The New York Times‘s Sunday Magazine has an excellent article by Jeffrey Rosen, a Law professor at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. He discusses how the conflicting goals of Google and other global Internet services try to walk the line between free speech and local laws that heavily restrict just what kinds of speech can be free. As Google grows by purchasing services like YouTube, Blogger, and the social network Orkut (which is banned in Saudi Arabia), the company finds itself enmeshed in dealing with local laws—many with popular support in various countries—that run counter to the idea of free speech.
Google and its competitors like Yahoo are in a tough position. They are being pressured by governments, including the US government, to act in particular ways. The problem is that there is no universally accepted concept of free speech. Each country draws its lines differently. In Turkey, and in Turkey alone, it is illegal to make fun of the founder of the country, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or of ‘Turkishness’. In Thailand, one cannot insult the King. In Islamic countries, there are myriad pitfalls that need to be avoided. In several European countries, it is illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia or to deny the reality of the Holocaust. How do companies, whose goal is to make a profit, after all, deal with laws that completely contradict each other? Is it even the role of private companies to promote and protect human rights? Or can it simply avoid violating those rights itself?
I recommend the article, strongly.
Google’s Gatekeepers
Jeffrey RosenIn 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site.
‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’
In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity on YouTube in Turkey, and that the press was reporting that the Turkish government was blocking access to YouTube for virtually all Turkish Internet users. Apparently unaware that Google owns YouTube, Turkish officials didn’t tell Google about the situation: a Turkish judge had ordered the nation’s telecom providers to block access to the site in response to videos that insulted the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which is a crime under Turkish law. Wong scrambled to figure out which videos provoked the court order and made the first in a series of tense telephone calls to Google’s counsel in London and Turkey, as angry protesters gathered in Istanbul. Eventually, Wong and several colleagues concluded that the video that sparked the controversy was a parody news broadcast that declared, “Today’s news: Kamal Ataturk was gay!” The clip was posted by Greek football fans looking to taunt their Turkish rivals.
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November:30:2008 - 10:13
Here in the UAE, I often find a lot of sites blocked for reasons I do not know. The news here is very good though, the Gulf News and The National are examples. I often find pieces from the New York Times, Washington Post and editorials from Near East think tanks. Ireally do not think that any newspaper is “objective”. I think as time progresses here in the UAE, less of this censorshop will enevelop the internet. Also, I do not think that there will be a universally accepted censorship as the interpetation of issues vary greatly around the globe.
November:30:2008 - 12:24
I know that in Saudi Arabia, both Arab News and Saudi Gazette (and I’m sure other Saudi papers) are blocked to users in the KSA. This is a commercial decision: the owners of the papers think that there’s money to be made in blocking local access, thereby forcing would-be readers to buy a copy. A similar kind of thinking may prevail in the UAE.
This goes against general newspaper business trends which has more and more media opening up content online.
Then again, most of the print media (and a lot of broadcast media) are having serious financial issues while they hemorrhage hard-copy readers. Your guess is as good as mine about what this all means in the long run!
November:30:2008 - 15:43
Nicole Wong has a journalism and law degree from UC Berkely. Why am I getting hives just thinking about her being the arbiter of what is considered appropriate speech for Google and YouTuble?
November:30:2008 - 16:00
YouTuble = YouTube
(sheesh)
November:30:2008 - 18:51
I don’t know that I’d trust her (or much of anybody, actually) to be the arbiter of what I consider appropriate. But she did a pretty good job in reporting the issue.
There are plenty of people who think Google (and Yahoo) are part of the problem in that they don’t stand up for absolute free speech. I think those people have confused Google with some missionary group, or perhaps a government.
I don’t have to like the way Google or Yahoo does or doesn’t find compromises with governments, but it’s their business decisions. I do have to respect that they will make what seem right for them. What are the alternatives? Stop doing Google in China or Iran? That might make some feel good, but I’m not sure what effect it would have.
November:30:2008 - 22:33
I will agree that Google is not the government and they have the business right to censor whatever they please. I should also be happy with the gains we’ve seen with Google in China (for example). But, I’ve read enough to know that they restrict content in order to have access in the Chinese market and other places. What signal does this send? That threats trump free speech? CNN did the same thing in Baghdad with the Saddam Hussein regime. They placate to gain access.
I’m just no fan of Google. I use Yahoo!, somewhat out of principle. Google is an American company that shows little American patriotism because it considers itself a world citizen. They don’t fly the US flag on their web banner on patriotic US holidays. That just gets my goat. They have the benefit of what America offers and don’t acknowledge it.
December:01:2008 - 00:34
I think that if a company decides that it would rather give up some of the rights it has as an American company in order to secure profits, then it has the right to do so.
What it must ALSO do, though, is make it clear to any and all that it is doing precisely that. Say it, up front. Then let customers decide how they want to deal with it.
I certainly understood the constraints that CNN was under in Saddam’s Iraq. They had a choice to tell less than or other than the whole truth or to leave the country. They made their decision.
Where they went astray, in my book, was to pretend that the case was otherwise. They should have had every report from Iraq prefaced with a statement to the effect: “We are operating under Iraqi censorship laws that control what we can or cannot say.”
Had they done this, then it would have been clear what the deal was. Viewers could make up their own minds about how much was being slanted, biased, shadowed, whatever.
Google, like CNN, tries to be ‘global’ and does shy away from questions of nationality. That, too, is a business decision and theirs to make. It is our decision to act on that as we decide.