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Google Enumerates Government Requests
D H NG writes "In the aftermath of Google's exit from mainland China, it had sought to be more open about what it censors. Google has launched a new tool to track the number of government requests targeted at Google and YouTube. These include both requests for data and requests to take down data. A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there), and information for China cannot be disclosed because 'Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets.' As part of its four-part plan, Google hopes to change the behavior of repressive governments, establish guiding principles for dealing with issues of free expression, build support online to protest repression, and better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship."
That wouldn't have much effect: due to the First Amendment, it's not actually illegal for third parties to republish classified information. It is a crime to leak it in the first place (so e.g. if you're a CIA officer and start mailing out documents, you can go to jail), but not to publish if you somehow get a hold of it. So making it classified information wouldn't prevent Google from publishing their own statistics.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What they DON'T show -- and I've sent feedback asking for -- is how many of these are legal demands, such as warrants or court orders, versus informal requests.
For anyone else interested in requesting the same info, here is the link: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?contact_type=privacy&ctx=contactpolicy
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I don't think Orwell saw that one coming...
One that hath name thou can not otter
google could have so easily gone the traditional "sacrifice all your values for the pursuit of money route", but they actually showed they have principles and a backbone
google, you've earned my loyalty and respect. integrity: what a rare and wonderful concept
as for china considering censorship requests to be state secrets: well of course it does. just like the church of scientology considers its sacred texts to be intellectual property. i mean, if you're going to be a controlling asshole, at least be true to the concept to the inevitable extreme of absurdity, right?
wikileaks: get that list of censorship requests. google, give that list up: you've already burned your bridges
oh, and btw: fuck you censorial controlling assholes. you are clearly on the losing side of history. i look forward to your inevitable demise
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
March 22, 2010: Google starts redirecting all traffic to their uncensored Google Hong Kong.
March 30, 2010: Mainland China blocks all Google service. The block only lasted a day.
Beijing used a lot of harsh words, but in the end Google and all their employee in PRC were not prosecuted and they continue to operate without censorship on Chinese soil. Google - 1, China - 0 so far.
To bad those numbers aren't per capita. If you consider that the population of the United States is roughly 9 times that of Canada. Then Canada has more removal requests per capita.
A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there)
The reason Brazil is the top country is not only due to Orkut's popularity, but because many Brazilian laws were designed to limit freedom of speech and free enterprise. Anyone remember this?
A significant part of these government requests is probably tied to lawsuits involving Adwords. In the past, companies have been sued and found guilty for using their competitors' names as keywords in Adwords, for example. This practice is perfectly legal in most countries, including the US.
I wonder if Google can make this popular enough to pressure countries into changing their laws.
on a more serious note, Canada's population is 10% of the US. Coincidentally, the number of requests is about 10% of the US's.
Today I had a notion that I can only wish might become viral. Since the Chinese government wants to censor web pages that critisize the Chinese government, the logical thing to do is to get some sort of criticism onto all possible web pages .
(Example criticism: "The Chinese government is run by cowardly barbarians. They are proved to be cowards because they are afraid to let their citizens have guns; they are proved to be barbarians because they think their political views are the only ones that matter. The Chinese government therefore deserves to be replaced; the Chinese people need to replace their government with people who are not cowardly barbarians.")
The result, of course, is that the idiot Chineses government censors will try to censor the entire Internet outside of China, which will not be tolerated for long by the Chinese people....
But it is illegal to violate a court's gag order. So watch as a new, automatic, clause is inserted in every single warrant to access Google's systems going forward. Something to the effect of establishing a gag order on the recipient of the warrant.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
In both Google Blog posts, it is stated that they comply with takedown requests for such "obviously illegal" material as child pornography.
It would appear, however, that some of the material they treat as such is not in fact obviously illegal, is not child pornography, and does not fall within the scope of mandatory removal statutes of US federal law (viz. 18 U.S.C. 2258B(c)(1)).
Here is a report of one case where Google has acted on a child porn complaint while the material at hand was in fact Japanese pornographic comic books (i.e. drawings!):
This type of material may be unsavory to some, but it can be found on the official sites of many major Japanese publishers as well, and is widely available in Japanese book shops. The legality of the material in the US is not completely clear, but only because of obscenity laws (as opposed to child porn laws): i.e. it is on an equal legal footing with BDSM porn, scat, rape play porn and others (as in, possibly illegal in the Bible Belt and first amendment-protected speech elsewhere due to different community standards).
It appears that Google has ignored subsequent requests by the targeted site to reconsider the takedown:
Sure, they have a right to take down whatever they want, but it's a bit disingenuous to pose as virtuous defenders of free speech afterwards.