According to Sergio Suiama, a Sao Paulo federal prosecutor, around 50,000 pedophilia-related complaints have been connected to Orkut.  By way of response, Google plans to implement a filtering system and retain information for a longer period, but still won’t share problem profiles with authorities.

 Sergio Suiama

The company’s attempts to uphold free speech have won it praise from some corners.  As always, it’s disturbing to think of the search giant sharing information with any person, company, or government that asks.

On the other hand, there are few things more disgusting than pedophilia, and Suiama told the AFP, “The dissemination of Orkut in Brazil has turned the country into a distributor of child pornography and Google doesn’t seem to be worried by that.”

While in search in Google’s cooperation, Brazilian authorities did everything from ask nicely to threaten civil and criminal action.  After all that urging, Google should put its filters in place within the next month or two, and it will hold onto suspicious-looking user data for six months instead of 30 days.

As for the future, we’ll just have to wait and see whether the issue is revived yet again.  Sylvie Barak reports that the Brazilian senate, at least, seems happy with the current compromise.