Order to ban YouTube over steamy video of model ignites Brazil firestorm

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A time-honored Brazilian pastime — getting frisky with a significant other on the beach — has ignited a nationwide debate about Internet freedoms.

The difference in this case is that the sex caught on video and displayed on the Internet involved one of Brazil's top models, Daniela Cicarelli, cavorting with her banker boyfriend on the Spanish seaside.

She sued, leading a Brazilian judge last week not only to block access to the video but also to shut down Brazilian access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube, which is owned by Mountain View, Calif.-based Google. It was the first Brazilian effort to block access to an international Web site.

The order has prompted outrage and debate about whether Brazilian authorities are resorting to draconian measures in an effort to stanch a rising wave of Internet fraud and other cybercrimes.

Internet crimes

Legislators have proposed collecting personal information on every Brazilian Internet user as a way to prevent Internet crimes. Brazilian officials also have sued Google to force it to hand over information about users of its popular Orkut social-networking site in an effort to stop the spread of child pornography.

Technology experts said such heavy-handed tactics suggest that Brazilian authorities haven't figured out how to regulate Internet activity while protecting online freedoms.

"The problem is, there's a lack of legislation dealing with Internet issues," said Ronaldo Lemos, a Brazilian technology expert who's chairman of iCommons, an international organization that supports open access to copyrighted material on the Internet.

"Judges don't have the criteria to address these problems on a consistent basis, so they're trying to regulate the Internet with the kind of conduct, such as filtering, that's used by authoritarian regimes."

Brazilian officials pushing for tighter controls reject such criticism, saying they're only trying to make cyberspace a safer place as Brazilian Internet use explodes. With some 13 million people regularly accessing the Internet, Brazil has become known as a haven for hackers and online fraudsters.

"The Internet is a powerful instrument, but it is also an excessively dangerous instrument because you have criminals who are using it to do illegal acts, like steal money," said Sen. Delcidio Amaral, who has introduced legislation requiring service providers to collect personal information about Internet users.

"We need to have a kind of discipline here because this is a thing that could absolutely damage society."

The storm was sparked when a video of Cicarelli, the ex-wife of Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, and her boyfriend, Renato Malzoni Filho, appeared on YouTube. The five-minute video showed the two having sex on a Spanish beach. The video has been talked about in Brazil for months and has popped up on other Web sites.

Damages sought

The couple — she has a successful show on Brazilian MTV — sued to block the video and is seeking $116,000 a day from YouTube for every day the video remains posted, saying the site isn't doing enough to prevent the video's reposting under different titles.

YouTube claims it has done everything possible to remove the video, but that users of its site keep reposting it.

That led São Paulo state Supreme Court Judge Enio Santarelli Zuliani to order access to YouTube blocked. The cutoff was successful enough that enraged YouTube users launched a boycott of Cicarelli's TV show and demanded that she be fired.

The judge reversed his decision Tuesday and ordered the Web site unblocked while the case progressed, so long as YouTube continued its efforts to remove the video.

The video was shot on a public beach, but it may violate Cicarelli's privacy under Brazilian law because it was edited and otherwise modified for commercial purposes, said Brazilian technology lawyer Renato Opice Blum.

"It's not possible to block everything on the Internet, and it's very unpopular" to do so, Opice Blum said. "Blocking YouTube was simply unenforceable."