Google Brazil Exec "Detained" For Refusing YouTube Takedown Order

h00manist writes that, as promised, "The police executed an order to detain Google's top executive in Brazil (Original in Portuguese), Fábio José Silva Coelho. Google refused an order to remove a YouTube video which accused a mayoral candidate of several crimes. Police say he will be released today; Brazilian law for the case allows for a one-year max sentence. Streisand Effect, anyone?"

Re:When in Rome...

[icebike]

Google has no data centers in Brazil.

So your Pass the buck is the only true course. I'm sure that is exactly what the hapless Google employee did.
He has no control over datacenters. He's probably a marketing droid.

But Brazil decided to take hostages any way.

So next time you travle to Brazil you can expect to be held accountable for anything your employer might do
anywhere in the world.

If the US did this, you would be championing the company and condemning the US for trying to extend its
laws to other countries.

I'm Brazilian and this is'nt censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, i'm completely against any kind of censorship and when i read about this the first time i tough it was something abusive. But after looking at some of the videos... they are just a bunch of lies about the guy, with fake "documents" that doesn't exist showing things he didn't do it. Here in Brazil there's a law that says something like this: if you accuse some candidate about anything during election you have do identify yourself. That's to protect people against things like this. Google did not comply with the law, they were asked to remove and done nothing, now they say excuses like they aren't responsible about user content. When it' s major record company thay don't even ask.. google has their legs open to then. Ridiculous position from a company that i have a lot of respect, hope they apologize their attitude.

Re:When in Rome...

[icebike]

He didn't comply because he couldn't comply.

Are brazillian companies run in such a way that it is normal to expect a Janitor at a Sales office to be able to over rule the head office?

If A US judge decided to hold a secretary of Embraer's US office hostage until the parent company nuckeled under to some unreasonable demand would Brazillians shrug? Or would they be burning the flag at the embasy gates.

Why the the double standard when it comes to this type of behavior?

Google has complied before

[dutchwhizzman]

Google is known to comply with local law and not display video's that are in violation of several nations laws, when requested to do so by the local authorities. After Thailand blocked youtube, they removed any video that could be insulting to Thailands king Bhumibol, to give an example. Similar actions to remove or at least block content have been taken in several countries after legal and sometimes economical pressure from the country. I'm sure that a next step from Brazil would be to name Google a criminal organization and block all their services for the entire country. It may not be the very next step, but eventually it will get to that point.

The most likely thing that will happens next is that Google will then comply because they can't afford to loose the business if it gets to that. Don't be evil, unless you are losing too much money. My analysiss of Google leaving China is that it wasn't about censorship, they complied to that for quite a while, but about too much effort for the money they were allowed to make by the Chinese government. They were being forced to censor *and* squeezed for the amount of cash they were allowed to pull out of the Chinese economy. The latter made applying the censorship just too much work to be profitable enough.