A Brazilian court ordered the popular video sharing service
YouTube, a unit of Internet search provider Google, to be shut down
until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial
clerk said Thursday.
Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great
Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in
shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the
site.
For days it was the most viewed video in Brazil.
Cicarelli and boyfriend Tato Malzoni filed to force YouTube to
take the video down and demanded $116,000 in damages for each day
the video remains up. Some copies of the video have been taken off
the site but users have reposted it.
The case dragged on for several months before they filed a
third suit in December requesting that YouTube be shut down as long
as the video is available to users.
The court honored that request Wednesday, but legal experts
say the ruling by the Brazilian court could be difficult to enforce
in the United States, where YouTube is based.
Last year, a Brazilian court demanded Google disclose data on
local users of its social networking site Orkut who had pages with
content supporting racism or child pornography.
Google took down some of those Orkut pages but has said that
under U.S. law it could not reveal user data.
Google was not immediately available for comment
Thursday.