Google Begins Country-Specific Blog Censorship

bonch writes "Google will begin redirecting blogs to country-specific URLs. Blog visitors will be redirected to a URL specific to their location, with content subject to their country's censorship laws. A support post on Blogger explains the change: 'Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or "ccTLD." For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected to [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader's current location.'"

Comments

Blogger only - it seems

[icebike]

This only works toward reducing the trustworthiness of Blogger as a blogging platform.

Blogs dealing with sensitive topics in certain countries will simply go elsewhere. Yes that elsewhere runs the risk of being blocked by that
country, but at least it will be that county doing the blocking, not Google.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

blogs dealing with sensitive topics are no longer Google's problem. Isn't that exactly what they want?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[eugene2k]

And what difference would that make to the people of that country? None, right? So what's better: having absolutely no access to blogger blogs in your country or having access to some of the blogs using that platform?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[kanguro]

Do No Evil My Ass

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Is being bombarded with a distorted version of reality better than a paucity of information? Yes, of course it is. All of the misdeeds of the powerful in the West today are possible only because people are so distracted from what is happening.

Google has always been part of the problem but it takes a while for some people to see clearly.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Gideon Wells]

Blogger only for now.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[stanlyb]

Your Ass Has Been Redirected To Your Country Specific Jail. Be happy that you are not redirected to some China's jail.....

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[EdIII]

Your Ass Has Been Redirected To Your Country Specific Jail. Be happy that you are not redirected to some China's jail.....

Not to be crude, but if my Ass had to be redirected towards a jail I would rather it be a jail with a small average penis size. Literally easier to handle. Just being pragmatic...

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this not (yet) get modded +5 insightful?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[DrBoumBoum]

Or worse to some well-known (Guantanamo, Abu Graib) or lesser-known American one.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[davester666]

If it's good enough for Twitter, it's good enough for Google!

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[msobkow]

Google is doing the blocking so they can do business in the nations requesting the block.

Despite American arrogance, all companies are required to abide by the laws of the customer's nation if they do business there.

You can't blame Google for following the rules! Sorry, but that's just the FACTS OF LIFE.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Dunbal]

No, it reduces the usefulness of google as a search engine. But people don't HAVE to use google.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[stanlyb]

Have you heard of the "thousands cuts" torture? Man, you just invented a new one: "thousands little penises...." LOL

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't noticed it yet, people are the problem.

True. But in cases like this it seems to be the rich, powerful people that are the problem. Their current solution is to try and keep poor or powerless people from noticing and/or commenting on the problem.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[RocketRabbit]

So they should take a stand and stop selling Google Adwords in China or other repressive countries.

It would be up to the authorities to try to block Google in China, and we all know that there are many ways around the Great Firewall.

Doesn't Google make enough money already?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anthony Mouse]

You can't blame Google for following the rules!

Sure you can. The Nuremberg defense is not a defense.

Personally, I think the US needs an antitrust exemption for companies who want to collude strictly for the purpose of refusing to comply with, or otherwise opposing, foreign legislation that would violate the US First Amendment.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[jc42]

How did this not (yet) get modded +5 insightful?

Because you just blew away your mod point by commenting. But I can fix it for you ...

(Oops!)

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[FatdogHaiku]

Hey, that's almost a fit to "ol' time religion"!

Gimme that old time redirection, that old time redirection.
Gimme that old time redirection, it's good enough for me!
It's now good enough for Google, and it's good enough for Twitter
They won't let you read your shit sir, and that's good enough for me!

Tip your waitresses, Try the baby seal souffle...

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[marcosdumay]

Nice answer. But if they were doing that because of China, theyd have acted earlier. By the way, they already closed their Chinese subsidiary, thus Google isn't subject to China's law anymore.

The fact that they started doing that just after SOPA and PIPA threatened to become laws just passed over your head...

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[jc42]

Despite American arrogance, all companies are required to abide by the laws of the customer's nation if they do business there.

Except, of course, in the US itself, where fines imposed on corporate "persons" for violating laws are typically much less than the corporation has earned from the violations.

At the extreme, I've read a few studies that compared the fines for things (bad drugs, contaminated food, etc.) that killed people, and reported that the per-casualty fine was typically less than $500, often under $100. You and I would be jailed and/or executed for selling things that kill people; corporations usually just get what amounts to a slight surcharge on their taxes.

Of course, you are free to believe whatever you like about how companies are required to follow laws. But being fined a few thousand bucks for a violation that raked in millions isn't much of an incentive to be law abiding.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[fightinfilipino]

as trite as it sounds, "i was just following the rules" and "i was just following orders" have often been lame excuses covering up horrible abuses against humanity. actively enabling the stifling of free speech is a horrible abuse.

i recognize the issue is much more complex than that, but then, so should you.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Grishnakh]

What about US legislation that would violate the US First Amendment?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Charliemopps]

Helping a totalitarian regime pretend like they allow free speech by allowing only speech they approve, furthers their goals. Google is playing the roll of Uncle Tom or the Jewish police in the Nazi ghettos. When they allow Syria to censor speech, what argument will they have when the US government asks them to censor speech? Do you really think that's not coming? The world is slipping into a very dark place right now, and every concession that providers like Google make, will be looked upon with shame by future generations.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anthony Mouse]

That's a good point. My initial thought was that it wouldn't help anything because the US law couldn't be enforced against a company that chose to violate it unilaterally, but if you think about it there are probably a lot of laws that are unconstitutional but that nobody is willing to be the first to challenge because appealing all the way to the Supreme Court is very expensive (and in the meantime getting prosecuted for a crime is generally bad PR). Letting an industry put up a united front would go a long way toward fixing that because they could contract to share risks and litigation costs, and it would also blunt any charge by foreign governments that the US is being hypocritical.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Lotana]

Touche

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaahahaha. You think they're doing it because of China?

Look closer to home.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Supporting something like censorship, which is evil, makes you evil, too.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[ohnocitizen]

You know that putting it in caps doesn't make it true, right? It isn't arrogance to expect human rights to be respected when you do business, its ethics. So yes, we can blame google for staying in a repressive country, and following the rules. If they want to enact country specific censorship, they could block out that country's access to the site with "your country does not support basic human rights like freedom of speech."

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The content is hosted (presumably) in the US. Google should give a shit where their traffic is coming from.Except of course Google cares very much where you are from and this whole thing is probably just to make it easier for Google to serve you location-dependent ads. The fact that it'll lead to censorship is just collateral damage. I'm not going to go on a rant about how "evil" this move is or isn't, I'll just say I expected better of Google. Who needs governments to censor the web when Google and Twitter are laying the groundwork for them ?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure the future generations will know anything at all about these times because they'll all be living in FEMA camps or prisons.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy for people to just see things in black and white, but you're not one of the people actually living in countries where censoring happens. I live in China. The alternative to region censorship is that nearly All foreign blog providers, as well as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and such are Completely blocked, and Chinese people are forced towards more heavily controlled Chinese alternatives (where people practice auto-censoring, even, to avoid getting into trouble). Google often gets blocked for short periods of time too.

The result? Major annoyance and decrease to productivity: Chinese search engines are just not as good as Google, and there are many non-political information I'd want to access from blogs and other sites (research, tutorials, etc.). Google Docs is often blocked.

In fact, even in countries with censoring, control over foreign websites is imperfect. For example, I can access Slashdot without a VPN, and most major forums have threads with political discussions somewhere. When a major service starts censoring, a lot of things in fact go under the radar, so it still vastly increases individual awareness. However, blocking the service and all its alternatives completely Does prevent access to a lot of information.

Basically, because people not living in countries with censorship complain about their services blocking say... 20% of sensitive content, the whole service gets blocked off, meaning people in that country can't access the remaining 80% of politically meaningful sensitive content, and can't access the 90% of total content that is "everything else" either. If this new feature allows Google to operate all its services in China, then I welcome this move.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Wandering Idiot]

I'm as concerned with the US slipping towards totalitarianism as the next guy, but for the love of god please shut the fuck up with the stupid FEMA meme.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Vijaysj]

Makes sense since If google breaks the laws in certain countries. Then google employees in that country are subject to criminal investigation....

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[RevEngr]

Despite American arrogance, all companies are required to abide by the laws of the customer's nation if they do business there.

You can't blame Google for following the rules! Sorry, but that's just the FACTS OF LIFE.

I think what you call arrogance is what a lot of people would see as idealism, or at least, being consistent with the ideals of an open internet. I, for one, don't understand why Blogger has any obligation whatsoever to any foreign government. I am probably unrealistically naive, but i still believe in an internet that transcends nationality, and I'm afraid I don't see the exchange of services or information over the Internet as the necessary equivalent of 'doing business' in any traditional sense.

Some governments may choose to try to block access to Blogger if they don't like the content, which is sad and has undoubtedly already happened. The response of Blogger and the rest of the Internet community should be to work to restore that access. I don't pretend it's an easy problem, but this action to move to ccTLDs looks like a dangerous compromise.

We're all very familiar around here with the history of the Internet and the important role governments have played in its development, but it just seems to be going backwards to start drawing political boundaries over this beautiful mess we've created. We have something here that can bring us to a better world than we've been able to achieve by carving up the planet into geopolitical territories; we shouldn't be selling it short to placate entrenched interests.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree!!

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because in a jail they stick penis into your ass, and larger penis hurts more.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[msobkow]

The idealism only goes as far as lining American pockets.

Witness SOPA, ACTA, etc.

The fact that the media companies have the American government in it's pocket through lobbyists is irrelevant to the rest of the world. We don't care why your government is abusive; that's an internal problem for the US. What we care about is that you do not (as a government) act anywhere near the ideals you espouse on the international stage.

