Orkut Home To Brazilian Criminals

Scaredy Cat on Sat, 2006-03-11 14:37.

Rumours & Scandal

6 comments

Seems Brazilians love Google's group chat program - Orkut. According to a story at Reuters,the Brazilian government has requested Google stop the illegal activities. Apparently 73% of the 14 million users are from the South American country.
Claims have been made that child pornography and drug deals have been occurring on Okrut.
This seems to be another example of criminals taking advantage of the freedoms offered by the internet. If such activities prevail the argument for censorship of the web gets stronger.

Comments

An evening with Googles

claus on Sun, 2006-03-12 05:54.

An evening with Googles Marissa Mayer, 12 January 2005

5. Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn't look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.

No Bloody Way does this make the case

chinaman on Sun, 2006-03-12 07:11.

for censorship stronger.

Phones are used by criminals, let's censor them.
Emails are used by criminals, let's censor them.
Hell, snailmail might still be used by old fashioned criminals, let's censor them too
Etc, etc.

Of course criminals take advantage of the internet. That's part of their job description.

But if that fact makes the case stronger for more censorship on the internet we are even more on our way to a world where free speech is only available in conversations with oneself.

There is no case for censorship ever. There maybe a case for finding evidence, prosecuting and convicting but nothing more.

Agree chinaman

claus on Sun, 2006-03-12 11:09.

There's no argument for censorship. Ever.

free speech is only available ...

plumsauce on Mon, 2006-03-13 01:22.

Sadly, already the case now. But, one should still fight further encroachment.

Keep those modems handy. Someday we may need to go back to fido bbs for info exchange.

There was a thing on the

grnidone on Mon, 2006-03-13 08:18.

There was a thing on the news the other night that Google has shut down some groups because they were discussing terrorist activities and actively recruiting for those activities. (Activities like setting up bombs etc..) The report also stated that Al Quaeda is looking to recruit people who "look western" and speak english through channels like Orkut.

It seems Google was actually doing the right thing: hands off in most cases, and only removing the very very extreme groups.

I can't say that is a bad thing.