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Dissecting Localized Google Censorship
carpe_noctem writes "Linuxsecurity.com has a link to a rather interesting story regarding Google's use of localized censorship. While not much information is given from the political side of why Google might be censoring information likely to annoy certain governments, it certainly isn't the first time Google has come under fire for censoring results on account of external pressures. Makes one wonder how many pages get filtered out around the world."
Not a government. Who cares if they choose to censor things in order to make their business stronger/more profitable? If they don't censor it, they'll get locked out of those countries or censored by a third party, which is even less likely to be accurate. Fight government censorship, that's the real problem.
Certainly Google is a private company that can do as it damn well pleases. Yet it operates an international scope with several countries having their own laws on censorship that they feel must be obeyed for whatever reason. As long as the government tells people about the censorship, there's less of an argument than when a government claims to respect free speech outright then decieves its own people in practice. Note the author's example of stormfront.org, a site that would test the boundaries between free speech and incitive speech.
Here in the US we have faced the same problem when Klan or other sites tried to get attention. If there are public decency laws are in place, how is it possible to both follow those laws (regardless of whether we think those laws are just or not) and provide free content? Should a whole country or region get a different search engine result based on its laws? In short, yes. To try and espouse American ideals to the planet doesn't work as the recent UN vote clearly shows. We don't have to agree with them, but they have a right to speak and vote regardless of what we think. Google has a responsibility as a multinational company to obey the laws of the countries it operates in, and given the legal right of people to sue internet companies according to the laws of their own country (Australia has a case like this), they damn well better learn what rules they need to play by.
It is somewhat loathsome that censorship be brought about, especially because the same rights used by the hatemongers to spread their intellectual bile is the same one I use to post here in disagreeance with their thoughts and, occasionally, the politics of the world at large. And anyone in the United States should also be guarding every right they have with vigilance given the blatant thirst for power of our current regime and their willingness to intrude on our rights and lives in the name of "security". Again, we should protect our rights here in the US and ensure that Google does the same by following the laws of other countries.
May the question of free speech and its legality in the face of "terrorism" never turn into a possible threat against the 1st amendment here in the US, lest we have to resort to the 2nd amendment to defend both...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
There come times when things are no as longer black and white as you would like them to be.
Google's role in society is no longer one of profit, it has become the navigator for millions of people to access free information. With great power comes great responsiblity.
Therefore, as human beings, those who run google have moral and ethical obligations to protect the free flow of information.
It may be legal for them to censor, but it is wrong as it damages the exchange of ideas which promote thought and freedom.
Fight censorship on all fronts.
"I only speak the truth"
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It is both a value and the greatest risk introduced by the advent of the web, that now fringe ideas can be sought out and the relitively few indeviduals who share these ideas can congregate and cooperate to advance their ideals in a society where those ideas are in the extreme minority. In fact, you can now insulate yourself from reality by seeking out nerws sources and those of similar fringe ideoligies, and limiting your world view, by surrounding yourself with those who share your fringe ideals.
This allows the crackpots who were once spread thinly throughout society, to become a meaningful force within modern social styructures.
Google has positioned itself as one of the few gatekeepers between the majority of internet users, and these fringe ideas. It is neither right nor wrong, that the management of google has deemed certain material, not worthy of delivery to users. Google as a corporation has a mission; to deliver the greatest shareholder value. Google management has decided that in order to deliver the greatest value, they must provide results which the greatest number of users, find acceptable, appealing, or otherwise paletteable. They're in this to make money, not as a public service. That's what the Mozilla Directory Project is for.
--CTH
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And I don't think removing one page to appease the citizens of one village in the UK is that big of a deal.
Schnapple
I am not so upset that Google is caving in to some of these demands. They cannot afford to fight off rich powerful corporations like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft. Even if these lawsuites are spurrious, they simply can't afford to fight all of them. In that regard, we need legislation to allow the quick and efficient dismissal of bullshit lawsuites like this.
Google should be completely transparent if they remove information. They should create a section called "Censored Sites" and list what sites (in text-format) these nazi's have asked them to not link to, with the threat of a lawsuite to back up. This way, everyone knows what draconian nazi's are forcing Google's hand by threatening them with impeding lawsuites. It should be like a news section, and they should post the following:
(1) Who (what corp., country, business, etc) requested what to be removed.
(2) Their letter requesting such.
(3) What Google decided to do about it.
(4) Why they decided to do such.
(5) The address and e-mail of the offending corporation, so we can let them know what we think.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
As I see it, Google is doing exactly what it should be doing. The company has an obligation to obey laws in each country about what material is and is not legal to view. Not every country has the same views about whether censorship is acceptable, and what things should be censored if it is. Google could get in very serious trouble if it chose to show people things that their governments have decided that they shouldn't have access to. At the same time, Google does seem to be trying hard to do the least damage it can in the process. Specifically, it's not censoring material everywhere just because it's considered objectionable in one place. Americans can still see Holocause denial sites (if they have some bizarre desire to do so), Germans can see Chinese dissident sites, etc.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Google is/may become a monopoly in the search space. As a previous discussion noted, it has entered into our common vocabulary. In such a situation, where do the rights of a private organization end, and that of the public good begin?
For instance, if PacBell (substitute your local phone company here) stops carrying calls over its physical network that use other long distance services, or Microsoft tries putting roadblocks for third party applications on its platform .. umm- scratch the last one.