

Google Will Start Country-Specific Censorship for Blogs - beatle
http://mashable.com/2012/01/31/google-twitter-country-censorship/

======
Karunamon
Before the doom and gloomers start (looking below I'm a bit late, but
anyways..), think about this from a practical perspective.

We can assume two things as indisputable facts: 1) Google is a multinational
company. 2) To operate in a given country necessitates complying with that
country's laws.

If a local country's laws say that you can't deny the holocaust (Germany) or
speak ill of the king (Thailand) or talk about how corrupt the government is
(Russia), or link to something that might be copyrighted (USA), or what have
you, Google's options are limited to either compliance, or ceasing operations
there.

What do you think would happen if Google took a public hardass stance like "We
refuse to censor user content under any circumstances"? Admirable, and that
would make them a darling on the internet, but only as long as it took for the
local apparatchik to note that the company is violating local laws, and shuts
down their operations there _or worse_.

Google's best bet in this case is exactly what they've done here - try to
limit the spread of the local censorship from its local area. Just because
Thailand's king gets easily butthurt is no reason for people outside of
Thailand to suffer for the actions of a partially corrupt regime there..

If you have a better (and most importantly _REALISTIC_ ) idea, I'd love to
hear it.

~~~
gbelote
I believe Google has a moral responsibility to fight censorship. I understand
your stance, and it makes sense under the assumption that Google should do
what's best for themselves (and shareholders), but that's wrong. Following
local law doesn't absolve them of that evil.

Edit: In response to having a better idea, Google isn't a powerless agent in
this situation. They can take a hard stance without being completely cut out
of that country. It may suck short-term, but it creates a better Internet
long-term and that matters for them.

~~~
Karunamon
You absolutists have really tied their hands. There is no country with a
concept of something being more illegal than something else - there is only
legal and illegal with (theoretically) higher sentences for worse crimes.
Denying the hololcaust in Germany is just as much of a crime as fraud.

I'd hate to be in Google's shoes right now. They can't win. If they keep going
in a country despite the laws, they'll just be shut down and then the
shareholders (and anyone else with a _rational_ mind) will be miffed. If they
follow the law, the shareholders will be happy, but some people in some areas
will have their rights trampled on.

I think your fight is with the government passing corrupt laws that everyone
is beholden to, not the company following the law like everyone else.

Asking a company to break local laws on principal sounds nice, but in the real
world, _it isn't gonna happen_ , for a number of very good reasons.

~~~
gbelote
I don't identify as an absolutist and I agree it's not a black-and-white
situation. It sucks for the reasons you mention.

But even if it's their legal obligation to follow, I still believe it's
morally wrong for them to do so. Their position isn't so weak that they're
powerless. As a business their incentives may be really strong, but I don't
believe that absolves them of the moral component. Just because taking a hard
stance is hard doesn't mean it's OK not to take it. But it is understandable,
certainly for a complex, multifaceted organization.

And I agree, it's not just about Google. I think everyone shares at least some
responsibility, from the government to the businesses to the citizens. But
just because it's practical for Google to censor doesn't mean they are no
longer morally responsible for taking part in censorship.

Hopefully Google will at least be active in fighting the laws and maybe that
is their full intention.

~~~
magicalist
I don't think it helps to talk about censorship in the abstract. We can start
with the position that "all censorship is bad", but we quickly get into the
same tricky problems that first amendment cases do (where do my rights end and
yours begin), not to mention that "free speech" is literally defined
differently in different countries.

Next, we can look at things like if censoring certain types of material is
ever wrong. Citizens reporting on each other for anti-patriotic behavior
horrifies us, but I have no problem with Google reporting a site that hosts
child pornography if they discover it while indexing images (I don't agree
with the thoughtcrime laws that child pornography seems to engender, but I
certainly have no problem with that site being shut down).

Since we're looking at an American company, what about DMCA take down notices?
Many on this site have serious problems with the way those laws are enforced
and in how they favor large content conglomerates, but if companies were to
not follow them, large segments of companies on the internet simply could not
exist (if based in the US). Is it morally wrong for them to honor these
takedown notices? What if most are in fact legitimate (in our copyright
system, not some platonic one!), they just deny due process to some minority?
Is there a moral difference between a court order and a national security
notice?

There's an easy transition from these questions to ones of censoring hate
speech and incitement to violence, to censoring Holocaust-denial and Nazism,
to censoring criticism of the King.

