Controlling digital information. . . .
By Associated Press Tuesday, January 16, 2007
NEW YORK (AP) -- For evidence that digital information, once set free, cannot be controlled, consider the steamy video of Brazilian supermodel Daniela Cicarelli making out with her boyfriend on a Spanish beach and in the water just off shore.
The couple persuaded a Brazilian court last fall to force the video-sharing site YouTube to remove copies, but other users simply resubmitted the video through their free accounts.
Earlier this month, Internet service providers in Brazil, responding to the judge's order, briefly blocked access to YouTube entirely. But by then other Web sites already had the video, and many in Brazil even had stored personal copies on their computer hard drives.
Safekeeping information -- video, photographs, documents -- will become even tougher with the emergence of additional ''Web 2.0'' services designed for users to easily share data. Society may have good reasons -- such as privacy, security or taste -- for wanting to keep the lid on some types of information, but it only takes one individual to overrule that desire.
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