And as soon as the American people wake up to the fact that the American government doesn't give a damn what they want, only what the lobbyists want, the sooner there might be change in that global perception of the US. Take back control of your OWN government before you try to tell anyone else how to run theirs.

Take off those rose coloured glasses. You can't see shit with them on!

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't blame Google for following the rules!
Sure you can. The Nuremberg defense is not a defense.

Sure it is. It's used all the time, and it usually holds up.

Save your Nuremberg bullshit. That was genocide and post-war retribution. We're talking about censorship laws which have stood on the books for years and are supported by most of the International Community. Every country has them, and if you expect to do business with them you have to comply with the laws.

foreign legislation that would violate the US First Amendment.

Foreign legislation by definition cannot violate the US First Amendment, because it's foreign and doesn't apply in the US. We have enough of Corporations getting involved in politics in this country and others, and here you are telling them to take an even larger role. Business should exist in a country at the whim of the laws of that country... not the other way around like you're suggesting.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Serpents]

The only thing I can say is: Good, maybe the people living in countries with censorship will finally move and do something about it. It has happened before, you know

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[noodler]

Which makes me wonder. How does this tie in with the upcoming policy change at google? I mean, if your google blog gets censored, all google services on that account would be aware of that. Is this new policy change introduced just to ease the work of the censors? It is increasingly becoming clear that google has no other goals than keeping their pockets filled and mottos like "Do no evil" become meaningless flutter.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[dnaumov]

The notion is ridiculous. If you have a website that's publically accessible from all over the world, then by your definition you "do business" in every single country of the world. The idea that this means you must now adhere to laws of every single country able to access the website is blantantly insane.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, IF they CHOOSE to do business there. Except the fucking PROFIT, there are also other things, like, say, ethics.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nuremberg defense was a defense before the Nuremburg trials and now the orders must be followed but if it comes to court the line soldier will be hung out to dry.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the size, it's how they use it. Now pucker up pretty boy.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you tell the David Drummond asshole how you feel. This was all his idea.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Tim C]

That's all well and good, but it doesn't help the employees in the country in question. They have to either follow the laws of that country, or risk arrest. If Google wants a physical presence in that country (and that includes hosting servers there) then they do indeed have to follow the rules.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't blame Google for following the rules! Sorry, but that's just the FACTS OF LIFE.

Excuse me, but are you retarded?

Google is an ONLINE company, selling online services. There are no borders in cyberspace, nor should there be.

If some country won't do business with Google, they should shrug and say "Good riddance!". It's most likely going to hurt the country more, being on the outside, that it will hurt Google in lost business. Then they'll come around and realize that the price of enforcing national laws in cyberspace can be too high.

If Google were to do something, introducing censorship should be anywhere near the list. Rather, they should engage in activities on every level to help either circumvent the restrictions or to remove the repressive regimes. Yes, this could and should include subversive tactics designed to bring down repressive regimes using any means, including military options. In other words, Google should be fighting back, not rolling over and submit by playing dead. They're big enough to make a difference if they tried.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[flyneye]

Don't worry when a hole is found, someone just creates a new workaround. This is all governments, you know the people who DO censorship. I'm sure Omama and his mistress Hillbillary are completely at peace with censorship. (esp. this election year)

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people are the problem. We need to destroy humanity as a species so that we can all live... oh wait.

Seems you've bought their shit too, Mr Cynic. "Oh we must have this system because people are evil so nothing else works except this system doesn't work either but oh well in History at school they said other systems were all worse and we've surely tried everything else so far..."

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better if Google just cut off those countries entirely. That would add more fuel to any impending revolution. Censoring lets the people continue to live in denial.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[cowboy76Spain]

Since when "having a website" is the same as "doing bussiness"?

If you have a website, you "do bussiness" when you accept money either for the hosting of the adds. And here is where the single countries have leverage, because if you want to have some benefits you want to link addvertisers with their public.

If you have a blog written by chinese people that is read by chinese people, you will serve adds of products that can be bought by that chinese people (and further you can try do a demographic study to further maximize your impact). And if it goes well, you will have an office in China so advertisers in China can easily contact you and pay you without problem.

Of course, you can have your "Free the Tibet!" page at your server of the USA, no problem with that. But that site will be blocked in China (and probably, all of your server content too, even if it is not "offensive") and you won't get a cent in revenue from Chinese advertisers.

That is why "having a website" is not the same that "doing bussiness"

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[ultranova]

The world is slipping into a very dark place right now, and every concession that providers like Google make, will be looked upon with shame by future generations.

But by that time, Google execs have already gotten their bonuses, so what do they care?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[__aaltlg1547]

Are we forgetting that Google is a for profit company and not a publicly owned system with a mission to overthrow oppression?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[assertation]

"American Arrogance"
1. A slang term used outside of North America to refer to being opposed to dictatorial governments, censorship, anti-sex attitudes, genocide or oppression of women.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in the midst of your fury, you have misused the term arrogance. Maybe you meant to say ignorance?

Besides, why does Google 'have' to do business in Syria?

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[tehcyder]

Yes, corporations are the problem. We need to destroy capitalism as a system so that we can all live in a non-coercive socialist utopia.

If you haven't noticed it yet, people are the problem.

You're absolutely right, which is why in civilized countries we still have slavery, child prostitution, pregnant women denied medicine and dying in childbirth, capital punishment for stealing a loaf of bread, and so on. There has been absolutely no social progress since the earliest recorded era of human history.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[tehcyder]

Are we forgetting that Google is a for profit company and not a publicly owned system with a mission to overthrow oppression?

No, I don't think we are. Being a for profit company doesn't mean you can do whatever you like to make money, without consequences. If Google starts being evil enough, a lot of people like me will choose to stop using Google entirely. I like Google search and Gmail, but I'm not married to them.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[crush]

I would imagine that Google don't want users to just switch to other search engines.

This change (coupled with their bias towards google+ results) is probably going to push more users in that direction as they doubt the quality of the information resulting from a google search.

I've switched to using DuckDuckGo! and Ixquick about 6 months ago. They work perfectly.

https://duckduckgo.com/
https://www.ixquick.com/

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

"American Arrogance"
1. A slang term used outside of North America to refer to the prevalent American attitude that the American way is the one right way to do everything. See also: Might makes right. Do as I say not as I do. Societies in decline.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they will be remembered as the sell-outs who started the final slide to oppression

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Charliemopps]

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson : November 13, 1787

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I visited the U.S. (last year) it seemed like it was already a totalitarian regime.

Re:Blogger only - it seems

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you make a joke about females being raped?

Are you ok with the uncountable prison rapes that happen every day?

Are men not human?

So much for...

[grub]

So much for Do No Evil. I'm sure it will be spun into how this makes Blogger a better experience for everyone.

Re:So much for...

[M4n]

Just like the new TOC...they did it all for us!

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it sounds like it might have the effect of eliminating a lot of blogs, so I'd say it has a good chance of improving the experience.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is open! Durrr!

Re:So much for...

[spidercoz]

They're not doing evil, they're just enabling it.

Re:So much for...

[game kid]

I'm sure it will be spun into how this makes Blogger a better experience for everyone.

At Google we're indeed committed to improving the experience of Blogger for all. Users will be switching from our neglected, censored trainwreck of a service to services that respect bloggers and have valid HTML, so they'll be better off. Since all three people that remain there will be highly dissatisfied and robo-flaming our GMail addresses, we will shut down our service next week to ensure that our programmers and mail-answering slaves can move on to more urgent needs like how to better copy Facebook in Google+ and adding more redundant tags to HTML5. Since we'll no longer be paying to maintain Pyra's annoying piece of shit, we can give our dear friend and dictator Larry Page a big bonus, in the hopes that he leaves the blinds open in the board room so we can watch as he shouts down that Sergey guy and withers him into a crying nerdy mess.

Blogger is more powerful and versatile than Twitter. At Google, we're confident you'll support us in fixing that (and you can do that by +1'ing us on Google+!).

Re:So much for...

[Artraze]

They are doing this to follow local laws. Now, I understand that what's moral and legal don't always align, but at what point did *obeying the law* become *evil*! Sure, you can come up with some contrived circumstances, but I highly any will be in play here. This is about blocking content that people and/or their leaders want blocked. Honestly, it seems closer to evil to go against their wishes by not blocking it.

Companies aren't responsible for carrying out your civil disobedience campaign for you.

(And are you, yourself, evil for not running one of your own?)

Re:So much for...

[interval1066]

I think the motto should "Do no evil, unless it interferes with our business model."

Re:So much for...

[CowTipperGore]

If you had bothered to RTFA, you would see

[M]igrating users to local domains will help promote the freedom of expression while allowing the flexibility to abide by local law.

Anyone can use google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”) to see the original page without geographical redirection.

Re:So much for...

[Ossifer]

So why are they following local laws, beyond those of Mountain View? Is this really how the internet should work? Either the lowest common denominator or having to follow a global patchwork of contradictory local laws?

Re:So much for...

[GodInHell]

When it includes censoring people who do not live in those countries so that the plebs who do cannot be told how much their nation sucks.

Worse, this begins the process of actually fracturing the internet into sub-nets for national use. If I want to reach a global audience I'll have to make sure I don't do it in a way that will offend anyone in a country with bullshit over-pious litigators in government (looking at you Aussies) or a totalitarian regime bent on rewriting history (Hi China) or some asshole country with fucked up copyright and patent laws (hello U.S.A.).

So -- you can have a global blog, so long as you only blog about how awesome consumerism and particular Chinese products are.

-GiH

Re:So much for...

[sjames]

When you start enforcing questionable laws in countries you're not actually in. If some country wants to expend a trillion dollars making sure nobody ever sees a disparaging remark about their king, that's their business, but that doesn't mean that people in other countries should help them out.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to contrive anything, since a simple example that will be clear to any but the most brainwashed comes to mind. Persecuting/imprisoning marijuana users is legal, and also evil. The same used to be true of homosexuals. The law is often wrong, and obeying the law is often evil.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you very, very much for the straight talk. Google essentially has two options here. They can either comply with local laws, or they can give governments an excuse to go after them via their legal systems or outright banning of Google services in those jurisdictions.

For those who don't want the "customized" experience created by redirection to servers that comply with their local laws, there are countless ways around such restrictions. Honestly, has anyone railing against this sort of thing ever done a simple Google search (heh) for dirt cheap VPN services hosted in other jurisdictions? Hell, even without those services, anybody can grab a dirt cheap Linux VPS from any of the thousands of providers out there these days, and spend perhaps ten minutes installing OpenVPN. Bam, problem solved.

In other words, this "story" and all the spin being put on it pretty much amount to nothing.

Re:So much for...

[maxwell demon]

I think the motto should "Do no evil, unless it interferes with our business model."

The second part is always implied in everything a company says.

Re:So much for...

[elrous0]

Blogger

Or, as it's now called in North Korea, "Your Attempt To Access Imperialist Site Has Been Noted By Glorious Leader."

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

How on earth is this evil? If anything, now there will be LESS censorship. When the alternative is those countries blocking access to Blogger completely or Google being legally required to bring down the post for ALL countries, this is a great piece of functionality.

Now, when they're FORCED to remove content because of some stupid law, they only have to remove it for the country in question. Everyone else on the internet can still see it.

So, then, which option would you prefer?
1) All of Blogger is unusable for everyone in a country because they've blocked it.
2) Legal takedowns force content offline for all internet users because there is no country-specific takedown mechanism.
3) Legal takedowns force content offline for only internet users in that country because of this new functionality.

Re:So much for...

[lee1]

Google censors results in the US in response to political pressure, and lies about it. No laws involved at all.

Re:So much for...

[Baloroth]

So much for Do No Evil. I'm sure it will be spun into how this makes Blogger a better experience for everyone.

Actually, yes, yes it will. Instead of being forced by law to remove the content from everyone's view or be forceably blocked by that country (or sued), Google is allowing everyone else to see the censored content, and only blocking it where the law demands it.

Respecting the law of a country is not "evil". It may not be the right thing to do (depends on the country and law at hand, certain laws/governments are unjust and should be protested), but it is also not evil.

Oh, and you can still see the censored content anyways (www.google.com/ncr), so, there is that, also.

Re:So much for...

[JustSomeProgrammer]

Yes. Unless you want a one world government that has control over everyone or you want people to be able to ignore laws that are not enacted everywhere which amounts to the same thing. In that situation if you think that it'll result in the most amount of freedom you are dreadfully wrong.

Re:So much for...

[tqk]

... at what point did *obeying the law* become *evil*!

Invoking Godwin, in 3, 2, 1 ...

Evil laws shouldn't be obeyed, period. Do you really trust politicians of today to not write evil laws? Sometimes, it seems like that's all they do these days. Since when was censorship not evil? Since when was freedom of speech evil?

I hate this century.

Re:So much for...

[Artraze]

Define "not actually in", because after a quick search:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/locations/

We see they have an office in Australia, which was the domain used in the summary. And quite a few around the globe, of particular note is China, which is so often the center of discussions like these. Also, Thailand, which I believe was brought up with regards to Twitter and blocking posts critical of their king.

Are you suggesting that because their corporate HQ isn't there that "they" aren't there? Or are you suggesting that they don't _need_ to be in those locations, and so could pull out?

Finally, I'll note that you said "enforcing questionable laws". Don't you mean "evil laws"? I mean, if obeying the law is evil, then surely that law is evil, right? Or does it only become evil when enforced by Google because they aren't entire present where the law matters?

I dunno. This always gets so confusing. Like, why isn't Google evil for taking down ads for Canadian pharmaceuticals at the request of the FDA? Actually, I seem to recall people were saying they were evil for allowing the ads in the first place. Maybe it's that HQ thing again... That "good" is upholding American (oh, like specifically the USofAmerican) laws and ideals and "evil" is upholding the laws of other countries in those countries because their HQ is in the USA?

Re:So much for...

[TheGratefulNet]

but at what point did *obeying the law* become *evil*

when the law is wrong, that's when!

do I really need to invoke a godwin, here? or cite US history from the civil war era?

confusing 'law' with ethics, much?

and no, we don't expect google to be ethical. we stopped believing that, what, five or more years ago? it did not take long for the google shine to wear off and for us to all realize they are a self-serving company, just like all the rest.

Re:So much for...

[SteveFoerster]

I would prefer that Google makes information available to all who want it, and that if some repressive government wants to block it, at least Google wasn't an accomplice. I just finished terminating my Twitter account over this. Looks like Google is next, even if that will be slightly more difficult to detangle.

Re:So much for...

[TheGratefulNet]

"google: not dictators but #1 *with* dictators"

(apologies to the simpsons for ref to their '#1 with racists' joke)

Re:So much for...

[serviscope_minor]

They're not doing evil, they're just enabling it.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

Well, they're not doing nothing, but I think he had something in mind other than helping evil along the way.

Also, if the metaphorical road to hell is paved with good intentions, then where do you think bad ones might lead?

Bottom line is this action is evil since it serves no other purpose than to allow evil. That is in no way neutral.

But this is not news. Google abandoned any pretense of sticking to their motto long ago.

Re:So much for...

[houghi]

I think that is the implied motto for ANY business. Or are there companies that have as a motto "Do evil, unless it interferes with our business model"? Also, the definition of 'evil' might differ from company to company.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a publicly traded company, the second part isn't implied at all... it's enforced by law.
 
If that way of doing business burns your ass then don't do business with publicly traded companies. That includes Slashdot and all the associated GeekNet companies. Otherwise, just shut the fuck up and accept that you're part of that cycle, bitch.

Re:So much for...

[oxdas]

Corporations have a legal, fiducially responsibility to not violate their corporate charters, even if it means they make less money for shareholders. If Google has "Don't Be Evil" enshrined in their corporate charter, which I believe they do, then they must take that into consideration, even if it means lower profits. However, I think it would be difficult to objectively prove that Google is being evil (or rather that they are violating that provision of their charter).

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the law is evil, do evil!

Re:So much for...

[tqk]

If you had bothered to RTFA, ...

Hah. Good one.

Anyone can use google.com/ncr (NCR stands for "no country redirect") to see the original page without geographical redirection.

So, you're saying the summary doesn't really summarize? Damn! So, the summary sensationalizes the situation? Damn again. Is that allowed, or expected?

Rhetorical.

Re:So much for...

[Lunix Nutcase]

Funny because Slashdot heaped on tons of criticism to Microsoft and Yahoo for "complying with local laws" when it came to censorship yet the fanbois are out in full strength to once again defend Google for doing the same thing.

Re:So much for...

[AtomicJake]

Google is not censoring anything. They are not stopping freedom of speech.

They ARE redirecting blogger blogs through ccTLDs.

Correct. But why is a user outside of the USA redirected to a ccTLD, if he asks for "blogger.com"? More and more corporations are doing this redirection and it sucks big time. I, and probably most people, know how to write "google.de"or "google.fr" - if I write google.com, I want the same page as users in the USA. And the same is true for amazon, dell, hp, blogger, twitter etc.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. All web sites in North Korea are called, "Please wait while people's servant fulfills your TCP/IP SYN request via government form filled out in triplicate. Another people's servant will return shortly to execute you".

Re:So much for...

[sjames]

I'm suggesting they don't NEED to be in those locations.

As for the Canadian pharmacy ads, I would prefer they leave them up unless/until they receive an actual court order. I would even prefer that they defy such an order, but I don't believe I could go so far as to call them evil for refusing to go to jail over it.

Re:So much for...

[Anthony Mouse]

If Google has "Don't Be Evil" enshrined in their corporate charter, which I believe they do, then they must take that into consideration, even if it means lower profits. However, I think it would be difficult to objectively prove that Google is being evil (or rather that they are violating that provision of their charter).

I think you're misunderstanding what that provision is good for. Proving that something is evil is pretty hopeless unless they're committing mass murder or something like that, which seems pretty unlikely for an internet company. But now suppose Google's board would otherwise have a "duty" (for whatever inane legalistic reason) to screw over some honest people, and they don't want to. It lets them claim that doing that would be "evil" and if you (the soulless plaintiff's attorney) want to challenge it they could demand that you prove it's not, which you can't really do any more easily than you can prove that something is.

In other words, it gets them an out if they want to do the right thing and otherwise wouldn't be allowed to.

Re:So much for...

[icebraining]

So much for Do No Evil.

Then it's good that "do no evil" was never their motto.

Re:So much for...

[Slashdotgirl]

Anyone can use google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”) to see the original page without geographical redirection.

Unfortunately this is not totally correct. I live in Australia and if I have my cookies cleared (in firefox) and I type in www.yahoo.com/ncr I get redirected to an error page then finally to http://au.yahoo.com/?p=us. So currently I'm using http://72.30.2.43/. The website tv.com used to be easy then they implemented regional redirection. Suffice to say I was mildly pissed off.

I want to go where I want to go, when I want to and no I do not want you to tell me what I should and should not do. So I got around that by using http://us.tv.com./ After reading this particular article I tried http://us.tv.com/ and it did not work. I even used there American IP adddress but no luck there so I just used Tor, stuff them. As John Gilmore said, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

What Blogspot, Yahoo and TV.com have done and others is censorship at its worse and greed a close second if not a tie with censorship. Because, to impose any form of censorship a government must have the ability to monitor and therefore restrict communication. Therefore local laws are what are influencing these companies so they can continue to operate in those countries.

Kind regards
Slashdotgirl

Re:So much for...

[marcosdumay]

Is it so hard to discover? They are doing it to follow the local laws of the local where the TLDs are kept.

What other reason would they have to stop using .com?

Re:So much for...

[postbigbang]

You're weasel-working it.

Let's hand Blogger censorship over to the country's TLD control. It's banal fascism and pandering to government interests at its finest. There is no question of good and evil here:

1) it's evil-- censorship of all but exploiting images is inherently evil

2) it's evil-- this is the Internet, where populism is supposed to be the controller.

3) it's evil-- it's hypocracy to leave China in a huff over its email scheme, then let a country essentially in through the back door to step on its citizenry. Government works for us (presuming you're in a somewhat free country) on rare occasion, but in many areas of the world, the government is not your friend, no matter if you do, or do not do other evil.

An "out"? What are you, a K-Street lobbyist?

Re:So much for...

[superwiz]

Sounds like they are complying with censorship rather than enabling it.

Re:So much for...

[superwiz]

How is this evil? They bore the cost of fighting for free speech in every legislation for a while. But, at the end of the day, they can't fight with every country's local law. They have the choice of not doing business there at all (if asked to censor) or to comply with laws which are sometimes draconian, sometimes misguided and sometimes plain silly. They DID try to carry the free speech torch. But if the costs of it keep increasing, can you really put it on them to bare those costs? They aren't in the business of politics. They are in the business of providing a user experience. You can't exactly say they went out there and volunteered their services as a censor. That would be Cisco.

On a more pragmatic note, it's the job of the population of any one country to fight for their freedoms. It's not the job of a foreign corporation to come in to enable that freedom. They are not enabling censorship. They are complying with it. It is, after all, their best available search results which they have to suppress in order to comply with local laws. If they have to reduce the quality of the product they provide, they are lose competitive edge in that market.

Re:So much for...

[superwiz]

How are they being evil? By complying with local laws? Aren't they mostly unwilling participants in this? Shouldn't the countries in question be held responsible for the legal standards they set?

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

For better (less different regulation) or for worse (more regulation in a single set) a one world government may be inevitable because history indicates that humans organize into larger and larger groups over time. Tribes to villages to city-states to states to nations. There always seems a push to combine more and more people.

Re:So much for...

[Anthony Mouse]

1) it's evil-- censorship of all but exploiting images is inherently evil

To which they'll respond that the censorship is already taking place (by the country blocking the entire site), and by doing this they reduce the amount of censored material.

Of course, that argument is bullshit, because what they're really doing is making it less expensive for the countries that censor things to censor even more things, since those countries then don't have to pay the cost of the collateral damage caused by censoring people with a bomb instead of a switchblade.

But it's the argument they're making, and I'm not really sure how you can actually prove it wrong. The problem is it's weighing one evil against another: The evil of more censorship now vs. the evil of more censorship later. The latter is probably worse because the things getting censored in that case are the things that are intentionally censored rather than accidentally, which are more likely to be the things people have a need to know. But it's a judgment call -- you may think they're wrong, and you may be right, but how do you prove it?

An "out"? What are you, a K-Street lobbyist?

I wish. Do you have any idea how much those guys get paid?

Re:So much for...

[Solandri]

If it works like google.com, you'll be able to circumvent it by plugging in the country code for the site you really want. e.g. When I was living in Canada and wanted Canadian search results I could just go to google.com, which would redirect to google.ca. But if I wanted U.S.-centric results, I could just search on google.us.

So if the blog you want to read is on blogspot.com.au, and blogspot.com for your country redirects to blogspot.com.nk which has censored the blogspot.com.au article, you can still reach it directly via blogspot.com.au.

Of course if your country has blocked blogspot.com.au, then you still can't read it. But then it's your country's fault, not Google's.

It's an interesting solution to the "how do I make one website which complies with all countries' laws?" conundrum. While it would be cool for a company to "stick it to the man" and thumb their noses at repressive governments, I don't think that's realistic, nor would I call it evil for a foreign company/individual to fail to stick up for my rights. Freedom has to be earned, from within. If it's given by outsiders, it's not treasured, and may be discarded by the wayside. This way, if you see a bunch of people talking about an article on blogspot.com.au and it's not showing up for you on blogspot.com.nk, and you go to blogspot.com.au and find the site blocked, at least you know that your country/ISP is censoring.

Re:So much for...

[postbigbang]

To your first argument, as long as there's money to be made, a back door will be found. Honoring the verbiage that somehow justifies the weasel wording still means that the solution is a cop-out.

As to your admonition that you don't work K St, maybe you should. The lesser of two evils is the kind of expediency that's a hallmark of the mephistids that permeate the alleys there. Wishing you were there means that you're driven by the same evil: moolah.

My suggestion: watch the Bob Fosse version of the movie: Lenny. Yeah, he was nuts. Yeah, he was a hero for free speech. Yeah, he was a junkie. But guys like Lenny were heavily censored, and the right for you to say almost anything, let alone the word "cocksucker" comes from people like Lenny.

Re:So much for...

[anonymov]

It's not about government ability to pull down domains, it's about Google's ability to pull down pages.

For example, let's say someone on blogger.com makes a post stating that king of Douchelandia didn't look all so well at last parade. Douchelandia sends a takedown notice to Google for it's a laise majeste to imply that the king is not godly and perfect. Now Google has a choice to pull this page either only at .blogspot.com.dl, or for the whole world, or get sued and get whole blogger.com banned in the Douchelandia.

Which is preferable, and who's gonna pay collateral damages in latter two cases?

P.S.: LOL'd at this part:

since those countries then don't have to pay the cost of the collateral damage caused by censoring people with a bomb instead of a switchblade.

If the government indulges in web censoring, what makes you think it would even as much as say "sorry" to a luckless SoB who lost his site along with whole blocked hosting domain?

Did any of subdomain owners at mooo.com get anything from DHS when the whole domain got seized last year?

Re:So much for...

[Anthony Mouse]

Which is preferable, and who's gonna pay collateral damages in latter two cases?

It's pretty obviously preferable that they take down the whole website. Then people notice. There is a large hole in the Internet where the site used to be, things still link to it, and people realize that and start looking for ways around the block. Then many people have sufficient incentive to take countermeasures and the censorship is thwarted.

If you allow only the target of the censorship to be removed, maybe nobody notices, or more people conclude it isn't worth working around because they don't need to read solely the things the government has classified as unprintable. It makes the censorship more effective, because only the target of the censorship is removed and nothing more, which substantially reduces the incentive for that country's people to fight it.

If the government indulges in web censoring, what makes you think it would even as much as say "sorry" to a luckless SoB who lost his site along with whole blocked hosting domain?

When there are only a small few people who are disadvantaged, certainly. That's how they get away with it -- if the government screws over one person at a time, everybody else goes on with their lives with insufficient incentive to work together to help the one victim. If a government screws over everyone at once by taking down major websites, it's a lot more likely they'll have to answer for it.

Obviously some countries are more resistant to public pressure than others (e.g. Iran, China), but even they are not totally immune -- and even if they don't actually change their position and remove the blocking in the short term, at least people will have more incentive to bypass it and make it ineffective. They're more likely to ultimately give up trying to block information if their attempts to do so are ineffective.

Re:So much for...

[anonymov]

It's pretty obviously preferable that they take down the whole website. Then people notice. There is a large hole in the Internet where the site used to be, things still link to it, and people realize that and start looking for ways around the block. Then many people have sufficient incentive to take countermeasures and the censorship is thwarted.

Yeah, because remember how when Google pulled out of China it sparked the revolution and led to establishment of democracy in China?.. Oh, wait, didn't happen, Google just lost a part of "chinese censored web search" market to Baidu.

The problem with removing whole site is a) government doesn't care unless people start a massive uprisal, b) only those who visited that site will know what was there. All the thoughts shared there will be lost and general public won't even know why did it get banned, was it really inciting ideas, or was it just idiotic rambling and flaming.

The best solution would be removing page from the domain under that countries jurisdiction, but letting know people from outside that it's not available elsewhere.

If a government screws over everyone at once by taking down major websites, it's a lot more likely they'll have to answer for it.

Answer for it, as in: "Did we do that? Hmm, let us ask around. (time passes) We're still gathering information about that incident, wait some more (time passes) Erm, yup, seems like we did that. What an unfortunate mistake! That Bob or Dave or whatshisname surely won't get a bonus this holidays. I hope our sincere apologies will cover your losses for lost business days and reputation lost thanks to our IP THIEF/CHILD MOLESTER/TERRORIST DOMAIN SEIZED BY $LEA banner"

Re:So much for...

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The Ministry of Search - Googleplex in leetspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous outstretched structure of glittering steel and glass. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Corporation:

    CLOSED IS OPEN
    CENSORSHIP IS FREEDOM
    SURVEILLANCE IS PRIVACY

Re:So much for...

[Whiteox]

Uh... Hotspot Shield anchorfree.com works fine from Australia and you can get access to US sites.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is "don't be evil", not "do no evil". The difference is actually important : http://matchstrike.net/strikepad/2009/12/do-no-evil-vs-dont-be-evil/

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

What? I can't understand you. Take Google's cock out of your mouth and try again.

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, stop that /ncr bullshit.

google.com/ncr only works if you allow google to set cookies and track you.

Re:So much for...