If we're going to draw a bright line for companies we will financially
support, we'll have to talk about specifics, because "censorship" won't cut it
(what did you fund with your taxes this year?), and we really are going to
have to talk about "I don't want an American company censoring blog posts in
India because I think the laws there (that some portion of the population
likely supports) are wrong". And then we'll have to call up someone in the EU
that supports "the right to forget" and see what they think of our notion of
free speech and censorship.

------
drcube
Didn't Google _stop operating in China_ a few years ago because they'd rather
lose business than support censorship? Then they said, "ah, fuck it,
censorship's cool if your country has a billion ad-watching eyeballs". Now
this is like the "censorship for everyone!" service pack.

I think the answer is to make it easy for people to host their own content.
Sort of an "anti-cloud". FreedomBox is a great concept, you guys that are
better hackers than me (most of you) should find some way to contribute:
<http://freedomboxfoundation.org>

~~~
Karunamon
>Didn't Google stop operating in China a few years ago because they'd rather
lose business than support censorship?

That's just the PR reason. The real reason is because they had recurring
problems with local hackers getting into their systems.

~~~
powertower
I think it was more that Baidu.com is the state sponsored competitor to Google
China, and pretty much have been wiping the floor with Google in that country.

That move, claiming they were going to pull out of China because 12 email
accounts were hacked (of human rights activists that weren’t even living in
China) was pure PR that everyone was more than willing to lap up.

Same thing with that "Microsoft is indexing our results". As soon as you
looked at the details, the PR dissolved.

~~~
slykat
Just 12 accounts hacked from China, really? I think it's pretty well
documented that the hacking issues were more way more extensive than 12
account.

It's debatable whether it was government sponsored hacking or private citizens
but regardless, it's a gross understatement to say it's 12 accounts. My own
personal Gmail account from a Chinese IP a few days before the Google PR post.

Press "Google said Wednesday a hacker in China obtained access to hundreds of
Gmail accounts, including those of senior U.S. government officials, military
personnel, Chinese political activists and journalists" -
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/google-
hu...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/google-hundreds-of-
gmail-accounts-hacked-including-some-senior-us-government-
officials/2011/06/01/AGgASgGH_blog.html)
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/20/google...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/20/google-
china)
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/20/google...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/20/google-
china)

User Posting(s)
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=5da16...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=5da16d642cf89842&hl=en)
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=49aa5...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=49aa5586e9b05271&hl=en)

~~~
powertower
No one doubts that IPs coming from China log-in-with-stolen-passwords into
Gmail, hotmail, and mail.yahoo every single day.

Or that there are attempts to steal worthy information and data through other
means.

Some of these attempts are state-sponsored, some are corporate-sponsored,
others are crime-sponsored.

Russia does this, US does this, and just about every other player does this.

This happens every day.

It's nothing new.

The point is that Google entered China (the #1 known player in this game of
hacking and espionage), then when the expected happened, used it's PR machine
to pretend they were pulling out because of some of these attempts, with the
main focus (in that PR attempt) on the dozen email accounts of activists.

------
grecy
Wow, the best thing about that article is the reference to
<http://google.com/ncr> (No country redirect) - finally a way to stop Google
from re-directing me to whatever country I'm in.

------
SoftwareMaven
I hear about things like this and think we really need something like
Diaspora: a unified, social interface being run on highly distributed systems.
The benefits of things like Blogspot, Twitter and Facebook without the
leverage points a few big companies ruling it all provide.

------
yanw
Contrary to that headline it's actually more of a counter-censorship measure:

[http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2402711)

 _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._

So after a local authority demands that a blog post be removed, it will still
be available at *.blogspot.com

~~~
magicalist
Yeah, this article is pretty much just terrible reporting.

If this tech reporter utilized their long term memory (or a search engine),
they would remember everyone reporting on the google transparency report,
which tells you exactly how much content each government has asked them to
take down, and how many times they've complied with those requests. They would
also have remembered the notes in that report that said that _google was doing
this exact same censorship to comply with eg Indian or German laws while not
removing the content for the rest of the world_

[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/removals/)

I mean, seriously? "Ebay thought that they could hide it, but hidden away in
their TOS are rules for country-specific censorship, like hiding nazi
memorabilia in german search results. It appears that Ebay snuck those terms
in there 11 fucking years ago."

Censorship: it's a really hard problem. Luckily we have tech reporters.

------
DrCatbox
Good bye Internet, it was nice to know you.

~~~
getsat
It's not going away, it's just evolving (albeit in a less than stellar
direction). An enterprising individual will be prepared to take advantage of
the forthcoming restrictions and profit from them.

~~~
joe24pack
data and information bootleggers?

~~~
libraryatnight
We sell the truth.

