Brazilian judge orders arrest of Google Brazil president
m.sfgate.com
m.sfgate.com
US citizens ought to study the political history of these countries to really understand why it is very, very important to keep your government as honest as possible (honest government == oxymoron) and working for you and your interests rather than their own.
It doesn't happen in the US?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09cEwnivdr0
Virtually nothing in a democratic system is as sacred as a vote. Observing a politician flat-out ignore voters and make-up his own result is down-right disgusting. It is beyond me why this did not generate a revolt at all levels. What was being voted on is of no consequence here. What is important is that you are seeing the true nature of some politicians: You, the people, don't really matter. It's about politicians for politicians. Sad.
BTW, It happens at all levels and ALL parties. We just don't get to see it. This just happens to be one example that is very public.
I'm not saying that the DNC fight wasn't "undemocratic" either -- just agreeing that holding this up as an example of "government corruption" is a huge stretch. They held a fake vote on a fake document; the most notable thing here is that they did it embarassingly in public.
We do have a perfect example of this at the congressional level: The healthcare law. Most senators did not read it. And it was rammed through by using parliamentary tricks (legal, of course) rather than votes. What's worst, nobody actually read the law ("We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it"). And, of course, it was piled high with all sorts of pork.
The general idea is that politicians (all parties, all levels), as a class, will work hard to optimize their own benefits --be it political or financial. They seldom act with a sincere aim of benefiting the people or the country, and certainly not with any real long term thinking (despite statements to the contrary). The problem is that nobody has come up with a viable alternative that could fix some of these issues. We humans are a sorry-ass species.
If this was on the floor of the Senate or something there'd be massive protests.
Antonio Villaraigosa was the chair of the convention, so I guess you could say he's a politician as well as convention MC and a party functionary to boot.
He's termed out of his job as LA mayor this year, so he's looking for a new position and doesn't want to turn the party leadership off.
He's a real go getter, everything from instructing jurors on the guilt and innocence of the defendants, to unilaterally ordering the execution of citizens.
The man and the law have finally been unified. Whatever his whim so shall the law be.
Unfortunately, Brazilian law attributes a higher value on someone's public image than it does on free speech. Hate speech is similarly suppressed and slander lawsuits are routinely used to silence criticism. If you blog about the bad service you got at some restaurant, you risk being sued. Not that long ago offenses against someone's honor have been used as mitigating factors in murders.
The bright side is that, if the lawsuit is considered without merit, the other part will have to cover at least part of your legal bills.
http://pigletinportugal.com/2010/10/28/how-to-make-a-complai...
But, if the judge had ordered it deleted, shouldn't Google have taken it down and then argued its case? I mean, would Google simply ignore a judge's order in the US?
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government...
"Government requests for content removal are high in Brazil relative to other countries partly because of the popularity of our social networking website, orkut."
In other words, the high number of takedown requests from Brazil is to a significant extent, an ARTIFACT of the predominance of Orkut in Brazil.
That is an interesting response. What other judicial decisions has Google issued statements rejecting?
So it's kind of funny that my home country is also censoring an independent video on youtube. Another example of the web causing a problem for current law.
The idea behind the law isn't bad: no personal attacks, equal airtime for every party. Unfortunately, it breaks down when faced with the reality of youtube.
More like law causing problems for the web.
http://www.thedailybell.com/4290/Who-REALLY-Produced-the-Fil...
On the other hand, it shows the precarious nature of YouTube as a medium. They're not responsible for the content because... What? Google says so? Up until the recent times, we were used to channels taking at least some responsibility for the content they're carrying. Do the TV channels and newspapers not have to worry about privacy issues or about being libellous or slandering? Are the bookshops not prevented from stocking illegal, potentially harmful books? It's very convenient and cost-saving for Google to say: "sorry guys, we know we earn $billions but it's all on user-generated content, so we have no control over it." Perhaps that situation will change in the future and Google will have to comply with local regulations, although that'd bring a host of other issues with it.
I largely see Google as a force for good. However, there's a thin line that could be crossed and could lead to the company imposing its own, sometimes US-centred views, on the local nations. "Do no evil" to America is not necessarily the same as do no evil as a human being.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/technology/21ebay.html
I don't know about Brazil, but in Argentina that would be the correct ruling according to the law. They probably didn't think they could actually kill someone. In the worst case, they thought it was possible, but too improvable. Plus they were drunk. So you may not like they laws, but these rulings alone do not necessarily imply corruption.
In Brazil that would be true in the case of a regular car accident, it would be regarded as having no intent to kill.
If you are drunk however, brazilian law understands that you had intention to kill, because you know well enough that drinking will impair your driving and most likely kill someone.
However, an officer's statement is not enough to prove that you are drunk, you have to agree to take the test, and if you don't, than you can just throw money at the case up to the point where the final ruling is so late to the fact that the penalty has expired.
A truly messed up country. So next time someone complains about the way their country is being run, tell them to read up on freedom in Brazil and they might appreciate their own countries a little more.
That's an hyperbolic statement and is not true. Brazil and USA have a similar law system regarding censorship.
If you have the money in Brazil you can get anyone into trouble who has offended you where-as in the US and other places it's not as easy because the US judicial system fortunately for you and others is not nearly as corrupt.
This is not the first decision against Google in this election and will probably result in nothing for Google and their president and workers, I have a couple of friends working in Google Brazil and life is the same as before, there's no police in the door of their building harassing them, if everything else fails he could appeal to the Supreme Federal Court who judges matters of constitutional issues, including free speech and complication involving this basic right.
