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UK MPs Threaten New Laws If Google Won't Censor Search
It's not just Japan that wants to regulate how Google displays search results: judgecorp writes "A committee of British MPs and peers has asked Google to censor search results to protect privacy and threatened to put forward new laws that would force it to do so, if Google fails to comply. The case relates to events such as former Formula One boss Max Mosley's legal bid to prevent Google linking to illegally obtained images of himself."
The search engines from Google and elsewhere already flag sites that are "spam" or which host "malicious content."
Maybe they need to add a "gossip" flag as well.
Unfortunately there would be no shortage of lawsuits from "entertainment magazines" if they did so.
And that's really the crux of the problem. If Google capitulates to people who want their search results censored, it's just a matter of time before the censored sites sue Google for the censorship.
So really Google has a choice between being sued by the censors for not complying, or sued by the censored for complying. Either way, someone expects to be paid for doing nothing useful to society, as is always the case when there is a "big money" company or business involved in the equation.
The UK is free to block Google entirely if they so choose. And good riddance to them, the Chinese, and every other nation that thinks their censorship laws trump the free access of an international resource.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
These laws sound like the worst thing ever until someone posts your credit record online, a nude picture of your daughter, or your copyrighted code that you worked on for ten years and hoped to sell to finance your retirement.
Then, suddenly, they sound great.
The UK has a point about protecting privacy. If any point of failure can overcome the Streisand effect, it's the search engines. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.