NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Google to fight Spanish demands to remove 'libelous' links
Google to fight Spanish demands to remove 'libelous' links http://bit.ly/i21Vel (Guardian UK) - - - As I have long predicted, governments, frustrated by their inability to control the proliferation of data on serving sites themselves, will increasingly attempt to censor the sites that link to such materials -- especially search engine listings -- in the hopes that if people can't easily *find* the data, it's nearly as good (from the censors' point of view) as the data not existing at all. Plus, attacking search engines has the convenience advantage of helping to "bury" large numbers of links through what amounts to "one-stop censorship shopping." Call it the War on Links. This may be an increasing risk for all of us who link anywhere, but most notably for that entity most people turn to first as the reliable, unofficial Indexer of the Internet, that is, Google. Especially in the absence of other mechanisms to deal with search results disputes (e.g. Extending Google Blacklists for Dispute Resolutions: http://bit.ly/c4RvWs [Lauren's Blog]), censorship demands targeting search engines can only be expected to increase dramatically over time. "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no index you can use to find it, does it really exist?" --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance): http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz