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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.
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I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Slashdot should be held responsible for idiotic comments on its pages. Oh, and 3rd post!
Yes, this is all about anonymous postings, but surely anyone can make up an identity online? Law has a habit of applying judgements to other cases (in the same country), and encourages prosecutors to take a punt in other countries. In what other cases would this frustrate the everyday running of the web? ISPs failing to moderate comments from their customers? Allowing file sharing?
I'm not agreeing with this judge at all, please don't assume that for a minute.
However, we are entering a very precarious phase of the internet. As more and more of our user-generated content goes online and into "cloud" storage, we are turning over huge amounts of private information and possibly illegal data to these hosting companies. The push to upload data is growing, and the counter-push to demand responsibility of the hosts is also growing.
The first volley was almost 10 years ago when Napster was taken down for enabling illegal filesharing. Lately The Pirate Bay has been under attack for the same thing. Now we see Google under attack for providing a platform for someone to make illegal statements. The trend is to demand that those that make services available also police those services.
And those making the demands have been winning.
The only true longterm solution is to force encryption and invite-only data access. This pushes us away from an open Internet which Sir Berners-Lee envisioned and into the same parochial networked clusters that we had before.
It's sad, but as long as there are people out there who think that morality can be legislated, then we will forever have the problem of needing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
can anyone shed any light on the state of copyright in brazil? if the hosting party takes all the heat internet users of brazil have a get out of jail free card.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Let's be clear that in Brazil, separation of Church and State means "opposite sides of the confession box".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Someone should spray obscenities on the wall of the judge's house.
Then someone else should sue him for providing the space...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
In Soviet Brazil, Anonymous Coward pwns Google!
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...
In unrelated news countries around the world start fining companies fees just because they can, also they like money!
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.
Someone should anonymously cover the judges house with graffiti, then sue him for defamation
Everyone that have a wall, or any 2D surface in Brazil (no movie pun intended) has better demolishing it, since it can be used to "an post any type of message without any checks beforehand, ".
This is ridiculous.
-Woof woof woof!
Google Inc. is a registered company in Brazil, so it's bound by Brazilian law. They have fined a Brazilian company, which happens to be a subsidiary of a company from the US.
Dilbert RSS feed
Oh no! Not the blacklist!
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
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?
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
How come the US is not on your blacklist? With initiatives like the Fairness Doctrine, ACTA, requiring permits to assemble, and all the other crap that goes on, what makes you think the various governments of the US want to keep free speech?
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).
Don't forget about Sweden. We've had laws that basically say the same thing as this ruling for ages.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
In other words: if you own a wall and someone scribbles 'whoever reads this, sucks' on it, you're liable. I can see that, but it's not how, at the moment, most of the western world is put together. Walls would have to be extremely clean, for example.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
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.
Most countries do not have a constitution that allows free speech ..... ...the USA does and still restricts it more than some others who do not have this written into their constitution
Your blacklist should start with the USA .... and probably go on to include most countries
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
if your not willing to back it with responsibility of that expression?
In other words, Freedom of Expression does not mean freedom to slander. Too many people use anonymity to attack others so as to deny others the ability to respond in defense. Sorry, but calling someone a pedo and then hiding behind an anonymous id is just horseshit.
Either stand behind your words or don't bother. We don't need Freedom of Expression becoming a forum troll's fallback. Living in a world of false accusations and slander without recourse is not one I care for.
Yeah I can fully understand being anonymous versus an totalitarian government, but not attacking other citizens. Let alone Google knows the law in Brazil and its not allowed, how else was the judge to rule?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In a previous story, I commented about how censorship in Brazil should get more international attention.
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about. In Brazil there are no safe harbor provisions for ISPs and judges just refuse to acknowledge the fact that Google Brazil is a subsidiary and might not have any control about Orkut, which is hosted in US ground.
If you think about it, it's actually worse than China in some aspects: it's as if China ordered companies to censor information outside of China, i.e., not even someone in America would be able to search for information regarding the Tiananmen Square massacre. Otherwise, they would fine these companies.
These issues should be brought to the table when considering requests coming from Brazil and the other BRIC countries for additional power in groups such as G20. Our economy might withstand crisis such as the last one better than yours, however, this comes at cost of severily reduced civil liberties.
Make sure this is the example you and your leaders want to follow before praising Brazilian efforts.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Brazilian, living in Brazil)
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?
