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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Google are right, well sort of
Censorship is fine as long as it represents the majority view of the readership. So, most parents would censor the kinkythai website for example from their children. Most muslim countries will censor images of the profit Mohammed. But you would never accept Muslims censoring on behalf of Christians for example. It has to be the legitimate representative of the readership that makes the choice.
IMHO
The current Thai government does not represent the people so they have no legitimacy in making the censorship choice for Thailand, they are just arrogant men that nobody would vote for if they held a vote.
IMHO
What to do? A few words early in the coup would have swung it, but that opportunity was lost. This isn't the time to stand up and be ethical, some sort of ethical compromise has to be made.
IMHO
In my humble opinion, I have no right answer to this, Google were banned, if they choose to remove the one or two videos that the officials banned in Thailand then they remove the reason to ban youtube.
There is no single entity 'Thai people' and removing the easy excuse 'defamed the King' from Youtube fixes the *excuse* used to block Youtube.
*Small* voices are more important than *big* people would have you believe, and youtube is an outlet for the small voices. So it's overall better that they are in Thailand.
IMHO
They should remove the easy excuse and challenge further attempts to ban youtube. What are they afraid of?
IMHO
But then what do I know. This is just MHO.
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