[Asic Eng]

Apart from the censorship angle, this redirection stuff is pretty annoying when traveling. Just because I'm in Korea this week, doesn't mean I can read Korean. I didn't enter the URL for the Korean page either, so why do they insist on giving me what I didn't ask for?

Re:So much for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you reading the same thread that I am? By the way who is this "Slashdot" person anyways?

Re:So much for...

[heathen_01]

"obeying the law" and "evil" are orthogonal, always have been. More people need to realise this.

Re:So much for...

[xelah]

We have to wait and see what they actually do with this.

Here might be some examples of non-evil uses, or at least uses which are in the same class as blocking the word 'democracy' or 'tibet' in China:

• - Removing material which breaches only US copyright laws in only the US.
• - Removing private information subject to a UK injunction only from the UK site.
• - Blocking holocaust denying material from the German site only.
• - Blocking material which can't be distributed in a particular country due to an ongoing court case.
• - Blocking material containing the names of rape victims or children involved in court cases in countries which ban publishing them.

No company can be totally free in which governments or jurisdictions it chooses to alienate. Maybe you can accept copyright infringement in Russia and be Russia-based, or you can accept criticism of Vladimir Putin and be US-based, but you can't do both. And similar countries often cooperate (or are exposed to coercion, such as US export of its copyright laws).

Re:So much for...

[BoothbyTCD]

"That which is not just, is not law.' - William Lloyd Garrison

Re:So much for...

[salmonmoose]

I'm not sure what people really expect Google to do in these instances, they're at the mercy of the governments their sites are used in.
Blocking some content to some countries seems like a better option to me than having all content blocked to some countries.

Along with Twitter

[krslynx]

Looks like Google is bending over to the powers that be along with Twitter; such a shame.

And so it goes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a matter of time before they caved. So much for all the grand-standing and posturing, in the end the potential profit prevailed over ideals.

Completely Misleading

[RazzleFrog]

If you read the article Google is doing this so when a blog is censored in one country it isn't censored everywhere and you can always access the blog by appending ncr (no country recognition). This means they found away AROUND the by country censorship. Talk about spinning a story.

Re:Completely Misleading

[rtb61]

Once censorship starts it doesn't ever stop. Next up ISP blocking. You are watching the creation of the new internet piece by rotting piece.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Once censorship starts it always stops? Perhaps I have been whooshed.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Seumas]

That makes absolutely no sense. If they weren't caving to censorship, they wouldn't need to split it up by country. The only reason they need to do it this way is BECAUSE they are caving in to censorship, because it's more important to grow a company into more markets than to take a principaled stand on behalf of consumers and just plain people.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Artraze]

> Once censorship starts it doesn't ever stop.

Sez you. Remember back when "Schweddy Balls" was pushing the limit of what was allowed on TV? Remember when McCarthyism made certain _ideas_ essentially illegal?

Censorship is done at the behest of people or their leaders. It's something that comes and goes and people decide what should be visible or not. Sure _sometimes_ it's forced upon a society, but that's usually (and really by definition) the result of a totalitarian government. But really, isn't that the real problem?

When a people decide they don't want guns, or drugs, or prostitution, or gambling, or certain forms of expression they pass laws against them. So you think "censorship" is stupid and wrong because it doesn't hurt anyone. Good for you. I think that most of the aforementioned laws are stupid and wrong and they hurt people more than they help. But you know what? Sometimes people get hurt by things, and they pass laws against them because they feel that the law hurts them less. Yeah, it sucks, but it's not Google's fault, nor is it their duty to change it. This censorship crap is no more "evil" and "slippery slope" than Google, say, not selling booze in Islamic countries or whatever. You don't agree, I don't agree, but if the Germans, for example, are made extremely uncomfortable by Nazi stuff, should Google tell them to piss off when asked to block it?

That actually would be rather mean of them, I think...

Re: Completely Misleading

[bonch]

There is nothing in the article or in Google's support post about this being a workaround for government censorship. To the contrary, the intent is to make censorship more convenient for Google by enabling them to censor content on a per-country basis without affecting visitors from other countries. The NCR prefix will get blocked by censoring governments. The only spin here is your post.

Re:Completely Misleading

[bonch]

You're citing absurd examples like selling booze in Islamic countries or banning Nazi content that makes Germans uncomfortable. Government censorship is far more sinister, silencing criticism of leaders and quieting stories of the government abuses or the punishment of political dissidents. It's also not something that "comes and goes" like a summer breeze. Overturning an all-powerful government structure is extremely difficult and often bloody. We're talking about people's lives here.

If this wasn't Google, it might not be considered as huge an issue in relation to other companies' foreign censorship compliance, but there are two contributing factors: 1.) Google's dominant presence on the web, and 2.) Google's public embrace of concepts like openness and freedom, seemingly when it suits them. Their power and ideology give them a greater moral responsibility; that's the drawback of being #1 in a given industry.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but this is Slashdot, Google's official spin-machine, where anything negative or hypocritical about Google gets magically flipped around into something awesome and brilliant.

Re:Completely Misleading

[GameboyRMH]

That's because this story was submitted by bonch, real name Matt Deatheridge, a rabid Apple fanboy and pathological Google hater.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes absolutely no sense. If Google was working around censorship, they wouldn't be redirecting visitors in censored countries to censored content. This is just making it easier for Google to censor these websites country-by-country. You're a tool if you think people will "always be able to access the blog by appending ncr". That'll just get blocked!

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazi content doesn't make Germans uncomfortable, unless they don't like going to jail. It is not allowed in that country. That IS government censorship. It may not seem that bad because the Nazis sucked, but it is akin to the government saying you can no longer have images of unicorns. Same goes for governments that ban images of Mohammed. So, I say his absurd examples are totally valid.

In regards to your reasons why this is worse just because it is Google:
1) yes, google is the top site ranked by Alexa, but there are other sites available. Try searching with Bing (#26) that Yahoo(#4) uses or spread your eggs out among different baskets and don't rely on Google's services.
2) Google's embrace of openness and freedom refer to open software and the freedom to do with it as you wish, NOT some jackass idea that you are free to do anything you want with no consequences and open borders around the world. Don't forget that they are a tech company, not a crusader for the rights of the people.

Re:Completely Misleading

[unrtst]

Right... Once censorship starts, it always stops eventually. There was censorship in the past that has gone away, and come back again, and gone away again, etc.

I took "it doesn't ever stop" to be the same as "it never stops", and that's just wrong. Granted, it'll probably keep getting worse for a while, but eventually it'll piss off enough people to get significant push back to remove it and we can start the cycle over again.

Re:Completely Misleading

[rtb61]

You are confusing stop with being stopped. A subtle difference in language but in social reality, one that is often drenched in blood. Censorship once started does not stop and always grows. Those outside the body that control censorship must use force to limit, reduce or eliminate censorship.

Do you think the first amendment was a freeby, that those in power gave it away for free or did those that want it have to fight and die for it.

Do you remember glasnost and the turmoil that caused. One leader at the right place and at the right time managed to sneek it in but it teetered there for a while under the threat of what could have been an enormously destructive civil war.

Now every country will argue, if goggle can do it with the amount of traffic they generate all of you can do it for everything else. You will argue technicalities, a different protocols and they will ignore it all and say, see it can be done.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

The way you don't censor it is by not censoring it at all. Just close your offices in the offending country and leave them with no recourse.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Artraze]

Absurd how?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany
"Membership in a Nazi party, incitement of hatred against a segment of the population (Volksverhetzung) and Holocaust denial are illegal in Germany. Publishing, television, public correspondence (including lectures), and music are censored accordingly, with legal consequences that may include jail time."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition
"Saudi Arabia completely bans the production, importation or consumption of alcohol and imposes strict penalties on those violating the ban, including weeks to months of imprisonment, and possible lashes."

So.... Wut? They're absurd because... they don't ruffle your ideological feathers?

Are you honestly trying to say that Google should be part of a process that you admit is "extremely difficult and often bloody"? If we're talking about people lives here, why don't we talk about the lives of their employees in these countries, who could be arrested under some kind of 'conspiracy to undermine public welfare' or what have you?

And the real question is, why Google? Why not you? You could run a tor node. You could host simple blogs; it's quite cheap. And you even have the advantage over Google because you don't have any connection to these countries and those don't have to worry about your employees being arrested.

Or right, sorry, you said already:
They're big and have the greater responsibility to enforce your morals.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, just leave people without useful service and wait while local government funded business pops up. Now not only they won't get results, they will also get reported for searching.

Re:Completely Misleading

[redkcir]

People don't pass laws, governments do. They are seldom the same.

Re: Completely Misleading

[RazzleFrog]

Well I wasn't aware of your reputation before I posted but I can see why you are so defensive. Google has little choice but to comply with local laws. You can't blame them for the over-restrictive laws in other countries. They are making it, however, that censorship in one country doesn't have to affect other countries. They are completely cutting edge with this and you'll likely see other companies doing the same thing.

And forget about NCR. By not completely blocking a particular blog they make it easier for people to circumvent the censorship in many easy ways.

Your title is ridiculously misleading no matter what. Google is not censoring anything. It's still the governments on the respecting countries that is doing the censoring.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Grishnakh]

I'd just like to point out that there's a giant difference between banning alcohol (or other physical objects) and banning speech or other expression. I don't know what the law is in Saudi Arabia, but if you're allowed to talk about alcohol, about how much you'd like to drink it, and how you think the ban on alcohol is stupid, then that isn't censorship. It's just a ban of a physical product. That isn't remotely as bad as censorship, because at least it allows people to discuss the law, express negative opinions about the law, and if enough of them agree and convince the government, get the law changed. Censorship is bad because you're not even allowed to express a dissenting opinion without being thrown in jail and having any written (or digital) copies of your opinion destroyed so that your ideas can't spread.

We had Prohibition in the USA back in the 30s, but it wasn't censorship. People were free to talk about the law, and eventually the law was changed (actually, it was changed remarkably fast, given that it required a second Constitutional Amendment to repeal the first one, and usually Amendments are very hard to get passed compared to other laws due to the higher requirement of consensus).

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

>So.... Wut? They're absurd because... they don't ruffle your ideological feathers?

It is geo relocation we're talking about. You go to a foreign website, and you are forced to a place where national laws are in effect. It's fascist. It means on the Internet, the national law is globalized. You could write something on an American site about alcohol, and have it censored for everybody in SA. That should only apply to sites hosted in SA. Likewise, how would you like to go to Amsterdam, and get busted by your national police for smoking marihuana? Google only erodes our Internet rights because they are an evil ad broker going simply for stock holder profit maximization, at the expense of everything. You are defending this, it ain't pretty.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it means Google distorts the information-stream by redirecting people to "benign" sites, when in all actuality they were searching for something else. A lot of people will not notice this, and so those visitors are fooled into believing everything is a-ok. It's worse than outright censorship. It's active "harmonizing" of the web.

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Walking backwards while eating peanuts during a concert is illegal in my home town. Must have happened at some point i guess....

Re:Completely Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

They're absurd. Sorry you can't see that.

Alternative?

[JanneM]

Anybody have a recommendation for an alternative blogging platform? Preferably one hosted in Europe by a non-US company, and one where it is reasonably easy to migrate from Blogger.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear Blogspot is pretty good.

Re:Alternative?

[maxwell demon]

It's called HTML. Learn to code and host your website, I mean "blog", on a small machine at home.

Unless he lives in Europe, it will not be what he asked for ("preferably one hosted in Europe").

Re:Alternative?

[Seumas]

Yeah, your super-mega-corp-ISP will never cave!

Re:Alternative?

[oodaloop]

He asked for a solution that was easy to migrate from Blogger, and your answer is to learn to code html? I'm sure he found that very useful. And if you asked a friend for advice on buying a low-maintenance car and his advice was to just become a mechanic, you'd find that equally useful.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at your blog - relax, brah. Your deep commentary about having omaraisu for dinner aren't going to get you censored, or targeted for re-education.

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wordpress + your own hosting (either in-house or from a host you can trust, probably a local one).

Re:Alternative?

[JanneM]

I looked at your blog - relax, brah. Your deep commentary about having omaraisu for dinner aren't going to get you censored, or targeted for re-education.

It's a fair point, and no, I don't expect my blog to get noticed by anybody, much less censored.

But I've come to realize almost all of my net prescense is based in one single country where I have no representation, no voice and no rights; and in one single company that - for all that they want to do no evil - sees me as a product, not a customer.

This concentration of power over my online presence to entities I have no control at all over is making me increasingly uncomfortable, and I want to diversify a bit. Not that I expect anything to happen, but, well, better safe than sorry.

So, any good online alternatives in general? There is supposed to be a good German cloud offering, I believe, though I don't remember the name; and Gitorius seems like a good code hosting service. Are there decent European alternatives to GMail, Google Calendar, Blogger, and so on?

Re:Alternative?

[AHuxley]

The problem with a non-US company is that they may not allow unlimited file transfers, disk storage*- i.e. finding a good cheap web hosting solution outside the US can get very expensive for a simple blog.
Step 1 Register your interesting domain name with a registration service (company A).
Step 2 Find a host with the file transfers numbers and disk storage you need (not with company A).
Step 2.5 Set up your domain with your new host.
Step 3 Use their tools to build your webpage and enjoy blogging.
Step 4 At a later date may want to learn how to code and understand what their tools and templates do and how to create your own.
Step 5 Enjoy reading your raw logs as different searches and ip's find your site.
* i.e. you have to pay into some "Virtual Private Server" for $100 a month with 1000 Gigabytes of Internet or Business plans with 500 Mbytes of months traffic for $50 vs $ 6 for unlimited file transfers, disk storage in the USA.

Re:Alternative?

[Herve5]

So, in addition to quickly installing his own version of Wordpress, all he needs is an european shared hosting, presumably in the form of a non-profit, cooperative association, in Europe.

There are not really many of them, but indeed a reasonable lot, of which for instance:

in Belgium, All2All, http://all2all.com/en , large and reliable
in France , ouvaton.coop , http://ouvaton.coop/ , with completely free 1-month testing
in France, lautre.net, http://www.lautre.net/ smallest of the three (and possibly with only a french-language interface!)

Re:Alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn you for responding to my snarky commentary with a thoughtful and cogent response that makes me say, "I know exactly what you mean."

I think I want to be your friend now. And I'll respond with a SERIOUS response that may be helpful in guiding you:

I have no specific solutions, but I'd recommend that you start looking for *paid* services, rather than free. The money to run those servers has to come from somewhere - if the service is "free" (to users), it's paid for by advertisers. If it's paid for by advertisers, then the company offering you that "free" service has a huge conflict between providing you with excellent service that respects your privacy & personal data, and making a buck off of selling the aggregation of that data to advertisers and any other group of people who want to look at it, for reasons as benign as advertising or as sinister as monitoring you for the eventual police state crackdown and re-education.

This doesn't mean that companies you pay will never sell out, but it's a lot less likely. It's one of the reasons that I consider Apple *slightly* less evil with respect to privacy than Google - they want you to buy their shiny gadgets, that's where they make their money, and that's where all their profits come from. They don't have a huge vested interest in mining all that data and packaging it up in easy resale format - Google does. (Please note, before I get accused of shilling for Apple, I said "slighly less evil" - not good, not "great", not "the best possible," etc. Simply, slightly less evil. Their profit motivation comes from selling the shinies. Google's comes form getting all your data and using it to show you ads, for which they are paid by third parties.

Sinister, just like Twitter

[bazmail]

This is a very sinister move in my opinion, as the only way we used to get to know about posts being censored in foreign countries is when they disappear from our radars in more free countries. Now the only way we'll know is by running some sort of massively networked diff program, comparing views originating in censored countries with ours.

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[Aryden]

Or you could actually RTFA, or at the very least, Razzlefrog's post.

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[bazmail]

You really think people are going to /NCR? Good for you sparky.

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[Aryden]

I dont care if they use it or not. But at least this move by google allows people that AREN'T in the censored country to get to the content naturally instead of the content being removed.

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[zidium]

You're an absolute fool if you don't think the /ncr link won't be blocked by every government and corporate firewall on the planet!!

IT IS NOT A WORKAROUND IN PLACES THAT BLOCK STUFF LIKE TOR! (e.g. China).

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[Aryden]

I don't like the blocking of shit either, but if they have to comply with local laws, i would rather it be done in a manner that does not directly impact everyone everywhere. Would you rather they just delete the damn blog/article?

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[forkfail]

In a way, yes.

Because that way, the evil would be dragged out into the light, and not allowed to hide behind Google.

Re:Sinister, just like Twitter

[marcosdumay]

Ehh, they are putting those blogs out of the .com TLD... You can guess what region's censorship they are protecting against. Yes, it is sinister, all those laws proposing censorship at the place where TLDs are kept are sinister.

Anyway, that move will PROTECT the readers of the free countries from the censorship of less free countries. There is nothing Google can do about countries censoring their people, but they just don't need to take the content away from everybody. Thus, they create country specific censorship rules.

Don't be dobedobee

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be evil, be a coward instead.

Redirect may be avoided?

[Anonymous Coward]

TOA says:
>> If you would like to see a non-affected page, you can direct to google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”),
>> which places a short term cookie that temporarily prevents geographical redirection.

Re:Redirect may be avoided?

[forkfail]

A cookie that I'm sure security agencies will love to scan for.

Re:Redirect may be avoided?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it will be just like with their search engine: if you are looking for censored content you will have to switch to another countries Google. Most swastika links are censored in Germany, switch to US and you will get them, as you will get differently censored content. Because of geolocation you need to do something similar.
Nonetheless, it could be switched to mandatory any time and, even like this, it helps them staying in business if, e.g. Germany blocks access to US Google Servers.

And thus begins...

[fahrbot-bot]

... the end of the Internet as we have known it. The future will consist of, possibly inter-connected, networks that show different groups their own version of the world, or part there of, tailored, censored and controlled according to the whims of "those who know better". Different truths for everyone. Yes, that will help bring us all closer together as a planet and as a people. (sarcasm intended)

Re:And thus begins...

[RazzleFrog]

Different countries have different laws when it comes to freedom of speech and censorship. You aren't going to change that. This is basically a tricky way for google to tell the governments they are blocking what they want but at the same time letting the users have a back door around it. I think it's a brilliant move. I can see more companies going this way which in the long run makes the censorship useless.

Re:And thus begins...

[betterunixthanunix]

Different countries have different laws when it comes to freedom of speech and censorship.

If Google does not have operations in a particular country, why should they care about that country's censorship laws?

Re:And thus begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a website, you have de facto operations in every country. It doesn't matter if you actually personnel there or not. That's sort of the nature of the internet, you know? If the company wants to profit off that presence, they will need to comply with local regulations, or as we've seen countries will eagerly seek to block access through control of the ISPs.

Re:And thus begins...

[afabbro]

If Google does not have operations in a particular country, why should they care about that country's censorship laws?

Good point, but it's still quite a lot of countries to care about.

Re:And thus begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is better to do this than to be blocked at the Great Firewall of [Insert Country Here]. At least this way they get into [Insert Country Here].

But the slippery slope is that is if Google is doing it for one country why can't they do it for [Insert Another Country Here] including possibly the US of A.

