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.
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"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.