(OT) Google looks to U.S. government to fight internet censorship
- From: allenkirshner@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:51:06 -0700
(CTV)
Google seeks government help to fight censorship
Updated Sun. Jun. 24 2007 8:50 AM ET
Associated Press
Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is
seeking help inside Washington to fight the rise of web censorship
worldwide.
The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by
asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as
international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global
commerce, such as tariffs.
Google sees the dramatic increase in government Internet censorship,
particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its
advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to
consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.
"It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that
we face," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy
and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin
has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office
several times this year to discuss the issue.
"If censorship regimes create barriers to trade in violation of
international trade rules, the USTR would get involved," USTR
spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said. She added though that human rights
issues, such as censorship, typically falls under the purview of the
State Department.
While human rights activists are pleased with Google's efforts to
fight censorship, they harshly criticized the company early last year
for agreeing to censor its website in China, which has the second-
largest number of Internet users in the world.
The company defends its actions, saying the Chinese government made it
a condition of allowing Chinese users access to Google web pages.
China has an Internet firewall that slows or disrupts Chinese users
trying to gain access to uncensored websites.
Censorship online has risen dramatically the past five years, belying
the hype of the late 1990s, which portrayed the Internet as largely
impervious to government interference.
A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of
41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship. That's a dramatic
increase from the two or three countries guilty of the practice in
2002, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, who helped prepare the
report.
China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and Thailand, among
others, are increasingly blocking or filtering web pages, Palfrey
says.
Governments "are having more success than the more idealistic of us
thought," acknowledges Danny O'Brien, international outreach co-
ordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Still, even government filtering isn't always successful. In Iran,
which filters web content, there are nearly 100,000 bloggers, making
Farsi "one of the most blogged languages in the world," says Palfrey.
Google's YouTube has become a common target for thin-skinned rulers.
Turkey in March blocked the video-sharing site for two days after a
complaint that some clips insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk.
Thailand continues to block YouTube after several videos appeared in
April, criticizing the country's monarch.
Bloggers in Morocco said in late May that they could not access
YouTube shortly after videos were posted critical of that country's
treatment of the people of western Sahara, a territory that Morocco
took control of in 1975. A government spokesman blamed a technical
glitch.
One likely source for Google's censorship idea is a paper written two
years ago by Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, who
argues that downloading a web page hosted in another country
effectively imports a service.
Drawing on that concept, Google envisions using trade agreements to
fight back. The negotiated pacts would include provisions guaranteeing
free trade in "information services." As is true of most trade pacts,
the provisions would call for arbitration if there are violations.
The U.S. has a trade agreement with Morocco and began negotiating one
with Thailand in 2004, although those talks were suspended early last
year after a military coup.
Columbia's Wu said the trade pact approach is likely to be more
effective when governments are guilty of blocking entire web sites or
applications, such as Internet phone-calling, than when they filter
specific content.
Under World Trade Organization rules, countries can limit trade for
national security or public moral reasons, Wu said, exceptions that
authoritarian governments would likely cite when filtering politically
sensitive material.
The company's trade initiative reflects Google's increasing acceptance
of the value of federal lobbying. The company didn't hire a lobbyist
until 2003, according to public filings, but paid the high-powered
Washington-based Podesta Group US$160,000 last year to work on
Internet free-speech, tax and other issues.
Human rights groups say Google's censorship efforts seem sincere,
albeit motivated by bottom-line incentives.
"Free expression is a unique selling point" for a company like Google,
O'Brien said. Filtering and censorship "diminishes the value of their
product."
Yet last month at the company's annual meeting, Google's board
recommended investors vote against a shareholder resolution urging
Google to renounce censorship.
The resolution was defeated, although Google is already acting on some
of the proposal's ideas, including working with other technology
leaders, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., to develop a set of
principles on how companies should respond to censorship and other
human rights violations when doing business abroad.
Human rights advocates, academics and corporate social responsibility
groups are involved in the project, announced earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Google's global growth efforts continue. YouTube said
Tuesday that it plans to expand into nine other countries, including
Brazil, France, Spain and Poland, offering local-language websites and
highlighting videos of domestic interest.
In China, where Google is the No. 2 search engine behind the
domestically based Baidu.com, the company said in April it will
increase its investment as it works to create more content of interest
to Chinese users.
--
Allen Kirshner
(the alt.music.lyrics TV theme guy)
.
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