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Google Complies with Law, Excludes 'controversial' Sites
YDdraig writes "To conform with some French and German laws, Google has removed listings for over 100 sites which it believes to be anti-abortion, pro-Nazi, white supremacist or anti-semitic. They're not keen to talk about it either, saying merely: 'As a matter of company policy we do not provide specific details about why or when we removed any one particular site from our index.'" Noted from Declan's articles: This is Google.de and Google.fr, and is done to be in compliance with those countries laws. Because, of course, not being able to talk about something makes it less attractive right? And drugs being illegal makes it less attractive for kids too, right? *sigh* Update: 10/24 13:55 GMT by H : Thanks to Declan for providing the linkage to his News.com original story which has more links then the ZDNet UK one.
OK, there'd be a lot to say about the reason a site should be considered as controversial but their light quantity just sounds like to me they actually visited these to ensure they would not blacklist a legitimate site...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
My guess is that there will be many here who will moan over Google being stupid, but of course they are doing the right thing following the law of each country in this case.
If the laws are wrong both Germany and France are fairly democratic countries so advocate to change the laws instead. Make it legal to spread nazi-propaganda i Germany etc...
If these people want to search for these sites, they can still fire up google.com.
Guess it does seem a little pointless like that but they are complying with local laws for countries they are operating in which i think is fair.
And as another poster pointed out, they probably checked each site individually to insure that they were offending sites and not just done automatically.
Maybe the French should try re-reading the works of French, postmodern writer/philosopher Michel Foucault, who wrote that repression of ideas and restriction of speech leads to discourse. France should know better. Now, Germany on the other hand . . .
What prevents French people from just using Google.com ?
What blows me away is not the racist speech blocking, but the fact that they're blocking anti-abortion websites from google's listings--racist speech could be construed as "hate speech" and thus I can maybe see how they'd not want their children to see it, but anti-abortion (AKA pro-life, depending on whether you support it or not) speech?! How is that worthy of censorship? Oh, does it not agree with what their government believes?
Well, we get a chance to see their freedom of the press in action--let's see if any French or German newspapers cover this blatant act of censorship.
"I may be quite wrong." - Socrates
"And drugs being illegal makes it less attractive for kids too, right? *sigh* "
Do you seriously believe that rubish?
Yes, drugs being illegal makes them more attractive to "some" but I wager it makes it that it also makes it that much less attractive for the majority.
Just because somone's a kid, isn't going to make them a rebel against all law.
Pro-Nazism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism are all hate-driven egocentric nationalistic racial biases. How the heck does the Pro-Life movement fit in with these groups?
joel
Yeah well freedom of speech ends where you step on other people's rights, like those anti-abortion sites inciting people to kill abortion doctors or Nazis who want to gas the jews.
I agree that it's a problematic issue. Note that freedom of the press is not the same as freedom of speech, by the way. You can report all you want about Nazis who want to gas jews, but as soon as you advocate it yourself, then you're in deep trouble, and in my humble opinion rightfully so.
We all know that if you want to find something you can. For example the Homosexual poem "The love that dares speak it's name" is not available in print, however 5 minutes on the web and I am sure you will find it (not my choice of reading matter BTW, just to set an example).
The rules are changing for publication and we are lucky enough to be at the frontier. Let's use this responsibility carefully and appreciate a gesture for what it is. We know that we can find nazi or white supremacist stuff by using google.com rather than google.fr, at least that have made the gesture. In this environment all rules are temporary, let us relish this and enjoy the dichotomies that are raised as each nation's law struggles to keep up.
Google's a target, that's for sure, it's a drawback to being highly successful. But Google has to follow the laws of each nation it is based in. So of course Google.de and Google.fr had to remove the links. It *could* make a stand, and challenge the laws, but does it really want to put the time and effort and money into such a legal challenge? These laws have stood, what, almost 60 years? Take a look at ChillingEffects.com and see how many cease and desists Google has to wade through... for simply having a link to a controversial site.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
such as this one? Or this?
It's really a French and German issue rather than a Google issue."
So it probably sounded like a good idea to filter out Nazis...everyone hates Nazis right? (except the Nazis) While we're at it let's censor White Supremicists, cause we all hate them too.
The list of what's censored is in an of itself controversial. For example, pro-Fascist sites are censored... what about pro-Communist sites? After all, Stalin killed 20M or more of his own people in his purges compared with 6M in the Holocaust. Anti-abortion sites are censored, what about pro-Catholic? After all, Catholics oppose abortion.