This has nothing to do with free speech though so why are you blacklisting Brazil? free speech is a right in Bazil, anonymity while doing so is not though. Australia also provides free speech, but the government wants to censor the shit out of the internet so they probably still deserve the blacklist. People need to learn to seperate free speech from the consequences of the content, just because you have the right to express yourself doesn't automatically invalidate laws that protect people from slander, hate speech and other such laws.
free speech is a right in Bazil, anonymity while doing so is not though
and you think the two can be separated? now i've seen everything.
weinersmith
well they have walls that can be graffiti ed ? Same thing ... they leave their wall there for any one to come along and write stuff on it.
So silly - are they really that behind ?
Can you name a single country in the world that does? Say what you like, but the fact is that all over the world governments and especially the public support censorship. You just say the magic words: child porn, terrorism, Muhammad, anorexia, extreme porn, etc, etc and people, pundits and politicians will trip over themselves in their eagerness to shut the web down. Public support for censorship in western democracies is overwhelming.
You don't think this is "really" supporting censorship. Well then here it is: The Ultimate Censorship Supporter Acid Test v0.9:
Someone has written a graphic, explicit, sordid, supportive, but purely textual fictional story about sexually molesting children under the age of 5. It has been uploaded to a webserver somewhere. Should this page/site be censored?
If you answered yes (or are prepared to argue for it) then you are a firm supporter of censorship. You support the censorship of the purely written word, because you are either too afraid or too disgusted to stand up for the rights of everybody. People hate this test because it forces them to interpret the law and rights they way they should be interpreted; as applying equally, logically, and without prejudice to everyone, everywhere, all of the time.
Unfortunate schmucks like me who actually took these principles to heart in their formative years then get lumped with heaps of shit for daring to mention them out in the open where pedophiles/terrorists/witches/anorexics/suicide groups/etc are involved. I suppose we should have spent our youth learning to be hypocrites in order to survive in this enlightened age.
Google are fighting a losing battle. The public, governments, the media and now the legal system are not on their side. The internet genie is being put back in the bottle, one step at a time.
May the Maths Be with you!
http://slashdot.org/submission/1219710/Open-net-debate-on-Internet-laws-in-Brazil?art_pos=1 (links to original story) Brazil has opened public, free, internet debate on it's new internet law proposal. A hodgepodge of contradicting state laws, lawsuits, and rulings were blocking efforts to encourage more internet use, so a new federal law proposal is open to debate, including topics such as education, culture, freedom of expression, right-to-use, user and provider rights and responsibilities, anonymity, content removal and notices, crime and law enforcement, everything. Currently the site accepts comments on each paragraph of the law. Last October there was debate on the general principles to be included in the law. Brazilian Portuguese, but there is Google translate and volunteers translating to English.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...requiring permits to assemble...
Requiring permits does not alone make something a violation of rights. As long as all reasonable permits are granted, then there is no problem. Namely, if you permit a Neo-Nazi rally of 300 people in a 1,000 person occupancy area, then it's ok. If you deny a Neo-Nazi rally of 1,000 people to be in a 300 person occupancy area, then that's also ok.
It's been well upheld that 2nd amendment rights are not violated by requiring registration and permits, but it is if those permits have unreasonable restrictions that make them essentially unobtainable. (Ok, so far, this only applies to the Federal government, there's another case going to the Supreme Court hearing whether states can do this, as they are not bound by the Bill of Rights... it sounds stupid, but seriously, there are certain rights that have been interpreted as applying only to the Federal government, and not states.)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
of course they can be seperate, what is it about free speech that requires anonymity. being known in no way impacts your ability to conduct free speech.
You misunderstand freedom of speech, you can say anything about anyone, but it is never legal to falsely accuse someone of a crime. You can joke about Michael Jackson being a paedophile all you want, but if you state it as fact you have made a criminal accusation... I know there were incidents where someone is falsely accused and their lives destroyed by it, but it was always a public opinion manhunt in the media that portrays someone very bad. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a right that is also needed, and not only for courts but also the media and people need to adhere to this important right. These incidents have nothing to do with the right to free speech (because it is not a right to falsely accuse someone), but much more with the innocent until proven guilty right.
Funny joke about team America and savage Aussies, but i'm from The Netherlands and it still is much more down to earth here. I remember an incident just this month where a woman accused someone of raping her (because her husband caught them in the act), she was arrested for falsely accusing someone.
P.S. Freedom of speech allows me to indeed dismiss your opinion as you presumed, I have no obligation to agree or even read it, but I see this as a normal courtesy in conversation. Until you insult me (or otherwise undermine communication) in a way that I can't in good conscience continue to converse with you there is no problem with you disagreeing with me... and there never should be. Maybe freedom of speech should be written as 'Freedom for people to disagree and still get along'.