Brazil does not have free speech as in the US, the legislation is almost the same that exist in France and a couple of other European countries for example, you cannot open a website containing hate speech, hosting neo-nazi websites is illegal in Brazil, hosting terrorism related websites is illegal in Brazil, the list follows, I prefer this way although I see value in the American system.
Following HN for such a long time I saw a couple of comments about how the legal system in the US also sucks and how the legal system there is a mess, nothing different from, people here in São Paulo generally idolizes the American criminal law and how it's easy to put people in jail for long times or even applying capital punishment, which does not exist in Brazil, with a exception in military justice in times of war, and yet I saw more than one discussion of how this same system in the US sucks right here on HN some months ago.
There's a point in the last paragraph, why are you generalizing? Are you a expert in comparative international law? If not I do not see how your opinion matters or how your last paragraph is valid, I used to be a grad student in the US I got the impression that Americans are over litigious and that the justice system generally benefits the rich who can pay better lawyers, not much different from here in Brazil, but that is just pure personal experience, I'm not a lawyer, I am a statistician. Must I say then that the US judicial system is corrupt? I don't think so, personally I would love to live in a world where judges are not necessary but we know that this won't happen.
And by the way in Brazil a judge is employed by the state not by a government.
And I still mean the question I asked, but without snark now. Where is pitiburi? Brazil, somewhere else? Wikipedia doesn't list what countries have this form of the word or give any way for me to look up the etymology.
Take the case of Germany. Free speech? A complete joke! http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/04/30/testing-the-l...
Internet gives you power, dont let these fu*rs do whatever they want.
Will the next world war start over a video on youtube? Starting to consider that.
This seems like an excessive amount of power wield by some random judge, not to mention the non issue of it all.
Having said that, the decision might not seem that crazy once you know more about the local electoral laws: Each party has a free quota of TV ad spots (it's actually good because it gives a voice to smaller parties), and because they are free they need to follow certain rules such as no personal attacks.
The electoral judge has the the power to arrest media bosses because historically media has a huge influence in Brazilian elections (for example, the owner of the major TV network actually elected a president several years ago).
Google is being treated in this case as any other mainstream media, and its president is being held accountable. Sounds a little crazy, but these were all protections put in place as a result of decades of dictatorship and disproportionate power enjoyed by the elites.
As for the equal amount of allotted airtime per politician, I know someone who was running for city council and she told me the allotted time is not equal, that it's dependent on several factors. In any event, politics here annoys me all the same.
_____
"It's 3PM and a car drives by the apartment complex. This isn’t an odd occurrence since I live near a main street. This particular car happens to have large speakers set up on its roof and it’s playing the kind of song that is attractive to young people. Without considering it, I start bobbing my head to the beat while at my desk...then comes the chorus. Strangely, it’s a five digit number that is on a loop.
What I’m experiencing, in actuality, is a local politician’s campaign strategy. Politicians in Brazil each get a number which they need to use to the best of their ability in order to get their constituents to vote for them. These numbers are repeated ad-infinitum as if the only purpose were to implant that number in people’s heads.
A few other strategies are also employed during election time, with only one of them allowing the politician ‘air-time’ to say what they stand for. Another phase of the “remember my name and number” plan of attack, is to hire anyone looking for some extra cash to stand in high traffic areas and hand out glossy leaflets with the politician’s face, name, number and political party on them. The idea, I suppose, is to hammer the message home. Whatever that message might be, I can’t quite tell."
This has led to the same "get my name out there" campaign, where my entire suburb will be covered in Billboards of various candidates, each Billboard containing only their photo and their name. Half the time I can't even tell which party they are with, let alone what their policies are or why they deserve my vote. I can't imagine it's an effective use of the campaign budget.
The worst version of this is seeing a party which otherwise claims to be thoughtful about the environment and global warming etc hiring drivers to drive a convoy of cars with billboards on the trailers around the city - again, with nothing but a photo and a name. I sometimes wonder if politicians even consider what message their campaigns send the electorate...
More on Brazilian politics here. http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/wljya/til_tha...
It's quite convoluted.
Neither Google or Youtube are down now here, probably won't be too, since it would let it spill the amount of ridiculousness that happens around here in every field outwards.
Not long ago, another judge tried to blackout Facebook for 24hrs too, don't remember why...
It was for similar reasons. Someone trash talked a politician on Facebook, the politician ordered it to be taken down, Facebook failed to comply and was ordered to blackout for 24 hours.
It's worth noting that Brazil is the number 1 country in number of takedown requests to Google. Almost all of them are because of politicians feeling offended.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2121003/Liam-Stacey-...
I had heard that too. It's not true. Of course, it's the US. And the US is ahead in the percent of requests complied with by Google (93%) which is the important thing.
Three sources: http://www.care2.com/causes/us-makes-most-takedown-requests-... http://searchengineland.com/most-censorship-and-content-take... http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/king-of-takedown-requests-goog...
The fact is that Google complies with US requests at a far higher rate than any other country's. It's a US company, and users in Brasil or anywhere else had better not forget that, just as they should not forget that Microsoft and Apple are US companies.
As I never tire of saying, "there is no free lunch".
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government...
Click on court order requests. Brazil is first, US is second.
And so is every country, because ignorant judges are everywhere.