Note that I'm not claiming to be pro or anti anything in this post, I'm merely pointing our some gaping inconsistencies that render the policy meaningless, and hence probably mere cheap political point-scoring rather than a serious attempt to suppress hate-crime or make the world a better place. Assuming you believe in hate-crime; my personal opinion is that it matters little to the victim what the criminal's motivation was.
Even more meaningless than it would be if French and German users couldn't simply point their browsers at google.ca.
Welcome to democracy, people. France and Germany are both democratic countries that have decided (along with most of Europe) that racist speech is not acceptable in society. The government isn't trying to dictate what people think, or say privately, but in public we expect people to behave in a certain way (eg. masturbation in public is not okay).
It saddens me when I see white supremacists in the USA campaigning outside schools for the removal of black teachers and children etc. If we need laws to stop that kind of abuse, then we have no other option. Your freedom to speech stops when it promotes violence and hatred towards other people. Don't forget that even in the USA theres no such thing as freedom of speech - try writing an "ANTHRAX-HOWTO" or setting up a pro-terrorism website and see how long it lasts. Its just a matter of drawing the line somewhere, and in Europe we draw the line closer at protecting personal freedoms - the freedom to live in peace is more important than the freedom to kill/promote killing.
Have a look at the site. If that is not hate-speech, i don't know what is. Some things I read on extremist christian sites (have a look at tencommandments.org) made me feel actually sick, including suggesting the murder of all non-believers as a solution to world hunger, implicitly or explicitly condoning murder of doctors, homosexuals etc. not even speaking of generally insulting individuals and groups or religions that happen not to share their views. In my view this is hate-speech and asks people to commit crimes.
... particularly when it includes calls to direct action.
Some countries have different definitions of where the right to free speech ends, for example when it urges people to commit crimes.
In germany there would be not much controversy about censoring a magazine or group that wanted to glorify and re-instate a nazi-regime / get rid of all non-christians / foreigners /
Anyway, different countries have different standards, google.de is registered in Germany, so it has to comply with its laws, Germany is a democracy, so if people get upset, they can vote in a new government that will repeal them.
Greetings,
:/
First of all, I absolutely agree with you. Censorship is never the right way to go after ideologies of debatable morality. The only thing it's gonna achieve is make its proponents feel persecuted, and as such, it legitimates their views.
Thing is, you absolutely CAN'T touch those anti-racism/antisemitism/whatever laws. It's a very, very touchy issue over here, and some organisations will scream bloody murder if you ever even want to open the debate about it. (Note that it's the same organisation -- *not* the government -- that had the Yahoo auctions censored, for example). If you want to open the debate then you're obviously a racist antisemitic extreme-right wing nazi and should be dragged out and shot. So the debate is never opened. Heck, Sharon called Chirac an antisemite when France stopped supporting his attacks on Palestine.
And it is growing into a REAL problem. People are so afraid of being thought of the extreme-right that they'll never speak up, but brood in their corner instead, and then (other) people act all dumbfounded when the extreme-right candidate suddenly makes it to the second turn of the presidential elections.
While opening the debate will allow to laugh the extreme-right into oblivion in a matter of minutes, to everyone's benefit. Sigh.
Oh well. Now you can mod me (-1, Flamebait) for obviously being an antisemitic nazi bastard.
(Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons -- I dared open the debate, so now I'm gonna play it safe and hide.)
Somehow this implies to me that anti-abortion views (read: pro-life, anti-murder) are supposedly "evil" just as pro-nazi views are assumed to be "evil"... at least according to the French government. Its a simple assumption to make.
First of all, nobody controls the free speech (supposedly) of US entities. Secondly, who decided that Anti-abortion, Pro-nazi propaganda is offensive? Are the french people that weak that their government decides whats offensive to them?
I happen to find pro-abortion sites offensive, but I don't rally for google to block those sites from their index! My respect of free speech and other people's opinions to be far more important that the content of their views.
So, lets think about the implications of this for a moment. The French government has the power to remove listsing from the internet's most popular search engine. Ok, so there are a couple hundred governments in the world that could do the same. [sarcasm]Wouldn't it be great if other governments hopped on the bandwagon and reduced the quality and accuracy of search results for the entire world? [/sarcasm]
What if another country decides that chickens are offensive? Do they now have the "right" to lobby Google for removal of chicken websites from the index?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
is not like the other?
Is it just me, or does anti-abortion stick out as being rather unlike pro-nazism and anti-semetism?
I hope that the sites in question were militant anti-abortion sites--otherwise this is the most illogical grouping I've seen in a long time.
It's all going according to
Hey wait, this is France and Germany censoring Web contents.
Please people before commenting on how bad is the situation of "freedom" in the US look at your own countries first!
