p2pnet news | Freedom:- “Google is being accused of an infamy often disingenuously levelled at P2P file sharing applications by the vested interest corporate entertainment industry,” p2pnet posted yesterday.

So what is this horror?

Exposing children to online porn.

And how’s Google doing that?

According to Huch Medien GmbH, owner of German porn site Amateurstar.de, Google.de and Google.com’s image search displays, “hundreds of pornographic images for users of all ages who enter such terms as ‘porn’, ‘fuck’, or ‘oral sex’.”

So Huch has “filed for expedited proceedings at the first-instance District Cour of Frankfurt to force Arcor to block Google.de and Google.com in order to prevent pornographic texts from being displayed without age confirmation,” says Heise Online.

But, “Look,” says Andy in a p2pnet Reader’s Write, “when I was a kid I looked up new rude words in the dictionary; so sure, if I’d had google, that’s the very first thing I’d do.”

He goes on:

But is it up to google to do the censorship?

I don’t really think so.

Of course, if they want to follow the ‘do no evil’ mantra, they could supply parents with an applet to disable unsuitable hits.

And, “Wake up, people,” posts The Angry Offender, continuing:

This is how freedom is destroyed. We start making distinctions between ‘good’ speech and ‘bad’ speech, and the ‘bad’ speech category being legally infringed upon is the tip of the crowbar pushing through the door.

Demanding that Google, which is basically a giant indexing robot, be blocked for reporting unbiased results from its indexing that happen to show what SOME PEOPLE consider to be objectionable content is absurd.

Let’s take a ride down the slippery slope. Consider the methods by which children (or teens) can be prevented from viewing ‘objectionable content’ online. The perfect way to do it? No more Internet, period. The next less drastic step? Massive oversight of the entire Internet, requiring that all content be published through, say, a government entity, and even then there is no guarantee that objectionable content won’t be published.

Next we would have designated third parties that do the regulation management instead of the government, which opens more holes for bad content but makes it somewhat easier to publish content. Now keep following this inverse traversal of the slippery slope we’re on, and where are we? We’re at the part where some assclown can come along and demand that an ISP *VIA GOVERNMENT ORDER* block out some form of content because ‘kids might see something bad.’

Granted, they trump up the ‘threat’ by using typical lawyer exaggeration such as ’systematically committed felonies’ and ‘horrible breaches.’ That’s not too terrible yet, but how far does it have to go before someone stands up and says ‘to hell with this censorship?’ Don’t people have a right to self-censor?

If someone sees that Google is spitting out porn to their kids, don’t they have the right to take measures to keep them off of it and have them use other search engines? Why is it that governmental bodies are parenting the general population more and more as time goes on?

Have we really degraded to the point that we can’t make decisions for ourselves? Or is it that some people wish to exact their individual morality and beliefs upon others, using the government as the tool to bring about that goal of fascism?

I wasn’t aware that a government would ‘blacklist’ websites; it seems that the free market is the place for such ‘blacklisting’ to take place to me. But then again maybe not, since governments have proven for centuries that they can surely manage things better than the private sector, like healthcare. Yep, government-run healthcare makes free market healthcare look like a joke, especially since the government-run healthcare doesn’t have waiting lists and rationing out of live-saving operations. Oh, wait…

(Remember who said ‘the government that governs least, governs best?’ Hmmm?)

Slashdot it!

Also See:
p2pnet – Google: exposing kids to porn, December 1o, 2007
Heise Online – Arcor to block Google, December 5, 2007

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 9:08 am and is filed under Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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