I can't seem to find your name, phone number, email, IP, and address on your post. I'll ask a mod to delete it ASAP.
Pretty much this.
There's absolutely no rational justification for allowing Google to profit from publishing their users' material while not being liable for the consequences of publication. The whole point of free market is that you take a risk and potentially reap a reward. To put risk in the hand of individuals and reward in the hands of corporations is, well, what we expect from the US and its satellite states. See also banks.
I don't necessarily agree with Brazilian/British libel law, but to the extent that it exists, it should apply to the profit-making publisher as much as it applies to the individual. Inequality before the law in matters of speech is more insidious than totally restricted speech.
From Wikipedia:
In the British honours system the knightly style of Sir is accompanied by the given name, and optionally the surname. So, Elton John may be called Sir Elton or Sir Elton John, but never Sir John. Similarly, actress Judi Dench DBE may be addressed as Dame Judi or Dame Judi Dench, but never Dame Dench.
+1 Insightful
"... just say the magic words: child porn, terrorism, Muhammad, anorexia, extreme porn ..."
Don't forget "OMG! RACISM!"
"Unfortunate schmucks like me who actually took these principles to heart in their formative years then get lumped with heaps of shit for daring to mention them out in the open"
I can appreciate that. Thanks for sticking to your values and standing up for what's right. It's the dilemma of principled civil liberties advocates to be in the position of defending what is often the most vile and revolting content. Nobody wants to ban innocuous speech that doesn't offend anyone. It's always "hate speech", anything pornographic, jihadist (I hadn't heard about attempts to ban discussion of anorexia. I'll check it out) etc. etc. that people want to ban. Defending the right of people to express things which should "obviously" be prohibited by any decent moral standard invariably makes one look like they're defending the content as opposed to the right of free expression. Tough position to be in, but I'm a true believer.
To be a judge here, you must be wealthy and sell his soul. Incidentally, you are sure you want to be judge in one of the most corrupt judicial systems in the world?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
they'd just google it.
rewriting history since 2109
The internet as we know it could not exist if your rules applied. No kind of interactive site could possibly have a staff verifying that everyone's name is real and that everything they publish is true in real time. Slashdot itself could not exist.
To be a judge here, you must be wealthy and sell his soul.
Ok...whose soul do I sell and how much could I expect to make? :-) Would 1 be enough to also qualify as wealthy or would that take a couple more?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
No country have real free speech.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
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.
"It inconveniences the rich" isn't a reason to not apply a law to them.
The Internet as I know and hate it, including Slashdot, would still exist because it's fairly hard to libel someone in the US.
The problem is Brazilian libel law itself, not Brazil's correct application of the law to everyone.
However the consequences of stupidity are very often bullshit laws we are all subjected to
FTFY.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
People will always find a definate reason to (unwittingly) erode free speech, and this one is about saving the children so most logic goes out the window.
I understand bullying is a big problem, and steps need to be taken to prevent it. But is the only solution to make a law against it? And do people really believe these laws will make a difference? Bullying is something that can be solved in school, or at home. If you use 'bad' words it is the job of your parents or teacher to set the line, the government should have no say in the way you verbally interact with your peers. In my opinion the most the government should be able to do is require public schools to have an active project to combat bullying, and let the school handle this internally (with detention or whatever works in that particular school). This also won't fix the problem completely, but at the very least no less than any law could.
And another problem with creating a law is that you need a hard line... where will it be? You can't tell them to 'go kill themselves', but can you say something like 'you would be happier if they would be dead'? Or even 'go to hell'? Or can you still say something more positive like 'if you commit suicide you will hurt the people that love you'?
That case may not get very far...
Read that section of the Fourteenth Amendment carefully. The bold part is very, very relevant and I can't see HOW the Supreme Court could or would grant Cert to a case arguing that the States aren't bound by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is an explicit enumeration of the Privileges and Immunities each and every Citizen of the Union enjoy, described as "Rights". The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly binds the States within the Union to the Bill of Rights in it's first section with little room for discussion or debate as to what that means. There is no "so far"- when the Fourteenth was put in, the States got bound and they're obligated to abide by each and every one of the items therein.
If you doubt this, go look at the decisions in Miranda or Crawford v. Washington sometime. If the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal level government, you wouldn't have HAD those decisions because they're very much Fifth and Sixth Amendment based decisions, applied against Arizona and Washington state at the time they were decided.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You realise the purpose of a judge is to make a ruling based on law (okay, they use case precedent, too, but ultimately there's a foundation in law underpinning all of that). Therefore it's the politicians who need to understand how these things work, and then they need to draft clear, well-defined laws that leave no room for misunderstanding. Judges have some leeway in their rulings, but ultimately they have to follow the written law.
