Google has been fined $8500 in Brazil after an anonymous Internet user posted defamatory messages on one of its sites against a priest, calling him a "paedophile".

A court ruled in favor of the 54-year-old priest, identified by his initials J.R., after rejecting Google's argument that the US web giant was not responsible for what users posted on its Orkut social networking site.

According to the O Globo the verdict upheld a lower court's judgement made after the priest sued for defamation in 2008 over the post, which called him "the paedophile ... the thief who has a lover", Judge Alvimar de Avila ruled that by making space available on virtual networking sites, in which users can post any type of message without any checks beforehand, with offensive and injurious content, and, in many cases, of unknown origin, (Google) assumes the risk of causing damage" to other people.

Orkut is a hugely popular networking site in Brazil, and the thought of having to police it would give Google a major brain ache.