March 24, 2010
SAO PAULO (AFP) - A Brazilian court Tuesday fined US Internet giant Google for not blocking pages of dirty jokes on its social networking site Orkut.
The court in the northern state of Rondonia ordered Google to pay 2,700 dollars for each day that the pages remained up, and told it to stop similar material being posted.
It rejected Google's argument that the company did not have the technical means or employees needed to police Orkut, a Facebook-like community that has its biggest following in Brazil.
The court noted that Google already implemented such curbs on its pages in China -- but did not address the major Google-China dispute over censorship that saw the US company direct Chinese users of its search engine to its freer Hong Kong service.
According to the Brazilian judge, the Google lawsuit stemmed from two teenagers who said they were offended by the material on the Orkut pages.