And how exactly is Google making any profit whatsoever off the user's post? Care to enlighten me?
It's widely known that Google social services such as Youtube and Orkut are basically profit sinks, with Youtube alone generating 500 million / year losses.
The perks are: about 120k USD a year. 3 months of paid vacation. A driver and a car at your disposal.
IIRC you must get a JD, work for five years as an attorney and pass a examination.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
So how come I can't make fun of the Holocaust or deny it using the excuse of Freedom of Speech? Why is Freedom of Speech only nice when it is used to insult someone you don't care about? Can I write an article in NY Times making fun of the Holocaust or even denying it? What about gays? Nothing is more insulting to the principle of Freedom of Speech than defending the abuse of it as a good principle. Any freedom of speech lover should hate it when freedom of speech is abused and made bad-looking. Surely those who, for generations, fought for the freedom of speech didn't do so just so some uneducated kid can freely insult big groups of people just for the heck of it. I'm not talking about this Orkut incident here, but about how you label countries that care about the feelings of their people and minorities as being hell-bent on destroying free speech.
Having reviewed a sampling of Brazilian women I am taking Brazil off the blacklist.
The holier than thou attitude is what I am taking issue with. "Yay America" is not an opinion, it is mocking another country for its laws. It does not earn any goodwill.
And blasting the person for WHAT YOU DECIDED TO PERCEIVE as Americastan chauvinism and putting into question a country's common law system (of which you have no personal experience to speak of) just because someone made a post that is clearly a joke to anyone that is not brain dead... earns goodwill how?
How does hypocrisy works for you?
If you are going to project e-rage and e-hate towards an American poster (or the American judicial system), at least be honest instead of dressing it with kumbaya calls of goodwill.
I wonder if they start suing Wikileaks too since they are actually way more sophisticated. The leaks are validated of cause but nether the less are always posted without the submitter known.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
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
Am I missing something here? I don't understand why Brazilian authorities didn't just ask for the user network information.
It's Brazil's problem what their users do on the Internet. That's as far as it goes.
Oh, well, I guess its easier making the news by suing a big company.
You won't be arrested for writing an article in the NYT making fun of gays killed in the Holocaust. The ridiculousness of your own speech is its own punishment. Large groups of people are not threatened by some uneducated kid, but rather the reverse.
$8,500 is not a lot of money. $8,500 multiplied by the number of anonymous posts on services run by Google is enough to bankrupt the company.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Since Brazil is allegedly a democracy, let the people decide.
Due to the risks of being held liable for this, tomorrow, block all access from Brazilian IP's to Google or any Google-owned property (youtube, etc.)
Simple.
My guess is that relatively quickly, public groundswell would force Brazil to confront the fact that I believe people are not allowed to be anonymous in any context there.
-Styopa
Digital forums are not well explained as an analogue of paper published media. Its somewhere between those, and a mail service. A newspaper or magazine has many readers and few authors, hence a small volume of traffic that can be edited and checked for veracity. A mail service has many authors and many readers, but they are one to one, instead of many to many as in a digital forum. The many authors to many readers relationship results in far to much traffic for the facilitator of the traffic to authenticate all of it. If a country decides that the facilitators of a forum are responsible for its content, it will simply cease to have digital forums.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Requiring social responsibility does not alone make something a violation of free speech, too.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Oh, wow, I didn't realise Google had registered as a charity - how much do you donate a month? I wouldn't want to freeload!
It cost more than that for the guy on their legal team who read the initial complaint to read the initial complaint. Perhaps Google should just buy Brazil...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok. Let go to "real life" and try to get judge point of view... You have a store with a place where everyone can add photos. It's free, you don't look at it, and who is adding photos to it. And someone adds a photo with child pornography. And a lot of people see it. The owner can just say that he didn't know? It's his store, he should take care of it. What do you think?
Seriously, get your act together. Google almost only makes money off Google ads (and I think more than half of that on Google's own search page).
They've been trialing YouTube and Orkut ads but it doesn't nearly cover the costs as has been reported in the media several times - you can Google it if you're interested, I won't waste any additional time with you.
Don't forget "OMG! RACISM!"
Unless it happens to be against Muslims, in which case these days it pretty much seems to get a pass...
The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly binds the States within the Union to the Bill of Rights in it's first section with little room for discussion or debate as to what that means. There is no "so far"- when the Fourteenth was put in, the States got bound and they're obligated to abide by each and every one of the items therein.
Not according to the Supreme Court.
