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Brazilian Judge Orders 24-hour Shutdown of Google and Youtube
_Sharp'r_ writes "Judge Flavio Peren of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil has ordered the arrest of the President of Google Brazil, as well as the 24-hour shutdown of Google and Youtube for not removing videos attacking a mayoral candidate. Google is appealing, but has recently also faced ordered fines of $500K/day in Parana and the ordered arrest of another executive in Paraiba in similar cases."
Early reports indicated that the judge also ordered the arrest of the Google Brazil President, but the story when this was written is that the police haven't received any such order (and an earlier such order was overuled recently). The video is in violation of their pre-election laws.
Don't you mean Google users?
Good censorship = censorship. Fuck you.
Yes, but libel laws, prohibitions on death threats, and prohibitions on publishing government secrets are also censorship. Censorship itself is just a label. Calling something that doesn't automatically make it bad.
case in point pornography is recognized as to be limited to certain class of ages, and various type of media are limited by ages. Also you can't yell fire in theater, another good type of censorship and similar. Finally libel laws are certainly limitation and therefor censorship of some type of speech, and in some country if you swear and insult a policeman you can get fined. In such a case , the censorship is to make sure *everybody* is on the same level shortly before the election, without a media blitz. Such law exists actually in many country. So yeah your insinuation that there is no good censorship is noted but completely ridiculous.
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I'm yet to speak to someone who spouts nonsense about all censorship being wrong who actually understands and accepts the consequences that come with it. You'll never talk them round because they've taken an ideological position, without real consideration, so they're not the kind of people who are going to accept a contrary, yet rational, position.
Nope. This is (yet again) about a US company trying to pretend that only US law applies as soon as they enter another country. Google is just the most visible example of that, and I support this decision.
If you want to sell services in a country and generate revenue, you damn well have to follow the local laws there or get fined. Simple.
Insert
You are allowed to do exactly that, no one's stopping you, it's simply that there are consequences, this is not censorship.
Censorship is the enforced blocking of information, it's the preventing of it even being broadcast which is exactly what's being asked for here.
If this were the same as punishment for shouting fire in a crowded theatre then the judge would simply fine them for distributing false information or jail the person who posted it for libel etc. This is not what is being done though, this is outright censorship, and yes, it's bad.
I hate trotting out this quote every so often, but...
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
From Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Good job, Brazil: If they don't listen to the law, give them a fine high enough that it's relevant, and arrest the responsible people.
I'm not choosing sides whether this is good or bad censorship. I'm just delighted that they have the balls to stand up to large companies. Not every country does that... and in almost every case the responsible management get away with it without any punishment. Most punishments are fines, which will just slightly reduce profit. Arresting the management might get their attention.
Several things here. Google has offices within the local jurisdiction making them culpable for violations of it. Google can likely restrict access to IP's outside the country like they did with that movie trailer thing a week or so ago. We know they have the ability and they have done it already.
Nothing is to stop you from copying the video and posting it everywhere you can find. The companies that have offices within the country that has local jurisdiction will have to remove it or face the same problems as Google it. The services and companie who do not have local offices can ignore the mandates, law and so on unless they plan on visiting and/or opening local offices up within that jurisdiction in the future. Unless some sort of international treaty with a country they have offices within provides otherwise, Brazil can fine and issue arrest warrant all day long on people not within their jurisdiction and nothing can be done about it outside that unless the companies get within their jurisdiction somehow- invasion, treaty, visiting the country, opening shop within the country and so on..
Now on to censorship. Please do not confuse the right to free speech with a mandate that someone provide you a platform or stage for that speech. If a company has offices in a country and doing business within that country, they are obliged to follow the local laws of the country. If that means blocking access to a video on their servers or removing it entirely, then they have to do it or suffer the penalties of breaking the laws. Google already censors a lot of stuff voluntarily- Google already complies with local laws in certain area they have offices in. It's not a big deal for them to comply with this.
Brazilian GNP - as sourced by Google.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is not the case. The US has possibly the strongest protection of freedom of speech in the world, and any such law would be in violation of the constitution.
But most other countries do consider freedom of speech to be a right that should be balanced with other rights. A fair election being one of them, and the belief that public criticism of a candidate without adequate time for the candidate to address the accusations would violate this right.
