It wasn't immediately clear from Thursday's reports, but Google will indeed share information from its Orkut social-networking site with Brazilian authorities trying to deal with suspected pedophiles.
On Wednesday, the Brazilian Senate ordered Google to share information on 3,261 suspected pedophiles, information Google had refused to share earlier. No more.
"Google Brazil is legally obligated to comply with this order, and it is Google's policy to comply with valid judicial process," spokeswoman Sara Jew-lim said in a statement Friday.
Google already had tools in place to allow users to flag potentially illegal content, and it's now adding a filter "with the goal of blocking pornographic pictures when someone tries to upload them, so that these pictures will not be posted," she said.
A panel of the Brazilian senate has ordered Google to provide access to account information for 3,261 suspected pedophiles who've used Google's Orkut social-networking service, Agence France-Presse reported Wednesday.
Under the order, a Senate committee investigating pedophilia would receive Google information identifying Orkut users who publish criminal material--information the search giant has refused to give to the Brazilian government, according to AFP.
In addition, the chief of Google's Brazilian operations, Alexandre Hohagen, told the panel Google will take measures to stop child pornography and hate crimes on Orkut, The Associated Press reported.
In August, Google had banned users who allegedly had spread child pornography and hate speech regarding blacks, homosexuals, and Jews, but had refused to share the users' identities with Brazil, citing U.S. privacy laws, the AP said.
Nobody's surprised that the same old legal and moral issues about sex have made their way to the Internet, but dealing with them has been tough. For example, MySpace.com grappled for months with sex offender issues, and in January unveiled a plan to make its site safer for teens.
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