(note: I am FRENCH)
http://www.pageliberale.org
Important difference, dude... Killing of Doctors = illegal by current laws Removing a mass of fetal matter from it's unwilling host = legal by current laws (in many places) Abortion may or may not be morally corrupt, depending on your particular moral code, but there is an unambiguous fact, it's legal.
These are the people who we're worried about offending with a conflict with Iraq?
This isn't some quirky "Can I block an intersection/burn a flag/show porn in public" free speech issue, this is "This book contains material we don't like, and it reminds us of something we'd rather forget. Ban it."
We can discuss the erosion of civil rights in the United States after 9/11, while the readers from overseas loudly criticize the president, but I suppose if this was Europe, we'd be banning terrorist literature and shutting down Islamic web sites.
This is based on Declan's article (Hi Declan!)
I am using Opera 6.03 uner Linux.
Entering "Stormfront" in the "Internet Search" field gives me [hit n.1] "stormfront.org -- Stormfront White Pride" neo-nazi web site we all love to hate.
If I enter "http://www.google.com", I get re-directed to "http://www.google.fr" and "Stormfront" does not appear in the results anymore. Screenshots available upon request.
On the other hand, I can always go through my main (US) ISP and browse google.com without redirection.
What's the moral of the story? If you are a [French|German] neo-nazi, and you have a [French|German] ISP use Opera to go around the google limitations. Or get a USA-based ISP.
What's the moral of this moral? Geolocation does not work!!!!. Moronic solution such as this one are simply to easy to avoid. And, yes, UEJF, that one is for you.
Whether neo-nazi opinions are worth defending is left as an exercise to the reader...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Not so important difference dude. In Germany in 1944 mass killing of Jews == legal
hiding jews == illegal.
Legal does not equal right.
My personal belief is
killing doctors == wrong
Abortion == wrong
Speaking your mind on the subject == right
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Someone explain to me why Google is being slagged for removing these items from their indexes? Yes they're a popular search engine, but at what point did the idea surface that they were required to maintain some kind of free-speech or anti-censorship policy? It's their site, their database -- they can do with it whatever they want. It's also not as if Google has taken down the sites it's removing from their indexes -- as much as I object to the content those sites might have on them, they're still available for people to read.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
In France and other European countries, there are those who remember the Nazi holocaust of WWII -- perhaps they have a right not to be reminded of what happened. In Germany, many are very sensitive about pro-nazi propaganda -- they have learned from their country's past.
To say that their censorship of such material is wrong is to say that the efforts of Germans to learn from their past mistakes has been in vain.
Let me remind those in the US that there has been much self-censorship since September 11th -- for example the film Spider-Man (the film was recut to remove references to the Twin Towers). Currently, there are arguments being made that a film featuring a sniper should be banned.
I am a strong supporter of freedom (including free speech). But I also recognise that there are times when, in the cause of the common good, censoship is important. For example, giving out the names and addresses of those suspected of working in abortion clinics, and advocating their assasination, is clearly wrong.
Some may argue that abortion is wrong, but either way, change must be brought about peacefully by following the legal channels.
History is rife with examples of successful peaceful protest. American history is particularly rich in such respect.
Personal freedom is hugely important, but I believe that community freedom is far more important. Americans have the right to bear arms, but this personal freedom results in thousands of deaths in the US each year. In countries where it is illegal to own firearms, death rates from gun-related incidents are almost zero.
Saying that the French or German government's laws banning pro-nazi propaganda is wrong is xenophobic and naive -- there is a rich history behind those laws, designed to protect the community and its way of life. Both countries have functioning democracies, have good education, healthcare, standards of life and are important players on the world stage.
Perhaps the US should look at itself in a new light -- how many of its freedoms are harming it?
Consership is only oppressive when it is used by a powerful government to pull the wool over the eyes of its citizens. As a non-US citizen, I am always amazed at how one-sided US and pro-administration US news-sources are, compared to the rest of the world, who tend to get a far more balanced picture of world events.
So, is the US really the nirvana of free speech its citizens think it is?
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law on this article.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Well said.
I've been involved in combatting Holocaust-denial on the net for ten years. I work with The Holocaust History Project, have transcribed and helped translate documents, including those about gas chambers, and have prepared information on deniers. I've even co-authored a lengthy and highly technical paper on chemistry of the Auschwitz gas chambers.
I think it's deplorable that Google has bent its knee to the German government in this way. Practically speaking, it's unfortunate because this gets the neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers more press (unintended consequences). And they do love this kind of attention, there is nothing they love more than being censored.
