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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.
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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!
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.
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...
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.
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
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).
How do you premoderate a resource with millions of users? More probable is google and other hosting providers and ISPs lobbying for laws that specifically make them not liable for the actions of the users. That is of course if google can't appeal anymore. Otherwise an appeal seems more probable.
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
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.
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/
they'd just google it.
rewriting history since 2109
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