Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Jeffrey Toback, a politician from Nassau has accused Google of profiting from child pornography by making it an integral part of its business. Mr Toback, who is a member of the Nassau County Legislature, alleges that Google displays paid links to Web sites, which have porn involving minors."This case is about a multi-billion dollar company that promotes and profits from child pornography," the complaint states. The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Mineola says that the search behemoth has made child porn a feature on its sites. However Google has denied these claims. Company Steve Langdon said in an e-mail statement to The Associated Press that Google does not condone child porn.
"When we find or are made aware of any child pornography, we remove it from our products, including our search engine," Langdon said. "We also report it to the appropriate law enforcement officials and fully cooperate with the law enforcement community to combat child pornography." He added Google had a SafeSearch feature on its search engine "that works to filter out adult content." Langdon also pointed out that the Google's AdWords sponsored links service strictly prohibits "promotion of child pornography or other non-consensual material."
[edited by: reseller at 8:23 pm (utc) on May 5, 2006]
I wonder if the monetary damages being requested will go into some child porn assistance fund or into the legislator's campaign fund? Where else would it go?
What #*$!.
I always wondered why Google would prohibit ads from gambling sites and sites that sell gun parts and accessories but condone pornography ads.
Looks like the Super Adventure Club is going to have a tough year.
Can you buy ads for [child porn]?
You can't use explicit language in ads. I had to change some wording in some book ads because of words used in the book titles.
But "child porn" isn't explicit language, so I don't see any reason why it would not be allowed.
As far as I know, there's no banned list of keywords, though.
So, to answer your question - an anti-child-porn group should be able to take out ads on keyword "child porn" and say something like "stamp out child porn" in their ad.
an anti-child-porn group should be able to take out ads on keyword "child porn" and say something like "stamp out child porn" in their ad.
Actually, the odd part is that you can BID on the term, but you can't use it in your ad copy because it might offend some users. Strange, but true ...
Makes me wonder how many ads the legislator's research team clicked on (fraudulently) before they finally discovered some actual cp on one of the sites, and not from a link on one of the sites ...
"Defendant refuses to spend a dime's worth of resources to block child pornography from reaching children"
Um... yeah are you stamping out child porn or protecting kids from pornography. They aren't mutually exclusive but I would have to guess that the main kiddie porn consumers are not, in fact, kiddies.
absurd!
Mack.
Correct me if I make mistakes, but if a merchant in a local shopping mall sells pirate products, the merchant and the mall will be fined.
Here in this case, Google is the mall, isn't it?
Correct me if I make mistakes, but if a merchant in a local shopping mall sells pirate products, the merchant and the mall will be fined.
I doubt if it's that simple. The prosecuter or plaintiff would have to show that the mall's management knew about and permitted the illegal activity.
Here in this case, Google is the mall, isn't it?
Google isn't a mall.
Kaled.
bad, bad, bad analogy. First, there is no damage done to him, and this is not even a serious case. I hope the judge fines this ---- and makes him pay Google's legal bills.
Second, Google in this case is the store (if that idiot is suing regarding ads on Adsense) but even then, Google might be responsible only if they manually approved them.
So if I set up a random code to email and hire hitmen, I can't be held responsible for the crimes?:)
I wrote a longer answer but changed my mind, last minut. Read your answer again, and focus on the, "If I set up" part; you will see the difference.
This is if Google is being sued because someone advertised child porn on adsense of course.
I run some adwords campaigns that link to adult related content & am increasingly finding that these are being manually reviewed. Whilst this is inconvenient & slow, I do accept the imposition if it endeavours to protect browsers from viewing inappropriate content.
Perhaps certain keywords should automatically trigger manual review. Maybe some of the people who are currently employed to constantly tweak the quality score algo could be given the task of compiling this sensitive keyword list. We could kill two birds with one stone.
"To a huge number of people out in the real world, the Internet is a disgusting wasteland, full of rude, cruel, nasty people, child pornographers, and photos of people having sex with dogs."
The aforementioned perception, in my opinion, is stronger than ever. In fact, you can likely add to that quote "child rapists lurking in every chat room and social networking website" -- or wording to that effect.
I'm entirely self-employed via the work I do on the web, as many of the others here at Webmaster World are.
Lots of people likely find it "mysterious" that there are individuals and companies that make money on the Internet -- when to them the "dot-com bust" (and rapid depletion of their stock market portfolio) somehow proved that money could not be made online.
So what might these people assume we actually do online?
Just think... if Google, ostensibly one of the most well known brands on the Internet with a stock market capitalization in the tens of billions of dollars, owes its success (as alleged by this lawsuit) in part to the profits generated from child pornography, how the heck must the rest of us be making money online?
I have no doubt there are those who likely harbor the opinion that ALL of us here at Webmaster World are a bunch of child pornographers.
We'll see where this lawsuit goes... but remember, the news headlines are roaring with allegations that Google is making a fortune off child pornography. That's what people are reading and absorbing as "fact."
Nine months from now, or whenever the lawsuit is dismissed (assuming it's dismissed), there will be hardly a footnote exonerating Google of the scandalous charges being made against it. Nobody will notice.
To vast numbers of people, Google will equal child pornography profiteering.
I have no doubt there are those who likely harbor the opinion that ALL of us here at Webmaster World are a bunch of child pornographers.
I have no doubt you are wrong. You are insinuating that as google goes, so do webmasters of every persuasion. NOT quite.
If all the webmasters at WebmasterWorld blindly defend google and THEIR child porn problem, you may have a point. ;)
Hey politician, how do you know Google has child porn in their results? Research?
Indeed! What was he looking for?
Maybe his PC should be examined first.
Hey politician, how do you know Google has child porn in their results? Research?Indeed! What was he looking for?
Maybe his PC should be examined first.
He probably got handed the info, it's been about for a while. Very recently raised by Dave Naylor on Strikepoint in fact as something that needed urgent attention.
It is a broadmatching problem
How ingenuis!
Sounds like a recipe from the viral lab at the plex.
Theres no way G would do this knowingly, the guys after brownie points for some warped reason
Plausible denial.;) Doesn't matter if they do it knowingly or not. Some lawyer or other will get around to mentioning ignorance of the law is no exuse for breaking the law...
