TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Google's Brazil Unit Summoned on Orkut Chat Rooms Complaint

Google's Brazil Unit Summoned on Orkut Chat Rooms Complaint

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Thu, 9 Mar 2006 19:45:06 -0600

Google Inc.'s Brazilian unit has been asked to appear before
authorities on Friday to explain what the company was doing to curb
crimes allegedly being committed through its Orkut chat rooms.

The Web search engine's Brazil spokesman confirmed that the unit,
Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he
declined to give details. The Public Ministry is similar to a
U.S. attorney general's office.

The summons came after a complaint was filed with the ministry by the
nongovernmental organization Safernet, http://www.safernet.org.br,
which monitors crime on the Internet.

Orkut, a chat room service provided by Google, has around 14 million
registered users, nearly 73 percent of whom say they are Brazilian.

"Since June, we have sought out Google to request preventive measures
against crimes that are practiced on Orkut, but we never got a
response," said Safernet President Thiago Nunes de Oliveira, who is
also a professor of information rights at the Pontificia Catholic
University of Bahia.

"We found more than 5,000 profiles of users that were publishing
images with scenes of child pornography in photo albums," said
Oliveira.

He said Google's local administration referred Safernet to Google's
headquarters in the United States. But Safernet said that was
unacceptable since the crimes were committed in Brazil where the local
unit is registered. Google Brasil has offices in Sao Paulo.

Oliveira said that Safernet wants Google to remove illegal material
and report users that post it.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

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