14 DAY TRIAL // The Thai government is now planning to take the search giant to the court after Google refused to remove a clip, which insults the Thai king, from YouTube. The online video sharing service was banned in the entire country on April 4 when YouTube refused to remove the clip. However, the Thai authorities contacted Google several times and finally decided to sue the Mountain View-based firm for offense against the monarchy as The China Daily reported. Thailand has very severe laws against the offenders of the king, trying to block the criticism over the monarchy.
"Thailand is a fairly small country and not the economic or military powerhouse, so we are at the mercy of the greedy businessman in America," Sitthichai Phokai-udom, the minister of information and communications technology, sustained according to the same source.
The case is a little bit complicated as YouTube sustained the clip doesn't infringe any of their guidelines and they consider the video as appropriate. In the past, Google received similar demands to remove certain clips from the database but the search giant agreed every time and deleted the clips immediately. The page was replaced with a "Video removed" notification, making it completely unavailable for all users.
The first case was reported in Brazil when Ronaldo's ex-wife, Daniela Cicarelli, sued Google for copyright infringement. The Brazilian model accused the search giant for publishing videos without authorization and demanded the company to remove all the clips from the page. A local court blocked YouTube in the entire country until the Google employees managed to remove all the clips with Daniela from the page. Then, the video service was blocked in Turkey for some offensive clips posted by its users but the company removed them quite quickly.