UPDATE: Google has not commented on Coelho, but a spokesperson told me that they are taking action on the ruling to remove the aforementioned videos:
“Google is appealing the court’s decision to remove a video from YouTube because, as a platform, we are not responsible for the content uploaded to our site.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Well, that didn’t take long. Less than two days after a Brazilian Judge ordered the arrest of Google’s President of Operations in the country, he has been arrested.
Fabio Jose Silva Coelho was arrested on Wednesday, according to a statement released by the Federal Police (obtained by Brazilian news site G1). The site reports that he will not stay incarcerated, and will be release later considering he agrees to obey a subpoena.
Coelho was arrested on charges that Google failed to remove certain YouTube videos that were determined to be defamatory. These videos contained disparaging remarks about a mayoral candidate in the city of Campo Grande. According to G1, the candidate Alcides Bernal calls the videos lies, and said they are part of an “electioneering strategy” designed to undermine his campaign.
Brazil and Google have clashed before on the issue of “offensive content,” as Google was sued in country for content hosted on Google’s Orkut social networking site.
Google has stated that they are not responsible for any offensive content. Google has complied with takedown requests in the past, however. In fact, Brazil submitted 418 separate takedown requests last year alone, and Google says that they complied with just over 60% of them.
We’ve reached out to Google and will update this article when we hear back.
[G1 via The Next Web]