What has Google's failure (in your opinion) at profiting from a particular operation got to do with whether that operation's purpose is profit-making? Next you'll be telling me that the Xbox must have been invented for the good of the gaming community, because that was a sink for MS greenback for so long.
Assuming Google's books accurately represent the state of YouTube, say, I'd say that YouTube is a fine loss leader. It's a great way of earning eyeballs for future projects as traditional media becomes more comfortable with Internet broadcasting. It's a sensible risk, if you have the cash, to assume that bandwidth costs will go down whereas revenue from advertising and datamining will improve.
Google were damn smart from a business perspective to have bought it - and that's why they did it: to make money from you so that Page, Brin and other shareholders can buy a bigger jet. Not because they care about you or your speech.
Welcome to the world, kid.
You have to obey the law of the land.
If it is possible to do so profitably, you do so.
If it is not, you leave.
Brazil, China, and other countries are making a choice to try to keep the 90% of the internet that they agree with and to forbid the 10% they disagree with. Ultimately, as computing power increases, they may succeed. It may or may not weaken them as countries. Watching porn 8 hours a day instead of pursuing business fraud did a lot of damage at the SEC. On the other hand, blocking creativity has not had good results in the past.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You must be an experienced attorney, and pass a test. Anybody can take the test (but if you are not an attorney, that will create some troubles), there is no need to indication, and no identification on the test. Very few people pass, so there are always empty positions to fill.
I'd advise caution when declaring somewhere to be the most corrupt anything. Nobody was able to measure corruption in any reliable way up to now. That is a shame, tough, it would be great to see when it increases or decreases.
Rethinking email
What if you answered no?
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
If your free speech depends on anonymity, you a) don't really have much free speech to speak of b) "free speech" laws are redundant, because they are not what gives you free speech, anonymity does (which has different scope of protection anyway...plus gives also means for impersonation, identity theft, etc.)
One that hath name thou can not otter
So does this imply that in Brazil anyone who owns a wall is now liable for anything an anonymous kid spray paints on it? Are paper manufacturers liable for anything some kid jots down in class about how big his teacher's ears are?
The judge needs to have his name changed to "Stew Pididiot".
Mr. Pididiot does not care that the same mentality causes law suites against car companies when hail damages the hood, and electronics manufacturers when idiots bring a TV into a bath tub.
Blame the guy with some money, and who cares about the anonymous Joe. I believe the more common term for what he made Google is "Scape Goat". Shame on Stu!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Did you read the post you were replying to, or just very lightly skim over it?
"criticizing corporations..."socialization"?...talking about the damage a company can cause...GAH another goddamned socialist! I'll reply with a post mocking his proposed socialization of the Internet, and I'll quickly call Obama a corporatist, that socialist son of a bitch! Those damn corporatists will take out foxnews.com first, and then there will be no dissenting voices against the socialists!"
In case you didn't notice you're building a reputation for yourself as a batshit insane loonie - quite an accomplishment on Slashdot.
I used to think you were just a bit eccentric, and now I can't help but imagine you wearing some kind of finely crafted tinfoil headgear, and sitting in front of a computer with a bunch of WND, Infowars and Prisonplanet tabs open.
Fun fact: Today I am picturing you wearing a tinfoil samurai helmet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
May not even exist in Brazil.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...and everything to do with misplaced national pride. IMHO, this and the Italian case are mostly about a smaller country getting off on pushing around a larger and presumably dominant one. Worldwide, there's considerable political sentiment against the ubiquity of American film and other media - this is an extension of that. If the world's preeminent search or media sharing sites were based in Brazil or Italy, it would be a different story.
I doubt your country is even in the top 100 most corrupt judicial systems in the world. If there even is such a ranking.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Something about slaves that believe they are free are the best slaves...oh well...
Anyway, some of those nasty countries are being propped up (or knocked down as deemed necessary to protect economic interests) with American/European dollars/Euros, and of course Chinese and Russian assistance. So while life may be nice on the inside, it's a good idea to take a look at what makes it all possible. If knocking down old ladies to steal their purse is considered a good way to make a living, then I don't know what to say. Because that is effectively what all the major powers are doing. Now if we are to consider ourselves to be free, then we must get the state out of the speech regulation business for starters. It has no rights in this regard.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I hope they pay it in loose dimes (Ok, Ok, Ten Centavos pieces)...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I would offer that the SEC folks that did nothing all day but watch porn were actually doing us a favor. Government employees "doing things" often creates more harm than good, so if more of them would sit and just watch porn we might be a lot better off.
Think how many laws we might be missing if most government officials simply sat and watched porn all day. Do not begrudge them their salary while doing this. It is probably money well spent to keep them from passing more laws and interfering with people more than they are already doing so.
A truely efficient government would be extremely destructive to the idea of "freedom" because it is so inefficient. We should be thankful it is as inefficient and wasteful as it is.
The responsibility is on the listener. The words are inconsequential. You deal with the act, not the speech.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
You forgot to make this anonymous. It is therefore connected (somewhat loosely) to you personally.
Hate speech is indeed a crime in the US and while you are unlikely to be arrested for hate speech alone, when they decide to finally arrest you for other stuff hate speech can turn your other crimes into "aggravated" giving you some more years at the State's expense.
What a pile of horse shit. What needs to go, is the inherent respect for people's precious sensibilities. People who choose to be offended by every blunt fucking thing said, need to be offended to the point that they realize that taking offense is rather like an act of self-mutilation than an act of victimization, and that the idea of reducing blunt insults is not just a worthless, but impossible ideal. As indeed it should be.
Wrong.
Google was sued because it failed to respond to take down notices issued by the govt in this case.
So your scheme would have to be: ....
1. Post anonymous crap about yourself
1.3. inform the authorities and deal with costs of that
1.5. wait for the bureaucratic process
1.8. expect Google to denie the authoritie's take down notice.
2. Sue
3.
4. Profit!
Article 20 of the proposed legislation (Google translated)
"The Internet service provider may only be liable for damages arising from content generated by third parties if it is notified by the victim and not take steps to, within the framework of their service and within reasonable time, make unavailable the content identified as infringing."
The internet genie is being put back in the bottle, one step at a time.
The genie cannot be put back into the bottle... unless the bottle is made much, much bigger. Which we are all too happy to do.
Hehe, bad Google translation. The correct is sell your soul. English is not my native language.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
My fellow Brazilians, put down your flags. Stop dancing for a minute. You may be growing more than almost anybody but China. You seem to have found a shitload of oil in your shores. You will be hosting both the Olympics and the World Cup in the next few years. The 10% of your people who constitute the elite can finally afford new, modern cars. The 90% of your miserably poor, suffering, underfed, uneducated masses can finally afford basic plumbing outside major cities. Obama has called your president "the guy." But consider this:
- You shouldn't compare your economic growth to China's, unless you want millions of salaried slaves doing nothing but work from cradle to grave
- You should be too happy about your new found oil, unless you like what you see (wealth distribution even worse than yours, religious and political extremism, terrorism, etc) in countries that went down that road before like most of the Middle East and your neighbor Venezuela.
- Sports and international events are but temporary glory - just ask the no-longer-existing Soviet Union
- Notice that Obama didn't even invite you to the latest international talks; and when your president showed up there, uninvited, he was thoroughly ignored. - Ask your elites if their shiny new cars are worth living behind bars in luxury condos, if their annual trips to Disney World are worth the kidnappings, if their smuggled iPads are worth the rape of their daughters.
- Your poor are probably better off with some plumbing, but ask them if this is enough or if they also want access to health care, nice safe houses, access to a college education.
My fellow Brazilians, please learn something. You have a basic flaw in your principles. Learn about what freedom actually means; learn that it must include freedom of speech. I know it's a big leap for you, but try to understand that a judge or a celebrity do not merit immediate and automatic compliance. That the opposite is actually closer to the truth. It would be relatively easy to repeal your laws of contempt of authority and the rest of that rubbish; but repealing a law means nothing if the spirit of the law is in the spirit of the people. My fellow Brazilians, you must abandon the colonial ages, leave behind values meant for 17th century Portugal, and join the twentieth century at last. When you've done that you can start aspiring for the twenty-first.
Hello, I'm going to start with a disclaimer:
Yes, I am Brazilian. No, I'm not a lawyer. My opinion on this matter is still undecided, as I think freedom of speech is necessary, but I disagree with lies and slander.
All that said, here's some info on what I'm about to post:
- The text I'm going to use is a technical analysis of the case by a lawyer, not my own. It is in Brazilian Portuguese, so feel free to make use of translation tools to verify anything you feel is incorrectly translated.
- I got the text from http://www.leonardi.adv.br/blog/decisao-tj-mg-1024107021588-40011/ , but I fear the /. effect should take that down rather quickly. I will try to paste the text in full here, in the faint hope that such thing will decrease the number of hits that poor site is going to endure.
Basically saying, what some of you have asked/pointed out/debated is exactly what happened here. The original story is one of many cases where the real story is "reworked" to make impact, selectively leaving out what is not adding to their "fancy argument" and causing debate.
The Brazilian judge did ask Google for information on an anonymous poster who created an Orkut Community defaming the priest in question. Google refused to provide such information (Google Brasil told the judge that this would have been a decision by Google Inc., not Google Brasil). The court then demanded Google to provide all information regarding the post(s) as possible, and Google said nothing could be provided because the Community in question had already been deleted, as well as the user ID who created it.
The court then ruled that Google should be fined for losing sensitive proof about the law suit and therefore it "helped" someone commit a crime and get away with it. As correctly exposed by others before, in Brazil it is legal to exercise your freedom of speech, but it is not legal to do so anonymously.
Let it be completely clear that regardless of how much was omitted from the original story, there still seems to have quite a lot of misunderstanding from the Brazilian law system on the matter (which is well-known for being still in development, also something someone else pointed before). The whole thing is a mess, but this is not a case of Brazil blocking freedom of speech. It is about someone posting lies and slander online anonymously, which is a against the Brazilian legislation.
TLDR: Google was not fined because someone posted lies and slander on one of its websites, it was fined because it refused to provide the government of Brazil with proof of who, what and when did it.
Here is the text, for those who want to play with it:
Decisão TJ-MG 1.0241.07.021588-4/001(1)
dezembro 21, 2007
Decisão do Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de Minas Gerais, entendendo que não há urgência no pedido de fornecimento de dados cadastrais e de conexão de usuário responsável por ato ilícito praticado por meio do web site Orkut.com.
De acordo com a decisão, “não se discute a importância do fornecimento, pelo responsável pelo site de relacionamentos, dos nomes e documentos referentes aos criadores e mediadores da página da internet, mas apenas a ausência de urgência ou necessidade de provimento antecipado do pedido, quando o mesmo pode ser realizado quando da fase instrutória do feito, que pode seguir o seu regular procedimento, sem que haja perigo para o direto da requerente”.
O equívoco da decisão, porém, está em desconhecer que, na esmagadora maioria dos casos, os dados de conexão fornecidos por um provedor de conteúdo precisam ser complementados com dados cadastrais de um provedor de acesso, os quais podem ser perdidos com a passagem do tempo, tendo em vista que não temos, ainda, legislação específica que determine o prazo de manutenção desses dados, por parte do provedor.
Número do processo: 1.0241.07.021588-4
Welcome to more proof of tyranny being set up worldwide. This is not the first decision like this to come down from courts. Governments know to change the way corporations work you hit their pocketbooks. This is not too large or cumbersome a fine, in this case, but I assure you this is being done by design. Tyranny is coming. Control is being set up. Right now, governments are working to get us acclimated to control. One day, they will be done with the preflight and will launch their control. China is a real good example of the testbed for this tech. It can be routed around etc. but what happens when ALL routing and posting and hosting is controlled and monitored? Think it can't happen. Oh, yes it can. Your ignorance of the technology needed does not make it any less real. For those that do know about what can be used, well, you know what to do already.
Ah the slippery slope. Only a fanatic sees the world in black and white. The famous "Fire in a crowded theater" analogy is appropriate here.
Actually, it's not.
See, the "fire in a crowded theatre" example is interesting because it speaks to one of the most fundamental ideas about human rights and their enforcement. Specifically, the idea that your rights end the minute mine are infringed upon. In the case of the fire metaphor, by exercising your right to free speech, you infringe upon my right to safety, and thus it's felt that it is reasonable and moral to curtail your rights in order to protect mine.
But in the case of the written word, there is no harm being done, no one's rights being infringed upon. As such, the example does not apply, as the scenario is fundamentally different.
No, that's why I run Freenet and Tor and will also do everything else in my power to undermine their authority to control anyone's access to information. A government, a corporation or a cult; they all want to control you and own you, body and soul.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
$8,500 is not a lot of money. $8,500 multiplied by the number of anonymous posts on services run by Google is enough to bankrupt the company.
Right. And if Orkut (Google) pulls out of Brazil to protect itself from the government, that might just start a small revolution.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Read that section of the Fourteenth Amendment carefully.
I have, and that section is in direct response to the statements that I made. Earlier, it was held that states did not necessarily have to recognize federal rights.
The way it was held, is that the Constitution states that the States retain all their rights not explicitly forbidden. So, if there is no explicit statement that it applies to the States, then they are not governed by the clause.
The bold part is very, very relevant and I can't see HOW the Supreme Court could or would grant Cert to a case arguing that the States aren't bound by the Bill of Rights.
Unfortunately, United States v. Cruikshank sets the explicit president that the 2nd Amendment only applies to the national government, and not to state or local governments.
