SAO PAULO, Brazil – Brazilian supermodel Daniela Cicarelli said she disagreed with a judge's now-reversed order to ban YouTube in an attempt to stop steamy footage of her from being viewed. But she stopped short of offering an apology.
Thousands of Brazilians who use the popular video-sharing site had launched an e-mail protest against her and suggested a boycott of her television program on Brazilian MTV.
Cicarelli said her boyfriend, Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni, was the one who filed the legal case that resulted in YouTube being shut off until Tuesday.
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"I don't have to say I'm sorry about anything because it's not my fault," Cicarelli said in the interview on Brazil's Globo TV on Tuesday night. "I don't have anything to do with that request, nor with the decision."
The video shows Cicarelli and Malzoni in intimate scenes along a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz. The order for its removal was issued after they sued last fall and won a ruling that clips of it on YouTube violated their right to privacy.
But Malzoni filed suit on his own in a second case after the video kept reappearing, winning last week's court order that resulted in Internet providers and telecommunications blocking YouTube for days in Latin America's largest nation.
The ban ended Tuesday, after the judge said he didn't intend for the entire site to be blocked, only the video. Some of the Brazilian companies said it was technically impossible to filter out only the video, so they pulled the plug on YouTube to make sure they were in legal compliance.
The case, the first of its kind in Latin America's largest nation, spotlights the gray and technologically challenging area of when and how Internet companies and providers should remove content when privacy rights are violated.
YouTube, now owned by Google Inc. (GOOG), said Tuesday it was "working on resolving the current issue in Brazil" and has purged the site of the Cicarelli footage.
The ban was widely criticized by Internet users and press freedom groups, which complained YouTube was being unfairly punished by a near-total block that didn't work anyway because the clip of Cicarelli making out with her boyfriend just went up on other sites.
Sao Paulo state Supreme Court Justice Enio Santarelli Zuliani denied censoring YouTube, but acknowledged possible concerns.
Cicarelli is one of Brazil's best-known models and was previously engaged to soccer great Ronaldo, who plays for Spain's famous Real Madrid team.
Although she opposed the YouTube ban, Cicarelli told Globo TV she respected her boyfriend's decision to file the case.
"I'm not going to interfere with his decision," she said.
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