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.

I'll throw my mod point away there is good censors

[aepervius]

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.

World bank disagrees

[Kupfernigk]

Brazilian GNP [google.co.uk] - as sourced by Google.

Re:Pre-election laws

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:Pre-election laws

[zill]

How else are you going warn everyone about the theater fire?

Justice Holmes' exact words were " falsely shouting fire in a theater [wikipedia.org]". Please get it right next time.

Re:That's how you deal with Big Business

[bloodhawk]

Arrest the responsible people? Did Google produce the video? Did the specific Brazilian Google President produce the video personally himself and post it on his own Youtube account?

No.

The responsible people are those who produced and uploaded the video. Not Youtube.

There is nothing inherently illegal with the video, however most countries in the world have very specific laws around advertising just before an election and all forms of media need to comply with those laws, it doesn't mater who produced it, what matters is that google refused to remove it in a timely manner. In most western countries this is actually considered a pretty severe breach of advertising and election laws that can result in criminal prosecutions.

Re:Pre-election laws

[jbolden]

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.

Re:Pre-election laws

[SaroDarksbane]

But hey, that's ok right?

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).

But you said it should all be free... I'm confused...

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?

Re:Pre-election laws

[isorox]

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)