Nathan

Captcha : twitter

Re:And thus begins...

[Surt]

Not just operations, they only need to have sales in a country to care.
(My current company has operations in 6 countries, but sales in something like 50 ... and we definitely have to care about the laws of all 50 if we want to continue to sell).

Re:And thus begins...

[GodInHell]

So they don't get blocked at the DNS.

Re:And thus begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. Last I checked, all my crypto still works just fine, and I can do as I please with regard to pulling up anything I like anywhere on the Internet. Sorry man, I've been at this networked communications thing since the dial-up BBS days in the 80s (operated two), and this "oh my God the sky is falling" nonsense hasn't substantially changed since then. It's the same tired story spun and re-spun time and again, and if anything on a global scale free communications are continuing to expand a hell of a lot faster than any sad attempts to prevent it. Terribly sorry to burst your balloon; here's a lollipop to make you feel better.

Re:And thus begins...

[Mashiki]

Because we know how effective DNS blocks are. Right around as effective as trying to milk a bull.

Re:And thus begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. Last I checked, all my crypto still works just fine, and I can do as I please with regard to pulling up anything I like anywhere on the Internet. Sorry man, I've been at this networked communications thing since the dial-up BBS days in the 80s (operated two), and this "oh my God the sky is falling" nonsense hasn't substantially changed since then. It's the same tired story spun and re-spun time and again, and if anything on a global scale free communications are continuing to expand a hell of a lot faster than any sad attempts to prevent it. Terribly sorry to burst your balloon; here's a lollipop to make you feel better.

Well done, you were connected way before most of us in the 'west'.

People in developing nations just getting hold of their first cell phone or internet connection don't have the 25+ year head start you did.

Communication is increasing all the time, doesn't mean it's not monitored or censored for vast numbers of the global population.

Uhm

[Aighearach]

I don't see how this is censorship. You can bypass it easily. It might reasonably provide better service for a lot of people, and accommodates local culture and law.

If local law is so intolerable that we want to force changes on them with technology, why not just invade them and change their law?

Re:Uhm

[gearloos]

The fact that you can bypass it has nothing whatsoever to do with if it is censorship or not. You can rob a bank by bypassing security, does that mean that they are not trying to keep you out?

Re:Uhm

[Aighearach]

The bank is not built to have a security bypass for you to use if you don't want to use their security. ;) So, total analogy fail.

Re:Uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if it's censorship or not. It's really amusing how often people trot that word out like it's somehow illegal, when it's plainly a perfectly legal business decision. If anybody affected by this feels like starting a revolution in their homeland and tossing out the regimes responsible for their crappy local laws, they're more than welcome to do so. In the meantime, I really and truly don't care, especially given the three distinct ways this sort of thing is trivially circumvented. Now, if people are not only too complacent to do anything about their shitty governments, but also too retarded and/or lazy to figure out how to set up a simple VPN to deal with crap like this, they get what they get. Again, I really don't care.

Next. People specific censoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on your profile, Google will be displaying whatever news, sports or current events deemed apporved by the central authority.

This is devolution.

Missed the Boat

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a time when we could have really broken down all international boundaries through the internet, but now that even the most supposedly-benign corporate power is signing up for this state-based content, I think I'm going to flush that dream down the toilette.

One thing I have loved for many years about the net was the access to other cultures, their art and entertainment, and their people. I've met so many friends throughout the world since the early 90's because of the web.

As a related aside - can anyone tell me if there's a way to get google to recognize you as country-agnostic? I still get localized information when I go there, even not signed on. I'd love to know if there were a way to get around that, so I get all the search results from every part of the globe....

Re:Missed the Boat

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, you're such a fucking self-impressed, self-important "citizen of the world", aren't you?

"I want results in all the languages I can't speak or read, and I love having access to the popular and easily accessible arts and culture of a subset of the natives of a foreign country who are affluent and well educated enough to be on the internet and own computers."

You want access to another culture? GO THERE. Go get a sweaty ass crack hiking up a fucking mountain in Peru. Go get your balls sniffed by a monkey at a Tibetan temple. Get your johnson fondled by a kathoey in Thailand. Stop pretending that staring at something on a flat glass screen from the sanitized comfort of your bedroom allows you to experience anything but the barest hint of an imitation of a culture and its people.

Re:Missed the Boat

[ALeavitt]

As a related aside - can anyone tell me if there's a way to get google to recognize you as country-agnostic? I still get localized information when I go there, even not signed on. I'd love to know if there were a way to get around that, so I get all the search results from every part of the globe....

Try Duck Duck Go, which is a very simple search engine along the lines of what Google used to be. They proudly proclaim the fact that they neither track you nor alter your search results based on your location or history.

Re:Missed the Boat

[BiggerIsBetter]

We've had separation of Church and State for a long time. Maybe it's now time for separation of Business and State.

Re:Missed the Boat

[jbernardo]

Duck Duck Go uses Bing... So instead of Google tracking you, MSFT is tracking you. And all you gain is lower quality search results...

No, it's not

[Overly Critical Guy]

It's not "completely misleading." Google outright states in the Blogger post:

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.

They didn't find away around country censorship. They found a way to censor certain countries without affecting everyone universally. And the NCR addresses will obviously be blocked by governments, so it's not a workaround.

Re:No, it's not

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi bonch's sockpuppet. Haven't seen you in a few days.

Re:No, it's not

[RazzleFrog]

So in your opinion it is better to just let blogs be completely shut down in those countries.

Equal Global Internet Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

USA users will start to see http://equalglobalinternetrights.blogger.com.us , right?

Your post is completely misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Google didn't find a way around government censorship (ncr won't solve anything as that can obviously get blocked). They're just dividing up URLs by country so that censorship in one country doesn't affect users in other countries.

In other words, this specifically enables censorship on a per-country basis. It doesn't find a way around censorship--it lets Google MORE EASILY COMPLY with censorship and continue doing business without affecting customers in free countries.

I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[RocketRabbit]

I wonder what Google is censoring in the USA? Could be that they have strict orders to keep whatever it is secret, so nobody will even know about it.

And before anybody jumps down my throat and vaporishly wails "Oh but that COULDN'T happen in AMERICA!" please direct your attention to this post : http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/30/215-section-act-patriot/ and senator Wyden's recent comments on secret interpretations of the Patriot act.

We are really down the rabbit hole here folks.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[snookums]

I wonder what Google is censoring in the USA

To me this looks exactly like it is aimed at routing around censorship by or in the USA, and to increase global confidence in Google platforms.

The MegaUpload affair has given the world a very swift kick in the pants. Strategy consultants are recommending that businesses not deal with any US-based service providers, nor rely on hosts using any US-controlled TLDs. Google are now telling us that, hey the FBI might make us take down your megawhatsit.blogspot.com site, but the visitors you actually care about will still see your site at megahwhatsit.blogspot.co.nz.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[Aighearach]

I don't think google is censoring that, a simple search on "Wyden secret" will turn up all sorts of news about it.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[RocketRabbit]

That's a really fucked up way of looking at things. Google has started to agree to censor what people can see overseas, and you suggest this increases confidence in Google?

Are you naive enough to imagine that they will censor their platform based on something as simple as the top level domain? They will censor by IP range.

Google has take a big step toward evil here. What's next? Should the New York Times that is sold in Hong Kong limit their coverage of corruption of Chinese food issues?

You must be in PR, or work for Google, because without drinking some potent kind of Kool-Ade it is impossible to perceive this as a positive thing.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[RocketRabbit]

They are not censoring the idea that there are secret laws. But how do we know what they MAY be censoring? We certainly do know now that Google is willing to censor stuff.

Thanks for playing though.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[marcosdumay]

Google has started to agree to censor what people can see overseas

Started to agree by doing what? By putting different pages for US and overseas people so that they can comply with absurd US demands while keeping an ancensored version for everybody also?

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[AHuxley]

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-industry-calls-for-broad-search-engine-censorship-120127/
An idea like that would be useful for the USA. Its from "copyright holders" not some US gov group, content becomes harder to find or is just de-listed.
So terms like “mp3, “flac”, “wma”, “aac”, “torrent”, “download”, “rip”, “stream” or “listen”, “free” get pushed to the back of a few 100, 1000? pages of search results or are just de-listed.
As for secrets? If you write a book you may end up like Glenn Carle, a former CIA agent who wrote about Gitmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B86rc2VJAio
Or if you write a paper on the "internet" as Sean Gorman did mapping fiber-optic networks http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23689-2003Jul7?language=printer you may face new "security guidelines".
The next step is Costas Tsalikidis (Greek telco whistleblower) , Adamo Bove (head of security at Telecom Italia) - nobody will know anymore.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[snookums]

The fact that the system includes the ability to bypass the IP-range-based redirect and see the US version tells me that it's the US version that is more likely to be the censored one. Why bother putting put up a censored version of a page if the censored version is so easily avoided?

From the point of view of someone outside the USA this looks like a move to insulate my content from the Internet censorship movement that is under way in the US congress. Sounds like a positive thing to me.

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[Whiteox]

Yes. Just as an exercise, I banned all US IP4 ranges from an old website I still have access to.
US (including the local US Embassy) cannot access the site without some sort of IP spoofing.

newteam.org

Re:I wonder what is being censored in the USA?

[RocketRabbit]

You're laboring awfully hard here. This is really a move to comply with India, China, and Saudi Arabia's different censorship regimes.

The USA may be taking down sites like Megaupload and other largely pirate based sites, but we do have laws here that theoretically uphold freedom of speech, unlike the other nations.

If you were a German, you may be interested in certain topics like holocaust revisionism. However, under the new Google regime you won't be able to research it.

