Saturday, December 21, 2013

Google: Surge in pressure from govts to DELETE CHUNKS of the web...

Governments, judges, cops and politicians are continuing to lobby Google to tear down online material critical of their operations, we're told.

Today, the advertising giant said that, in the first six months of 2013, it received 3,846 demands from public officials to remove 24,737 personal blog posts, YouTube videos and other pieces of content it hosts. That's up 68 per cent on the second half of 2012.

And according to the web giant, which has just published its latest transparency report, 93 requests focused on content that was critical of people in public office. Defamation and copyright infringement were often cited, but less than one third of the highlighted material was removed in the first half of 2013.

"Over the past four years, one worrying trend has remained consistent: governments continue to ask us to remove political content," wrote Google legal director Susan Infantino, who called out Turkey and Russia for ramping up the number of complaints.

"Judges have asked us to remove information that’s critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don’t want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes," she added. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. 'The future of freedom on the internet is at stake'
  2. Google reports record spike in government requests to remove content...
  3. Google receives 1.5million takedown requests a week...
  4. Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments...
  5. Governments pose greatest threat to internet, says Google's Eric Schmidt...
  6. Hacking group Anonymous takes on India internet 'censorship'
  7. The Perfect Storm of internet censorship...
  8. Google, Facebook remove content in India. WTF!

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