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Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-10-15 19:12
Art Brodsky's of Public Knowledge recently posted his long defense of Moveon.org and Google for their blocking the free speech of U.S. Senator Susan Collins.
- Brodsky claims that Moveon.org has called off its trademark protection dogs and is now allowing Google to place anti-Moveon.org ads now that they blocked last week at Moveon.org's urging.
- How skulkingly magnanimous of them!
What appears to be missing from this sleight-of-hand mea culpa, is Google/Moveon.org or both of them:
- admitting they made an egregious mistake in conspiring to block the free speech of a U.S. Senate candidate;
- taking full responsibility for the Internet free speech censorship;
- pledging it won't happen again; and
- explaining that they have taken sufficient actions (policy changes) so it won't reoccur.
I doubt a congressional panel, the press or the blogosphere will drop this issue just because one of Google's Poodles organizations, Public Knowledge, posted a preemptive defense on the Huffington Post to try and frame this issue before their "progressive" base got a whif of their week-old anti-free speech droppings.
Mr. Brodsky also claims that Google and Moveon.org have never limited free speech before.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-10-15 18:24
While I doubt I'll ever be accused of being a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, I must commend her and her campaign for sound political judgement when it's due.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-10-15 11:06
How timely for the Google-backed Open Internet Coalition to be writing Congress asking for Congressional hearings on allegations of censorship of free speech on the Internet.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-10-12 12:32
The hypocrisy and situational ethics of "Google's Poodles", SaveTheInternet and FreePress is obvious for everyone to see.
SaveTheInternet on the top of its homepage has a call to "Take Action: Protect Free Speech Everywhere"!
- "Stop the gatekeepers" "It's time Congress demanded free speech over all 21st century communications – on the Internet, on cell phones, on the streets, everywhere."
- What part of "everywhere" does not include the most dominant gatekeeper on the Internet, Google, and does not include the free speech of a sitting U.S. Senator Susan Collins who is trying to respond to being targeted for election defeat by a political organization -- Moveon.org?
- Are we to interpret that SaveTheInternet only believes free speech is warranted for people who agree with SaveTheInternet's chief patron -- Moveon.org? That's not very "neutral."
- Or are we to interpret that because SaveTheInternet believes that Google's "don't be evil" "heart" is in the right place, they can do no wrong?
- Like Google, do you not do what you say?
FreePress, runs the same "Stop the gatekeepers!" call at the top of their page in a rolling ad.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-10-11 12:44
Robert Cox, the Founder and President of the Media Bloggers Association, a non-partisan professional standards group, reports that Google has blocked the running of U.S. Senator Susan Collins' anti-Moveon.org ads on Google.
- "Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its “General Betray Us” message."
- "The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term."
Google has a particularly tortured concept of "free speech" if it is willing to editorially ban Republican speech that opposes its most important and high-profile lobbying ally in the net neutrality fight.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-10-10 18:51
Listening to Google's General Counsel testify at the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the Google-DoubleClick merger which I also testified at, one would think everyone loves Google and all was just "teddie bears and rainbows" for consumers in Googleland.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-10-10 11:01
Reed Hundt's Frontline Wireless, is reportedly forming a high-profile "Open Access Advisory Council" for the 700 MHz spectrum auction, which includes "net neutrality" term-coiner and celebrity Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.
I have two pieces of unsolicited advice for Frontline's new advisory council."
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-10-09 10:59
Google's long rumored Google phone
or GPhone project has attracted a lot of comment and chatter, but not a lot of
good analysis to date. One big exception is a very good article last week by
Miguel Helft of the New York Times: "For
Google, Advertising and phones go together."
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-10-05 10:55
Google just can't seem to get on the right side of copyright law -- or the law in general for that matter.
- Google's MySpace partner, News Corp clearly doesn't believe Google is doing enough to protect copyrights.
- Peter Chernin, President of News Corp., in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, chided Google that ""they could do a better job" at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site."
- FT asks: "Do they have the technology to do it?"
- Chernin: "It's pretty safe to say that they have the technology available, that if we [MySpace] have the technology available, a) it's publicly available, and b) I haven't yet heard a lot about Google being technologically constrained."
The point here is that Google clearly has the wherewithal to not violate copyright, but they are making a business decision that it is better or more profitable for Google to disrespect copyright law rather than to respect copyright law.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-10-04 12:24
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