Google reports 'alarming' rise in government censorship requests
 

Google reports 'alarming' rise in government censorship requests

With this new data and recent reports of the British ATVOD , have you prepared for changes coming in the industry? If so, what have you done to prepare?

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Western governments, including the United States, appear to be stepping up efforts to censor Internet search results and YouTube videos, according to a "transparency report" released by Google.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google, wrote in a blog post on Sunday night.

"For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn't comply with either of these requests."

In the last half of 2011, U.S. agencies asked Google to remove 6,192 individual pieces of content from its search results, blog posts or archives of online videos, according to the report. That's up 718% compared with the 757 such items that U.S. agencies asked Google to remove in the six months prior. > FULL STORY <

Well, this is either terrible or way overdue.

A lot of intentially false garbage is posted on the internet and it stirs up a big mess sometimes.

Isn't that what the courts are for?

Doesn't it seems like they are replacing due process with censorship?

Oh, absolutely. What the US needs is a Ministry of Truth to combat unwanted information
/sarcasm

That's waht all these laws are about. ACTA, ATVOD, etc, etc etc.

Give the government the power to censor the internet as they see fit under the clearly bullshit guise of protecting us.

The Facebook method of overthrowing governments can happen with real or fake
information. Governments aren't going to wait for a court date during the revolution.

I agree :thumbsup

Google controls how many, and who, has access to you and governments control Google.