But more importantly, morally, it's wrong that these people are being censored. What they say is despicable. But until they start making credible threats against people, or telling harmful lies about individuals, instead of simply telling lies about a group of people, they should be allowed to have their say. Fairness demands that. And just because they would refuse to treat us with basic fairness, is no reason for us to be so afraid that we stoop to their level.
Seems rather Orwellian to me ... if you reinvent the language, you control the people.
[1984]Let's introduce a new term, boys and girls: "hate speech". Yes, that's right, these are thoughts and ideas that are too terrible for you to contemplate, so we will censor them from your tender minds. What? No, you are not sensible enough to arrive at your own conclusions, so we must ensure that you are never exposed to these evil ideas.[/1984]
One of the consequences of truly "free" speech is that you have to hear a lot of crap from people you strongly disagree with. These are the "idiots" that we "love to hate", but if their speech isn't free, then nobody's is. That's the idea of free exchange of ideas in a free society. But then again, there's no such thing, because every attempt at a free society has ended by a centralization into a totalitarian state. [© 2002 jazzbotley the cynic] Ah, the rub. (Thanks, G.W.!)
I am certainly not advocating the killing of anyone (hell the anti-abortion movement was about preserving life last time I checked) but disputing what is moral and what isn't possibly to the point of suggesting breaking laws is part of free speech.
I don't think there are many NAZI advocates here so I will use them as an example.Back when they were in control it was illegal to be a jew. Does that mean that anyone that broke that law and escaped the haulocaust alive was moraly corrupt?
By shutting down these sites one side of the debate is silenced and this must be considered a kick in the teeth to free speech.
By the way, in Ireland for example aborting fetus = bloody illegal, linching doctor that performs abortions = technically illegal but no one gives a damn (at least not as heavily punished as aborting a feotus). Does this mean it is right to linch abortionists? Should the anti-linching sites be banned?
Of course not, linching people is murder and just because the lincher does not think it is wrong doesn't make it right for them to do.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Nazism killed a lot of people, the wish to eradicate groups of the population being an integral part of the nazi ideas.
Well, I contrasted fascism and communism, not nazism ("Hitlerism", if you will) and Stalinism.
The modern-day Left would have you believe that Hitler and Stalin were ideological enemies, but it would be far more accurate to describe them as rivals. They both ran totalitarian police states with absolute power concentrated in a single leader, both believed that the only purpose of the citizen should be to serve the state (and hence the maximum leader), both ran command economies, both had expansionist foreign policies, both persecuted ethnic minorities. The only real way to differentiate between them is that Stalin's purges killed 3-4x what Hitler's did. It is also worth noting that other self-described Communists (China, Cambodia, etc) have similar records to Stalin's.
But mysteriously, modern-day Fascists are shunned and modern-day Communists are tolerated. In fact, the same attitude should apply to them both; neither has a place in the modern world.
maybe we should all reread john locke, etc., and remind ourselves the natural course of governments. thus it is only through the social contract, that the government governs with the consent of the governed that rights and fredoms are preserved.
eventually, all governments, whether democratic or not so, will attempt to seek power and control through various and sundry ways. whether by resrictions on freedom or by doling out public monies, they acquire ever greater power.
look at the us tax code. why is reform so hard. hell, EVERYONE stands to lose something if you reform it. so, we leave it unchanged and only add to its complexity.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Yesterday, all over the country, someone was killed by a crackhead. What's your point? Murder is illegal, unless they talked him to death, banning speech doesn't matter.
A month before in Isreal a buttload of jews was killed by a palestinian with a bomb. Again, what's your point?
Okay... yet again, what's your point? Would it be better if he stabbed him because of some policy he didn't agree with?
A fan of Jodie Foster tried to kill Ronald Reagan when he was in office. Quick, we'd better ban Jodie Foster!
Why is that a threat? Maybe it'd be good for you to change governmental systems. The fact is, you can't improve your government if you aren't allowed to suggest improvements/alternatives.
Every week? No, you don't.
France is not a democracy, there are political prisonners. Germany and US are not democratic also !
How does having "political" prisoners prevent a country from being a democracy?
If you feel that we should enforce freedom of speech for the fascist, no problem, just give the a green card !
I'd be perfectly happy letting a few proud white people into my country. What I don't want is to let some dothead in. It feels good to know that I'm allowed to say that, and you are not.
Obvious this poster doesn't read the New York Times, watch network TV or in general partake of the dominant media in the US, which has a long history of critizing presidents during war - especially republican presidents.
The journalists arrested for failing to reveal their sources simply highlights the natural conflict between freedom of the press and the need of the people to be protected from criminals. None of these people have been imprisoned for refusing to reveal *political* sources.
The only good weather is bad weather.