I've never heard of a law prohibiting the reporting of news or running of ads in the US close to elections
Then you missed out on part of McCain-Feingold, which did ban some speech along those lines. That's part of what the supreme court recently found to be unconstitutional: muzzling communication like that runs very contrary to one of the founding principles of our constitution. The law allowed, for example, a business like General Electric or News Corp (which both run media outlets, though of different political orientations) to use their editorial voices to communicate about candidates and ballot issues right up through poll closing - but prohibited others (like you or me, or groups we might join, like the NRA or Greenpeace and the like) from doing the same. Completely capricious, and justifiably shot down in the court. But it was the law of the land for a while there.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How else are you going warn everyone about the theater fire?
Justice Holmes' exact words were " falsely shouting fire in a theater". Please get it right next time.
Pornography. I'm still not so sure pornography is bad.
We like to watch entertainment of the things we like or are interested in. We watch food shows. No one has a problem with that. We watch beauty contests. No one... okay, 'few' have a problem with that. Olympics? Fishing? Golf? Fighting!! You name it; if someone likes it, there's a form of entertainment which will be produced about it. But because it involves sex, a rather basic and extremely universal pleasure in the animal world, we have to say "oh no..."
What we fear, dislike or disapprove of about sex has more to do with religious and social values than anything else. Remove those from the equation and you will see less "forbidden fruit." Suddenly people aren't making unsubstantiated claims like "it harms children!" You know what harms children? Curiosity which isn't managed by adults. Knives, fire, fireworks, guns, heights, roads and streets... sex isn't quite as dangerous as any of those other things and yet somehow we are more concerned over whether or not they know what their 'things' are for than just about anything else.
Right. There are many fundamentally broken things in the USA democracy - Funding and advertising is one of them. Most countries I know of have strict laws regulating who can fund a party, what are the tops for funding - And how can that be spent. Most countries also require a given period (here in Mexico, 72 hours) before the election where no advertising can be made. Campaigning is over, and it should not distract the citizen - This is done in part because of past experiences where i.e. rallies for party X were conducted in areas that would vote for party Y, making it hard for voters to reach the booths.
McCain-Feingold never prohibited speech by existing media at all. It had some prohibitions on paid speech. We have strong protections for people lobbying congress and strong laws against bribery. Paid and free speech have never been treated the same.
That argument it stupid.
The point is that some kinds of speech can incite panic and if done for nefarious purposes should be legally limited because the benefit of such a limit outweighs the harm.
Claiming that the people who panicked would be at fault is ridiculous: suppose someone yelled "Sarin!" in a room full of biochemists... They would be RIGHT in assuming they were in immediate mortal danger.
What's the BENEFIT from protecting such speech?
Then let me be the first: There should be no criminal penalties on any speech, information, or data transmitted from anyone, to anyone.
Basically, you're saying you think censorship is valid in some circumstances? Such as what? Anti-muslim hate videos? Electoral accusations? Videos that disagree with the state's point of view?
Who gets to decide these circumstances? The president, the king, you?
Sounds like a dictatorship to me.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
It's not okay, but it also shouldn't be criminal. You can be opposed to someone doing something and also not want it to be criminalized (see: drug war).
Why? Because you wrongly assumed I would be outraged by your scenario? I am not.
So I reiterate: There should be no criminal penalties on any speech, information, or data transmitted from anyone, to anyone. What else ya got?
It's the same if CNN of Fox news broadcast this type of stuff during election day (which I assume is illegal in America)
You would be assuming wrong. CNN or FOX can have a 24 hour presentation where they openly advocate for any candidates they want and say just about anything they want. The protections regarding political speech in the USA are very strong.
Interesting.
Certainly in the UK, once polling opens that's it for anything political. No exit polls, no party political broadcasts, and very guarded reporting from journalists.
But then we don't have a (broadcast) media that openly campaigns for specific parties. We don't have political advertising either, at least not monetary advertising (parties get fair broadcast time based on how "major" they are)
The newspaper industry often takes sides (It's the Sun wot won it), but the broadcast industry is a haven of impartiality compared with the U.S. media (but then our TV in general is much less eye-clawing)