I am going to file this under, “We’re not evil…no, really.” Google has been in hot water over privacy issues in the last several weeks. Luckily for our Mountain View friends, if Google knows anything it’s how to position PR. That leads us to our most recent news, Google taking a stand against censorship.

Curtail The Crackdown

Google wants the government to work towards ending internet censorship, especially in regions like Asia and the Middle East. They state that censorship not only slows the spread of information, but is also one of the strongest barriers to free trade.

Google hopes to use trade initiatives as a vector for change. They would like to see free trade in, “information services,” written into these agreements. That way, should censorship occur, the U.S. government would be able to bring the perpetrators to the table for arbitration.

This is not Google’s first foray into governmental affairs. After 2003, they retained the government lobbyists Podesta to help them fight against legislation that hurt free speech on the internet among other issues.

Most human rights group see this as a legitimate effort on Google’s part to increase access to information for everyone, however, it is easy to see that their bottom line would not suffer should their initiatives pass.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Here are a few countries that censor access to the web and their reasons for doing so.

China. Censors web pages critical of the government or containing content that might be interpreted as such.

Turkey. They blocked YouTube for a time on complaints that some videos were insulting to their founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Thailand. Once again, YouTube got the axe because of content that supposedly criticized the monarch.

Morocco. YouTube was shut down there for a time because of videos that were critical of the countries treatment of the Western Sahara.

Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore are also on the short list of countries that engage in content censorship. I think the lesson that we can draw from this is, don’t put up YouTube videos that insult monarchs. They tend to take offense and shut down your site for their entire country. Lets hope that Google gets their way, shall we?

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