So where will this end? What will Google be forced to remove next? What will be left of ANY website after it's whittled down each nation's pet peeves?
As an aside, I think it's pretty bizzare to censor "anti-abortion" (self-identified "pro-life") sites. Yeah, there are some crazies out there. But most anti-abortion sites I've seen are just people peacefully expressing their opinions.
I'd like to see international law exempting search engines from this sort of censorship.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Why does that song "one of these things is not like the other" from Sesame Street keeping running through my mind?
Since when is being anti-abortion in the same category as being pro-nazi, a white supremacist, or anti-semitic? This is a scary bit of phraseology on the front page here!
"Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Come see the violence ineherent in the system!"
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
No matter how offensive, mean, or cruel-spirited you may find people's ideas, they have the right to express them. Its a fundamental human right to freedom of speach. It exists whether or not government's recognize it, just as does the right to life.
If pro-nazi speaches offend you, then don't listen to them. Go somewhere else. Don't read Mein Kampf. No one's forcing you to listen: the right to speak does mean the right to necessarily be heard (though it does mean the right to have the potential to be heard).
That Germany as a nation chooses to ignore and violate the right to freedom of speach proves they haven't learned much from Hitler's era, when human rights were completely ignored. Had they, they would respect these rights. I'm speaking as someone of German descent, in this case. Its even worse in a democracy when human rights violations occur than when they occur in a dictatorship; when they occur in a democracy, that means that a majority of the people must have voted for someone who supports human rights violations.
To those who say that Google's doing the right thing by obeying the laws of Germany and France, I say that's non-sense. Unjust laws should not be obeyed. Just as in Germany during WWII, the right thing to do was ignore orders to kill Jewish people, so is the right thing to do in this case to disobey these laws which violate freedom of speach. This is not such a severe case, but the right thing to do is to violate laws which are wrong.
That said, I wonder why Google bother's to obey these laws. Google is based in the US, and to my knowledge all of their people are in the US, as is all of their finances. If Google chose not to obey these laws, how could the German & French government's possibly coerce or penalize them, since Google is beyond their sovereignty?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Google, Please remove all web pages that discusses the evil practice of commercialism.
And Christianity violates my moral beliefs, so they must remove those pages too.
Only kidding, but you see my point i hope. This sets a BAD precedent.. a really really bad one.
This will open the flood gates on mass censorship.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Because, of course, not being able to talk about something makes it less attractive right? And drugs being illegal makes it less attractive for kids too, right? *sigh*
...
sed s/drugs/child porn
Because, of course, not being able to talk about something makes it less attractive right? And Child porn being illegal makes it less attractive for pedophile too, right? *sigh*
Oh ok let make the child pron legal
Your comment is stupid.
It isn't the work of a Franco-German political office but the normal complaints expressed by courts and citizens, who asks for the application of laws which were never called into question by citizens, of France and Germany.
If a US hosted site is closed, because it contient illegal stuff, even if it's legal in France or Germany (DeCSS for example), no one slashdot's user will say anything but it is enough that these are another country which face to respect its laws on its Web sites so that it is censure.
If you want really attack the censorship, take a look of the situation in Egypt or in Iran.
i can't read rhat release notes, but i can read all the white power bs i want.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
>But in Britain, unlike the US, the media are at least willing to admit, or brag about their particular editorial biases.
Which is something I find far more commendable than pretending to be objective when you are not.
The truth is that every human is biased and our biases affect what we do, even when we make a serious effort to be objective.
More to the point, if you really are trying to be objective, admitting to your own biases has a way of ensuring an extra bit of diligence WRT your efforts at balance.
I know this will be ignored, derided or modded into the deepest pits of Slashdot hell, but I have to get it off my chest.
If this story were about the U.S. censoring some search engine, the discussions would be rife with how corrupt, backward, ignorant and repressive Americans and American society is. This sentiment would predictably come from Europeans and Canadians primarily, but a good number of properly self-loathing Americans would join in too.
However, since it's France and Germany, what do we see? Do we see denunciations of this kind of Big Brother style of governing? No, of course not. What I see are subtle defenses of what amounts to censorship and attempted mind control. "We've decided what's best for a civilized society" or "It's Google's fault because they caved" or "Yeah but... Americans set the precedent for this." Blah blah blah.
Fuck that and if that's your attitude, then fuck you too because you're secretly a patriotic hypocrite. This kind of thing happens everywhere in the world and instead of taking up your goddam flag and waving it high enough to distract everyone, you ought to be attacking what appears to be a total lack of responsible and trustworthy leadership in your own countries.
I guess this kind of thing is perfectly okay and reasonable as long as it's not the U.S.