The arrest of a top Google executive is reviving a debate about Brazilian laws that hold services such as YouTube responsible for the videos posted on them, making the country a hotbed of attempts to stifle digital content.
Legal experts said on Thursday that Google violated a judge’s order to take down videos on its YouTube subsidiary that target Brazilian political candidates – and that the judge was completely within the law in issuing the arrest warrant.
But they said the arrest of Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, the head of Google’s Brazil operations, underscores the need to modernise laws that treat offensive material on the internet like material that is carried by newspapers, television and radio, holding platforms such as Google responsible for user-provided content.
Coelho was released shortly after his arrest on Wednesday and agreed to appear before a court at an as-yet undetermined time. On Google’s official Brazil blog, Coelho wrote on Thursday night that the company was forced to block the video in the case for which he was arrested after the company lost its final appeal.
“We are deeply disappointed that we have never had the full opportunity to argue in court that these were legitimate free speech videos and should remain available in Brazil,” he wrote. “Despite all this, we will continue to campaign for free expression globally.”
Legal experts said the case cast a spotlight on problems within Brazil’s legal system.
