Cops cuff Google exec over YouTube Brazilian whack vid Google's senior exec in Brazil was detained by police for questioning yesterday after the firm refused to take down YouTube videos attacking a mayoral wannabe. Brazil has stringent election laws that prevent any campaigning that might "offend the dignity or decorum" of candidates. The two videos in question "slander, insult …
Before people chime in about freedom of speech: Google doesn't give two cacks about freedom of speech. Google cares only about what is in Google's best interest. If Google did care about freedom of speech and not shareholder interest, they'd allow nudity on you tube. If Google had any morals, they wouldn't host the video of Saddam Hussain being executed, or gangs "dissing" each other. Google wouldn't change things for China, if they believed in freedom of speech. No, it's all about what makes the most and loses the least amount of money for Google.
Google's best option is to provide country-specific variants of its sites, so they could have Youtube.br, Youtube.co.uk, etc. The offending video could be removed from the Brazilian site to comply with local law, but not from the other sites. It would then be up to Brazil to decide whether they want to block the 200 other national variants of Youtube or just accept that they can't control everything.
Good idea. Also, on each site, they could have a link to a list of all titles that have been blocked by order of that nation's courts. Perhaps with some/many called 'Title Forbidden' if the title itself was deemed to be offensive by that nation's courts.
That way, people would know what their courts were preventing them from watching.
why should they reinvent the wheel? Don't tell me that you never came across a youtube video that you couldn't watch because you were in the wrong part of the world?
I can't watch any FUNimation anime trailers from their official channel because of the regional lock. Why can't the same lock apply to videos that are deemed offensive by the local law?
Freedom of Speech? nah, more like good PR time, like the one they got when they left China just for them to try to crawl back in (and fail).
That's not the point!
If you want to do business in a country (and google obviously do since in this case they have a Brazilian subsidiary) then you have to abide by that countries laws.
All of them! You don't get to pick and choose which ones you want to follow and which ones you want to ignore.
Let me get this straight governments will arrest corperate stooges over stupid shit like videos they don't like... but if they ruin tens of millions of lives around the world, stealing tens of billions of dollars in the process, and they get a pat on the back and a government bail out?
Yeah that makes sense...
Also... someone needs to explain the Streisand Effect to these people...
It's a law to protect the feelings of politicians... and he wasn't arrested over that, he was arrested on a charge of "disobedience".
If was really offensive why didn't the politician simply sue the uploader for slander... you know take things through the courts in a way that's open to everyone, instead of take advantage of a law written to protect just him.
I'm guessing that libel/slander laws are of limited use against political smear campaigns, as they can only provide some level of compensation after the election - and plenty of people would be perfectly willing to hand over a pile of money in fair compensation, if the libel wins them a term in power.
It is a law aimed at stopping personal attacks on politicians (as is common in most countries: Swift boat? Tony Blair's demon eyes etc. etc.).
It only applies for, IIRC, 4 weeks before an election. Outside of that everyone is fair game, including & up to the vampire Serra.
There are elections coming up in Brasil in early October ( I forget the date).
The real tragedy is if it does follow suite, it leaves open the fact that all someone has to do is claim content is illeagle, and pages will be removed. Its already bad enough they are taking down all the sites that are "demanded" by all the different agencies for rights./ music, and such. I mean once they allow all this to happen, its just outright censorship! and we lose all sense of freedom of speech! Just wave a subpoena and poof, web pages go by by! Its very sad, I think.
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