[Sigia-l] morality, google and consequences of classification

[Laura Norvig]

As I recall Brin censored an advertisement, not a google index 
listing (I'm talking about the John Malkovich thing). I think that is 
certainly Google's prerogative.

The Chinese thing was a little more disturbing. I would say 
capitalism seemed to prevail over free speech in that case.

Anyone know where to find the
"report by two Harvard researchers revealed that Google had begun 
filtering its own servers to block users in Germany, France, and 
Switzerland from accessing sites carrying material likely to be 
judged racist or inflammatory in each country"
that is mentioned in the article?

-Laura


At 11:20 AM -0800 12/17/02, Christina Wodtke wrote:
>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/google_pr.html
>
>is a pretty good article on google's latest moral dilemmas.
>
>Blogged it this a.m. http://www.eleganthack.com/archives/003149.html#003149,
>but thought I'd bring the discussion to the list
>'"Don't be evil" is overly simplistic attitude. some things are easy to
>recognize as evil, such as a KKK site. But if you censor those sites, then
>you keep people from being able to research them to form arguments against
>their ideology. Is censorship evil, making google evil when they stop evil
>things? Good and evil are for first graders. Grown-up life is far more
>complex.'
>
>Yahoo! surfers (the information retrieval specialists who build the
>directory) deal with these issues all the time.. do you list a site that has
>the bin ladin guide to bomb making?
>
>But to have one guy's idea of wrong and right decide who can access what--
>good golly, this gives me the screaming willies. I don't care how nice a
>fellow he is. Does brin have access to the librarian code of conduct?