What happened to Open and Do no Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to Open and Do no Evil? I guess that don't matter anymore.. well since they already sell how many times I take a dump to the TP Manufacturers by using gps fine scale on my phone to see when Im in the bathroom, this is just small potatoes compared to that.

Don't be Evil

[Nonillion]

Just one more reason for me to abandon my Gmail, Google+ and Youtube accounts.

Re:Don't be Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for letting us know. We'll miss ya!

Re:Don't be Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you done it yet? I'm guessing...no.

Re:Don't be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be [CENSORED IN YOUR COUNTRY] ?

or:

[Error: Corporate slogans are not available in your country]

VolksempfÃnger 2.0?

[datorum]

"All VolksempfÃngers sold on the domestic market were purposely designed only to receive the Deutschlandsender and regional stations of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, so as to ensure that Nazi propaganda broadcasts could readily be heard while other media, such as the BBC's European Service (now the World Service), could not." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger don't take my comment too seriously, I just jumped into my mind...

Unintended consequences?

[rickb928]

So if Ihit a blog while in Canada, it will see me with a Canadian IP and thwart my access to anything the Canadian government doesn't like?

And if I drive back home to the U.S., I can merrily go on and do what I like wiuth that same blog, and not be blocked?

SO this works well... I wonder how it will work with cross-border proxies. Maybe I need to spin one up just to annoy them furringers.

Re:Unintended consequences?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just go to google.com/ncr to skip country redirect (a piece of info found not worthy enough for summary by our unbiased friend bonch)

Re:Unintended consequences?

[rickb928]

Poking the editors is unwise.

Mods, parent post is COMPLETELY WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a way around government censorship. It's a way for Google to censor more conveniently, so that if they have to block something by government request, they don't lose their precious ad views in other countries. If you don't think no-country-recognition will get blocked by governments, then you're naive.

It's sad that you got +5 Informative when you're being misinformative. People like you further the system of non-responsibility for corporate behavior in the world when it comes to political and social freedoms. Why isn't Google taking a stand and refusing to comply with ANY censorship requests?

There is no "backdoor," stop claiming this

[bonch]

You falsely claimed this in another post as well. There is no backdoor here making censorship useless; NCR URLs will just get blocked by governments. Google has specifically made it more easy and convenient for them to comply with government censorship requests: The point of this move is so they can claim to be in compliance with a takedown request in one country while keeping the content up in others so they can retain advertising hits. The people in the censored country get fucked.

Re:There is no "backdoor," stop claiming this

[scot4875]

Yeah, censorship is only OK when Apple does it to keep undesirable things out of their App store. When Google does it? It's an affront to humanity.

--Jeremy

Re:There is no "backdoor," stop claiming this

[bonch]

You can't be serious. The App Store is a company's private service for games and apps. Not getting hosted there isn't a violation of human rights or an oppression of third-world societies.

disable Google redirects

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any way of permanently disabling Google redirects on search results?

Re:disable Google redirects

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on your life, my Hindu friend.

Do no evil.... OOOOH MONEY!

[CuteSteveJobs]

Google started off with their heart in the right place, and from that they earned our trust. The fact that many of us trust them with our entire e-Mail collection is pretty amazing.

But we see that money is their primary driver. For anyone who thought could be trusted to keep giving away generously, look at the about turn they did on Google Maps. People who build their businesses on it were shafted overnight with demands for a $10K license fee. Some indy developers and startups did contact Google: surely you can't mean us? Google replied that yes, they most certainly did.

Forbes: "Google's Penny Pinching Is Costing It Customers"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbarth/2011/12/27/googles-penny-pinching-is-costing-it-customers/print/

This is the new Google who believe they have come as far as they can on goodwill and destroying competitors by giving stuff away for 'free'. Now it's payback time!

They've also been dodging their taxes: "The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is auditing how Google Inc. (GOOG) avoided federal income taxes by shifting profit into offshore subsidiaries"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/irs-auditing-how-google-shifted-profits-offshore-to-avoid-taxes.html

As for their latest toadying to repressive regimes and corrupt governments in the pockets of lobbyists, well, Google have struck a new low. That's the bad news. The worse news is they don't care: If corporations are people, and the US Supreme Court things they are, then Google is a real asshole.

Re:Do no evil.... OOOOH MONEY!

[cffrost]

You knew this would happen.

Google is a corporation. Corporations are sociopathic. Anybody that takes a sociopathic entity at their word set up themselves the bomb. Fanboys make your time.

Corporations do not love you. They do not even like you, for they do not feel. People, please stop forming emotional attachments to these organizations. It is a self-defeating and foolish endeavor.

Defending corporate behavior puts your own principles at risk. Think about what you value before you speak against your own interests in defense of an unfeeling pile of dollars and documents.

Re:Do no evil.... OOOOH MONEY!

[CuteSteveJobs]

Sagely words, cffrost.

Some others:

"I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one."

"Corporations are born in a lawyerâ(TM)s office, exist only on paper, have no social conscience, no soul and can never die."

The worst example of blind love for a corporation would have to be the way consumers worship Apple; a company whose workers are treated cruelly and ruthlessly. What is 'Cool' about this?

Apple's Chinese workers treated 'inhumanely, like machines'
Investigation finds evidence of draconian rules and excessive overtime to meet western demand for iPhones and iPads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/30/apple-chinese-workers-treated-inhumanely

Apple Store Employees Speak Out Against Demoralizing, Draining Work Conditions
http://www.cultofmac.com/103041/apple-store-employees-speak-out-against-demoralizing-draining-work-conditions/

The Darker Side of Apple: The Human Cost of Your iProducts
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/darker-side-apple-human-cost-iproducts-164412176.html

At least 14 workers at Foxconn factories in China have killed themselves in the last 16 months as a result of horrendous working conditions.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html

DNS-level website blocking

[Adrian Lopez]

Is Google anticipating the worldwide adoption of domain-blocking regulations in the style of SOPA, PIPA, and Homeland Security's domain name seizures? Google could do per-country blocking without redirecting requests, so I presume the intent is to allow for country-wide blocking of particular foreign domains while still allowing for country-specific links to censored content.

I shudder to think this might someday become standard operating procedure for websites around the world.

United States redirect?

[Anonymous Coward]

so a person from the United States of America will be redirected to .US when looking at a blog? I think .US is the Country code top-level domain for United States? like http://ci.boston.ma.us/

Don't be evil

[Patrick May]

Looks like Google needs a new slogan.

Have you already forgotten the International..

[Anonymous Coward]

..aspect of Internet. Is this the beginning of an Iron Curtain era?

taking steps

[WanQiaoYi]

one small step backwards for man (being that corporations can now be considered people), one giant leap backwards for mankind (followed by a tumble down a large mountain into a ravine full of quicksand)

Riding the Cluetrain...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

Alarmist shitbags

[geekoid]

Where does censor enter into this? Oh right, it's about Google, so alarmists AWAY!

Proper working hours too!

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google should check the working hours for my location too, so if I try to load the page too late, they should tell me to come back tomorrow!

google alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

In light of this, does anyone have any good suggestions for uncensored, anonymous search engines and/or e-mail services that err on the side of user privacy, etc.?

We use to be about freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Now its a buck.

I am so glad my time on this earth is limited.

Own Domain

[mdm42]

I wonder how they intend to apply this to blogs that are listed under their own domain... Since my Blogger-hosted blog is generally known via my own (blog.mikro2nd.net) subdomain, are Google now going to mess with my "branding" when I make snotty comments about China or the USA?

Free speech is above the law

[Anonymous Coward]

Free speech is a critical factor which keeps tyrants in check. It is above the law. American and otherwise.

So what are you gonna do about it, citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are you gonna do about it, citizen?

We here at Homeland Security Watchdogs are very interested.
Please google your plans.

If you;ve not already seen the scroogle "story"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Corelcache link which I can't te4st due to works retarded proxy (if that doesn't work remove the ".nyud.net" part to go to the actual page)

http://www.scroogle.org.nyud.net/doctorow.html

Think this won't happen one day ?

Google "knows" far too much already and the lunatics are now firmly running the USA so either you take back your government or this is very likely to come true one day.

I love the new tags system

[jbernardo]

I love the new tagging system, having "bonch writes" is so much clearer and concise than having a tag with "anti-google distorted declaration FUD", and the sematic value is exactly the same!

Time to move then...

[xenobyte]

I refuse to be part of such a censorship scheme so it's time to move.

What alternatives are recommended? - It is a must that a backup made on blogspot can be restored on the new service.

The tipping point for anonymous alternatives?

[Rexdude]

I've been running I2P for the last few days, and it seems to me to be one step towards a future of darknets or secure anonymous networks. Since it works as a network layer, it can support other services running on top of it - so you already have blogs, email, IRC and anonymous sites called 'eepsites'.

Technologies sometimes don't get adopted right away, but need some kind of tipping point before they become widespread. I wonder if this kind of censorship bullshit will drive more people to look for alternatives to communicate online without fear of detection or blockade.

I for one wouldn't mind permanently migrating onto an anonymous network like this- but for the fact that there's very little content here. I2P right now seems to be the best approach - tackling anonymity and cryptography at the network layer instead of running as one application, but there's very few people on it now.

Part of the pronlem

[doccus]

Anybody who in any way shape or form supports or defends this, is part of the problem. Period. End of argument. It looks to me like people are *still* tripping over themselves, as they have been for the last 10 years, to dismantle every right and freedom ever won by their forefathers. Allowing a global information medium to apply censorship country by country , so that citizens are not permitted to know the truth in their own country, is REPREHENSIBLE. Was NDAA not fucking enough? What the hell is WRONG with everybody?