“Google is appealing the decision that ordered the removal of the video on YouTube because, as a platform, Google is not responsible for the content posted to its site,” the company said through a spokesman in Brazil.

In Google’s case, Brazilian judges have held executives responsible for resisting the removal of online videos that are in violation of a stringent 1965 Electoral Code. The law bans campaign ads that “offend the dignity or decorum” of a candidate.

Earlier this month an electoral court in the state of Paraiba, in northeastern Brazil, ordered the arrest of another senior Google executive, Edmundo Luiz Pinto Balthazar, after the company refused to take down a YouTube video mocking a mayoral candidate there.

The video clip loaded by the user “Paraiba Humor” seized on a verbal slip by a candidate.

Within days another judge overturned the order to arrest Mr. Balthazar, writing that “Google is not the intellectual author of the video, it did not post the file, and for that reason it cannot be punished for its propagation.”

The company also defended users’ political rights in a statement at the time.

“Google believes that voters have a right to use the Internet to freely express their opinions about candidates for political office, as a form of full exercise of democracy, especially during electoral campaigns,” the company wrote.