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Although this case does not refer to internet intermediaries, the final decision will serve as an important background to understand the current debate on a “right to be forgotten” in Brazil. In this case (named Candelaria Case – Recurso Especial Nº 1.334.097-RJ), a man who was wrongly sentenced jail time (and later acquitted) based on accusations that he participated in a crime (the killing of eight homeless children and young men who lived near Candelaria Church in Rio de Janeiro downtown) sued the publisher of content (TV Globo) for damages. The rapporteur of the case explicitly affirms that his analysis is restricted to the publication of news at the television, and places the passage of time and the newsworthiness of the reporting at the core of the legal controversy. In the decision, the Court found that the...

Decision held that the ISP must act expeditiously upon user notification in order to avoid being held jointly liable for offensive/illegal content. The decision suggests that, once communicated by a user that certain content has offensive and/or unlawful material, the ISP must act in 24 hours to momentarily takedown such content, for later analysis. In particular, the Brazilian Supreme Court noted that "once notified that a certain text or picture has illegal content, the ISP must takedown the content within (twenty four) hours, to avoid the penalty of being held jointly liable with the offender due to omission. In this 24 hours period, the ISP is not obliged to review the content indicated in the notice, but only to preventively suspend the webpages until it has enough time to assess the veracity of the allegations ....

Civil and Consumer law. Internet. Consumer relations. Applicability of the Consumer Protection and Defense Code. Irrelevance of gratuity of service. Internet search engine. Lack of necessity to prior filtering of the searches. Non-applicability of restrictions to the results. Public content. Right to information. (Translated from the original by Felipe Busnello) Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel is a famous television show host in Brazil, who has made a notorious career in hosting shows aimed for children, and is widely known by the moniker “raínha dos baixinhos”, which translates to “queen of the little ones”. Prior to becoming famous for her television shows, she played a part in a Brazilian film titled “Amor Estranho Amor” (Love Strange Love). The movie is about the son of a luxurious prostitute (the latter played by the...

(1) The Plaintiff, a teacher called Aliandra, was informed by students that Orkut hosted an allegedly defamatory "community" (a discussion forum created by users) called “I hate Aliandra". The teacher claims this community harmed her reputation. She notified Google and request the community to be taken down. Google replied that the content could not amount to defamation and that a court order would be required to take the content down. (2) The Plaintiff filed the lawsuit and requested a) an injunction to take down the community and b) damages to be paid by Google for hosting the content. Her injunction request was denied, so the community remained online. Google presented its defense. (3) Upon trial, the District Court of Minas Gerais (Tribunal de Justiça de Minas Gerais) decided the content was indeed defamatory and...

Civil and Consumer law. Internet. Consumer relations. Applicability of the Consumer Protection and Defense Code. Irrelevance of gratuity of service. Internet Content Provider. Lack of duty of prior fiscalization of user generated content. Offensive content warning. Lack of inherent risk to the enterprise. Duty of immediate takedown upon knowledge of infringing material. Duty of identification of every user. Sufficiency of IP number. (Translated from the original by Felipe Busnello)