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Affected by this censoring mechanism are German, Swiss and French citizen. People from Austria (.at) can still access these pages. I don't think Google should censor SERPs. At the very least they should make clear that and what they are filtering. I despise racists but I would like free speech to remain free.
This is bad! What will be censored next?
i hate racism but i hate censorship even more. at least with the racists you can ridicule their reasoning but with censors you can't argue against what you are unaware of.
Nick
This may very well be the case (or something similar) in your example. Google might be under some legal obligation to not deliver racist content to Germany.
G.
It's very reminesent of the Yahoo<->France case.
Google is under no obligation to list any site. Results are editorial content. Would you want to have to "list" everything? Google is a business and can add or delete anything it wants to it's database.
if censorship is applied the users should be told don't you think? sure they have the right to exclude but i think that users have a trust of google, this should be regarded as precious.
It may be a legal issue, but rather in Switzerland, since they have a data center there. Regarding France and Germany, they may want to show some good will in advance. (Having a sales office in Germany and caching sites like stormfront is definitely risky.)
The problem with google.de may well be legal. I guess they are afraid of getting into trouble because they cache the page, which could be interpreted as hosting it.
Rassism, particularly regarding nazism is an offense in Germany. No freedom of speech or whatever as in the US.
Same thing for the ToS at google.de. As far as I can see, they are exactly the same as in english, just translated.
>When they filter a site for spam, is it editorial integrity, or is it censorship?
Neither integrity nor censorship, just plain common sense. No one searches an index when they know from previous searches that it is full of spam.
btw, has this thread been filtered from the recent posts? I can't find it there any more.
They should clearly state that they are filtering and what they are filtering.
It could very well be illegal to even bring up the concept/term "racism" in Germany. I'm not at all familiar with German law, but it wouldn't come as even a mild surprise to me if that were the case. If so, then it would be illegal for Google.de to clearly state that they are filtering results based on that criteria.
G.
It is not. That would be a bit exagerated and difficult to implement, as many government agencies would then be in trouble when trying to define their job.
And Germany's highest civil court has already ruled that Yahoo! is subject to German law as it is accessible by Germans.
This is mad! That would suppose that EVERY website is subject to every country's law! Possible exception would be countries that deny access to parts of the web, like China.
Coincidentally, I've just been writing about problems with the application of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act to the Net. (One of my other hats is as a board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia.)
The sites are not censored - they still exist, they are just not linked from Google.
Equally they are not linked to from my homepage - thats my right, its my site.
Within reason, Google can include what they wish in their database - they are NOT a government body, they are NOT the internet itself, they area a company.
I think it would be outrageous if they were forced to include sites against their wishes - what kind of world would that be?
Firstly, Google makes a big fuss about having a large index of web sites, and about the objectivity and quality of their results. Excluding sites on arbitrary grounds totally unrelated to quality, and not publicising the fact that they have done so, is quite simply deceitful.
Secondly, when a company has a large enough market share, it may wield sufficient power that it can reasonably be subject to constraints that smaller companies are not. If a site is not listed in a search engine with 80% of the market, it effectively disappears from the web for many users...
I think I'll put a FAST search box back on the startup page set as default for my users, just in case some things aren't coming up on Google. Who knows what the Australian government has convinced them to not show to Australian users, given that our Net censorship system is operating secretly [efa.org.au]?
BTW, I haven't seen any news coverage of this anywhere yet. Is this a WW exclusive?
[edited by: danny at 10:55 am (utc) on July 23, 2002]
Excluding sites on arbitrary grounds totally unrelated to quality, and not publicising the fact that they have done so, is quite simply deceitful.
Don't agree at all. IMO such a decision vcould not be called arbitrary, unrelated to quality or deceitful.
I don't see why anyone should be forced to account for the sites to which they link or include in their database.
Their definition of quality simply differs from yours. It also differs from mine in some respects, but I am comfortable with that.
Even if it was a conscious decision to exclude sites that they found distasteful, there is no legal or moral requirement on them to state that.
It would be an issue if you can point to a statement from Google that states that they include ALL pages regardless of the content. I haven't seen such a statement.
I believe that freedom of speech is a major issue here - Google's right to freedom of speech.
Again, they are a private company not the Internet itself - they have the same rights as you and I.
They have a right to publish what they wish on their web site providing they are within the law.
I have the right to use another search engine.
I don't have the right to force them to publish things they find distasteful - that would infringe their rights to freedom of speech.
BTW I am totally opposed to censorship - I just don't accept that this is censorship.
And what happens if someone is trying to research neo-nazism? Trying to "solve" racism by stopping people finding out about it is like trying to fix unemployment by compelling the media to report ficitious unemployment rates and not to print any stories about unemployed people. (There are countries that have done and do that.)
Google's mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world's information universally accessible and useful.From the Google Inc. Company Overview [google.com].
So they do promise to make the world's information accessible, not 'parts of the world's information'.
What bugs me and I guess most of us is not that they filter some sites. That part is perfectly ok and even good. The problem is the fact that they do it without saying so. And even if they do not state anywhere that they index all kinds of content, people out there believe they do and trust them to do it.
that they've done it under threat of action by the German government.
Which if true gets Google of your hook anyway.
I agree with Brett - no doubt a statement will appear at some stage, speculation is pointless at this stage.
Sinner_g - strangely, I draw a different conclusion from exactly the same statement - guess we have to disagree to agree or agree to disagree - whatever:)
It seems pretty damn unlikely to be a coincidence, though it could be that Google builds its German index separately, inside Germany, and couldn't reach stormfront.org when doing so due to ISP censorship.
