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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.
I haven't seen the suppressed sites, but there has been anti-abortion sites giving names of the doctors practising abortion and saying "Here are the adresses of murderers to kill".
A site which makes it easier to kill somebody by giving private information like home adress,... should be banned IMHO. Of course, some fanatics will dig the web and find that information anyway, but it is no reason to allow to publish it anyway.
If the site is hosted in a country which doesn't ban it, then it is IMHO perfectly legitimate to try to ban it from other countries, even if it is not 100% effective. Removing it from Google is not 100% effective, but it makes it a bit less accessible.
Being about anti-abortion, pro-terrorism or anything else doesn't change the fact: there are some sites which should be banned. But they should not be banned too lightly, and there should be ways to defend oneself against being banned,...
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According to the Harvard report, some sites that Google does not list include 1488.com, a "Chinese legal consultation network", and 14words.com, a discount Web-hosting service and some conservative, anti-abortion religious sites. Those sites do not appear to violate either German or French laws.
This is a particularly surprising move though. The German and French laws against racist speech are well known, but why would google remove sites like the ones mentioned in the article and that I have reproduced above? Certainly not because of pressure of the French or German governements.
Interestingly, 14words.com, which seems to be just a web-hosting company, is in the following category in google directory:
Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Remember there are pro-abortion sites that advocate murder of unborn babies.
If you're so damned concerned about censorship, the removal of EITHER site should trouble you. Otherwise, you're just an activist hypocrite.
Very true. The problem that Germany has, though, is that whenever some neo-nazi skinheads or right-wing politicians make headlines in Germany, the entire world points the finger and goes "nasty germans"! Whereas e.g. in the USA the whole "white power" crowd goes pretty much unmolested, and nationalist rhetoric is considered standard rather than offensive.
Because of its past, Germany does live under the microscope in that sense and it sometimes makes Germans a bit hyper-sensitive, and excesses (such as the (IMHO extremely stupid and counter-productive) law that denying the holocaust happened is an offense) do happen.