Google exec arrested in Brazil: Time

On 9/27, Sorcha Pollak wrote for Time on the power that governments still wield in cyberspace.  First, a Brazilian court banned YouTube from carrying “The Innocence of Muslims.”  The court ultimately decided that the “need to protect people from ‘actions that might incite religious discrimination'” trumped freedom of expression.

Second, another Brazilian court issued an arrest order for Fabio Jose Silva Coehlo, Google’s top Brazil exec.  The judge issued that order because Google had refused to take down a video on YouTube which criticized a local mayoral candidate.  According to Time, Google had initially ignored the order, and now wants to appeal the decision because “[Google] claims not to hold responsibility over any content uploaded by a third party.”

Third, a Brazilian ISP has blocked “YouTube in the city of Campo Grande for a period of 24 hours.”

This Time article illustrates the power that governments wield in cyberspace.  If you’ve had the pleasure of reading Jack Goldsmith & Time Wu’s Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World, you know that the internet has not liberated us from governments, borders, and our physical selves.  Rather, governments still have the ability to seriously impact cyberspace.  To wit, why doesn’t Google just say screw it and refuse to take down either video?  Probably because their execs will be subject to arrest orders, any property or subsidiaries Google owns in Brazil may be subject to judgements, and Brazilian ISPs will refuse access to YouTube at the Brazilian government’s request.  In this sense, the Brazilian government is able to reach out and influence a company headquartered in a different country with different free speech rights (much as Yahoo bent to the will of the French government in Goldsmith & Wu’s book).

You can find the Time article by Sorcha Pollak here.