Google's Evil Scale Apparently Now Includes Censoring Videos In Thailand
from the funny-how-that-works dept
Wondering why Google's board of directors recommended to shareholders that they vote down a proposal that would require Google to adhere to a set of standards against censoring the internet? Perhaps you just need to look to the situation in Thailand, where Google's YouTube property was lamely banned earlier this week over a single video that mocked that country's king. Apparently, the country is now getting ready to ditch the ban, but only because Google has promised to help them censor the video, not by pulling it down, but by making it inaccessible to viewers from Thailand. I guess on Google's famous "evil scale", censoring one video to make the rest of YouTube available is less evil than having no YouTube at all in Thailand.
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Not being evil.
The fact that countries like Thailand and China are willing to block an entire domain (service?) like YouTube or Google just shows how out of touch they are are with the reality of the internet.
Google's putting their collective foot in the door by keeping it's entire service up, minus one video. What those governments don't get is sense the media exists on the net it could be easily posted to hundreds or thousands of different sites in seconds. I feel safe in saying most Thailanians who want to see it have been able to see it without access to YouTube. And in a week or two, after the original is removed, when the media attention has died down, there will be renamed reposts and hundreds of little homages to it in other videos, and i bet Thailand won't say a word.
And that is why Google can block the video without being evil. They kept it up until the entire country exposed itself as being threatened by a silly video on the net. Now that the entire word has been enlightened to the videos existence, it doesn't matter that a particular copy is blocked. And Thailand should feel a little embarrassed for making a scene and wasting everyones time.
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