal) for just that reason.
Even if what was said about your neighbors was true, those vandals broke the law. Why didnt they ask questions before flying off the handle?
A lie can cause serious damage to someone. Some neighbours of mine had their home vandalised because they had been falsely accused of being involved in animal experimentation. If you post such a lie deliberately then aren't you in some way responsible for the harm suffered? But Google is offering to allow people to post whatever they want maliciously, and offering to hide their identity from everyone - even themselves. If Google is going to allow people to do this, then why are they not taking on responsibility for the harm themselves?
By that argument the mail service should open and check all letters and the phone company listen to all phone calls. You can use both to spread malicious lies anonymously.
The USA has:
- The most different lobby groups trying to get laws eroding free speech (left, right, liberal, Christian, Muslim... whatever. All 'for' free speech but against 'X being said because *that* is harmful').
- By far the most lawsuits against people who express opinions (anonymous or not, satire or not), sometimes with a conviction.
- Very strong censoring, some self-inflicted under pressure (like Comedy Central), some because of lobby groups (can't say 'fuck' on TV).
I say decentralize the web. Make it so that websites are stored "on the cloud", with dozens, or even hundreds, of redundant copies broken into small chunks on random people's computers. Make publishing these sites easy, so anyone can do it, removing the need for centralized holding sites like Youtube, blogspot.com, etc. Reduce ISPs to being a purely city-to-city pipe, with intra-city connections being done through the individual computers themselves.
Freenet is already doing a lot of this, if we can just make it more mainstream...
yeah, ive hoped that wimax like range (~5km ~ 1mbit) could work in a p2p symmetric manner and allow mesh networks in cities (or even some rural areas).
but surely we will still need fat pipes under the sea to get packets between continents, and thats going to cost. so perhaps in the future we will just pay for the peering agreement, and isp's will be virtualised.
+ caching.
How is that "freed speech zone" thing working out that was around in the time of Bill Clinton's reign and then famously used by George W. Bush? Has the saviour Obama stopped them yet? Or has he continued to use it as a useful tool to further his political career?
What good is freedom of expression if your not willing to back it with responsibility of that expression?
You can speak out about every dictatorship, every corrupt regime - but some only once. "Responsibility" is one thing, being put up against the wall and shot or imprisoned indefinately is another.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Give this man a lawsuit!
No, wait! Give Slashdot a lawsuit
In civil law countries (like Italy too) the judges have little choice in applying the law.
Hogwash. Civil law does depend heavily on codes and statutes but that does not mean there is no room for rational judgment on the part of the judge.
If I yell in the streets something libelous I am responsible, even if someone else told me first. The same applies to Google...
Google didn't yell anything. Google provided a forum. Since we are so fond of analogies this is like holding the paving company that built the street responsible for what someone said on the street. You might as well hold the maker of a megaphone responsible for whatever anyone says through one.
try this on for size: the holocaust never happened, and gays suck (pun intended). see what i did there? and guess what? neither i, nor slashdot, have been or will be sued for this! that's freedom of speech. just because the NYT might not want to publish hate speech because they're interested in selling their newspapers (or good journalism. either one works.) doesn't mean you're not free to express yourself, anonymously, without fear of retribution.
weinersmith
The classic strawman argument to justify censorship: There exist situations where people are liable for their use of speech, therefore censorship is valid. The fallacy here is thinking that no censorship means no liability. Censorship and liability are two very, very different concepts. Liability means people must be tried in open court under the law. Censorship means that works can be banned without recourse to trial or law, and all outside the public eye. Empowering censors weakens both open society and the rule of law.
Indeed, depending on the circumstances. And the trouble is those circumstances for 99.9% of people will be "If they're talking about something I don't like." Given the opportunity, the public would happily ban "violent" video games. There used to be a rule of law which prevented this kind of thing from happening, but fear and apathy is slowly eroding it. We will all end up like Australia before too long.
May the Maths Be with you!
The "fire in a crowded theatre" example is problematic; you are not being charged with act of expressing "fire;" you are being charged with the act of endangering the public. Whether you yell "fire" or change the screen to display a burning theater is immaterial.
Of course this argument can be applied in bullshit situations like "we weren't charging him with writing down with the government, we were charging him with endangering the public!"
An aroused, vigilant public and court system is the only real defense.
But, in any case, preventing people from yelling "fire" in a movie theatre is not a form of censorship.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC