Image Source: http://digitalben.com/content/examples/germans_vs_romans.jpg

One of the points made in this article is that any country could walk up to Google–or any business–and say, "Hey, this is what we expect you to do while you’re in our country." It’s so reasonable to "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," but in an globally connected world, that’s not possible. Coming to grips with that understanding can be frustrating with those issuing edicts to an army beyond their control and understanding.

• Google baulks at Conroy’s call to censor YouTube

  • Google baulks at Conroy’s call to censor YouTube

  • Google says it will not "voluntarily" comply with the government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad "refused classification" (RC) content rules.

    Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.

  • Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.

  • "What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws," Conroy said.

    "Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government."

  • "YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube," Flynn said.

    "The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy."

  • "They [Google] don’t control the access in Australia – all their equipment that would do this is hosted overseas … and I would find it very hard to believe that the Australian government can in any way force an American company to follow Australian law in America," Landfeldt said.

  • "Quite frankly it would really not be workable … every country in the world would come to Google and say this is what you need to do for our country. You would not be able to run the kind of services that Google provides if that would be the case."

    This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.