Google announced in January that it would cease censorship of search results in China. After the announcement was made, officials in the Chinese government claimed that Google was legally bound to censor results within the country as per Chinese law.
“Foreign companies in China should respect the laws and regulations, respect the public interest of Chinese people and China’s culture and customs and shoulder due social responsibilities,” Ma Zhaoxu, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a press conference. “There is no exception for Google.”
From a legal standpoint, the Chinese government is right; it has laws in place, however objectionable they are, and it believes Google should abide by those laws.
Since these complaints were made public, more countries have become vocal about what restrictions they want Web sites to implement in their respective nations.
Australia, which is currently in the hotly debated process of implementing a national Internet service provider-based filtering initiative, wants to partially censor Google subsidiary, YouTube.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the man pushing the filtering initiative, wants Google to do the filtering for the government.
“What we’re saying is, well, in Australia, these are our laws, and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said in an interview on Australian television show Hungry Beast.
A clip of Pakistan President Asif Zardari telling a group of people to shut up at a political rally was recently posted on YouTube.
Not long after the clip surfaced, the Pakistani government blocked YouTube entirely for a short period of time until it was able to block only the specific clips.
It is unknown at this time if the blocking was the work of Google or the government.
Media around the world has been controlled and influenced by governments for centuries.
Sometimes censorship is done with the best of intentions, but other times, the only purpose is to protect whatever government is implementing the policy.
In the modern world, information is international, which makes it harder to control. Google is in a prime position to shape the Internet into something above any country’s laws.
The real issue is whether the Internet should be seen as a road that runs through different countries, thus abiding by each nation’s separate laws, or as something international and above reproach.
Google has shown through its actions that it is against censoring the Internet, and rightfully so; people have a right to be informed of what’s going on in the world.
Michael Padon is an engineering sophomore and may be contacted at [email protected]
