• Information Week, Tuesday, January 9, 2007 11:15 AM

The YouTube-Daniela Cicarelli story (and the video) is all over the Web now, so your correspondent here had to take it upon himself to see what all the fuss is about. It is, in fact, exactly what the stories say it is, although the video taken is from a distance and the whole thing is far subtler than you'd imagine. There is no nudity (aside from her remarkably skimpy bathing suit), which is probably why it took YouTube so long to remove the video in the first place.

We at MediaPost aren't the only ones who've give the matter our professional scrutiny. Information Week also looked at the vid and concluded that Cicarelli has only herself to blame for this mess, and that YouTube shouldn't be obliged to do anything more to help her out. In this day and age, every little thing celebrities do in public is caught on film, so why is a Brazilian supermodel surprised that someone filmed her having sex in the waters of a very public beach?

At this point, the video can be found nearly everywhere but YouTube, but Cicarelli's lawyers are still targeting the Google site in their lawsuit. Regardless of its outcome, the video will always be on the Web somewhere, so punishing YouTube is useless. Sites like YouTube, MySpace, Blogger and Facebook offer too many opportunities for free speech to be responsible for screening user content in advance.

Read the whole story at Information Week »