The Court stated that "[t]he Second Amendment... has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government...".
And in the most recent ruling District of Columbia v. Heller:
With respect to Cruikshank's continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the first amendment did not apply against the states and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.
As with everything in the Common Law system, simply reading the law is insufficient to fully understand the law, because of the practice of stare decisis.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
NO. And I'm not anonymous. There is nothing that should be censored. It is speech. Words can't physically hurt you even when they can be hurtful. Neither do pictures, video, sound, and allot of other stuff that can be transmitted via a computer. Certainly it is undesirable to be a victim and for it to be on the Internet would be the understatement of the year. There is a bigger danger to society though than violent writings and pictures or child pornography. It is totalitarianism. It is the restraint of freedom. Is most importantly it is societies inability to discriminate for itself what is and is not good. We all have challenges in life. We all suffer at some point or another. This is a cost we all pay and sometimes some pay more than others. No matter who pays or how much though banning undesirable expression doesn't necessarily reduce suffering. It does create dangerous and hostile regimes. Ones where everything is decided by a select few and the people don't know they are being victimized. Western democracies are falling fast. Traditional media outlets are being consolidated or dying, the governments are beginning to censor, and soon it won't be just a few child porn sites- but a list of political, medical, and social sites that a few people decide should be censored. This isn't stuff I'm making up. It is stuff that is happening today. China does it, Australia is enhancing its system beyond censoring child porn and terrorism, and Germany, Britan, Canada, and and many others have similar child porn filtering lists now as well. Tomorrow when you decide it is ok for your child to go to school in the acid rain it won't be because the scientists say it is safe- it'll be because government started filtering the articles from the reporters who included quotes from scientists who said it wasn't safe. So those scientist no longer say things that they know contradict the political views of those in power-who just may be able to hold it indefinitely. The world accepted 9/11 as an excuse for all sorts of terrible atrocities. What would the world accept if a nuclear bomb went off in just one major city in the USA? Indefinite suspension of elections and numerous other legislation pieces disbanding various constitutional protections and even separate branches of government? The last time this happened they didn't even have enough time to read the law that was passed. Because that would be an effective dictatorship. If such a law was passed would they even bother to consider the fact that the constitution is above the law given that they got rid of the supreme court? Remember the president is now a dictator and those who just passed this law-well- passed it.
So most if not all open places owned by private companies (eg check IBM Plaza in Chicago) forbid skateboards and bicycles in its premises.
Reason? Liability. If someone gets hurt the company is fully liable. How can this argument be fully accepted for physical spaces and fully denied for virtual ones?
Maybe just because it fits very well someone's rhetoric agenda.
Well, that's where some people disagree. For example, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" may not be printed and sold in Germany, because it is considered harmful. The harm is exactly the same as in the fire example: People may be led to believe it and act accordingly, and thereby cause explicit harm.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So Brazil is acting a lot like that movie.... BRAZIL! *
Well, that's where some people disagree. For example, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" may not be printed and sold in Germany, because it is considered harmful. The harm is exactly the same as in the fire example: People may be led to believe it and act accordingly, and thereby cause explicit harm.
There's a *very* big difference between creating immediate harm by triggering a stampede, and causing possible future harm by inciting behaviour. As such, I still don't think the analogy applies. This would be why inciting violence is typically illegal, but writing subversive material is not.
And as an aside, citing Germany censorship laws as support for your position is probably a bad idea. Reporters Without Borders has them as 20th in terms of press freedom, and their censorship laws are very draconian for a western nation (and that's saying a lot coming from a Canadian, with our sham "human rights tribunals"). I certainly understand why they feel they are necessary, but I also believe they're immoral (of course, they're also preceded by censorship by allies during the occupation of the nation following the conclusion of WWII).
Given that I didn't anywhere state what my position is, I'm very astonished that you believe to know it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Given that I didn't anywhere state what my position is
Of course you did. Here's the relevant quote:
Are you saying you weren't taking that position? If not, why'd you say it? And if you aren't taking a position, why the hell did you post at all?
Someone probably suggested this and I didn't read all comments, but here it goes:
Say I get myself a can of spraypaint. And say I spraypaint the walls of a children's hospital with words offensive to the man that lives right across the street from said walls. And say I take extreme care not to be seen and not to leave anything that can trace it back to me.
Will a judge fine the children's hospital? He should, because it's the same thing.
Fine the hospital, judge. Come on. I'd love to see you try.
Leave our internets alone.
Can't Google change Orkut so it doesn't allow anonymous posts from the Brazilian IP address space?