Google is defending the practice of allowing any surfer to change information in its files.

Jaw drops. Hits floor.

Posted by: ewha1 at February 12, 2008 6:11 AM

Google is defending the practice of allowing any surfer to change information in its files.

Posted by: ewha1 at February 12, 2008 6:11 AM
Not only Google slanders, it supports slander by any and every surfer. DOUBLE the damages!

Posted by: Alert at February 12, 2008 7:21 AM

I would be wary of google and its pro jihad bias

Posted by: GrennBeck at February 12, 2008 8:29 AM

It is strange because one of the founders of Google is an American Jew. Perhaps he is one of those self-hating liberal types. After all, his father is a member of academia (professor of mathematics at U Maryland at College Park)...

Posted by: US_infidel at February 12, 2008 8:33 AM

So, now Google Earth is just like Wikipedia. What a bunch of crap.

Posted by: Pelayo at February 12, 2008 8:45 AM

I have as little to do with Google as possible, it is no coincidence that YouTube leaves up apalling Jihadist propoganda and deletes anything critical of Islam.

Posted by: Daffersd at February 12, 2008 9:23 AM

"Google is defending the practice of allowing any surfer to change information in its files."
-- from the article above

If Google does this, then Google, and all other potential Googles, should be regulated by the government, and told that it cannot be the willing source of misinformation on such a scale. If it wishes to continue this practice, it will be fined. For the spread of such misinformation -and clearly armies of Muslims are engaged in this activity, as the well-infomred who go to certain entries at Wikipedia can easily confirm -- increases the civilizational danger to the United States, to Israel, to the entire Infidel world. See how Muslim re-write, not merely the history of Jews and of Israel, but of India, or of the United States (with Christopher Columbus, or at least part of his crew, claimed for Islam -- a claim briefly echoed by someone in the American State Department, until she suddenly disappeared from view), or of any other area, to which Islam lays claim, and wishes to revise history.

This is not merely an affront. It is a danger.

In the case of Google, the fine should be enough to do real damage. Fifty million dollars a day, until Google proves it has a staff working full-time to lock in certain truths, and keep out free-lancers, would not be too much. That's a mere eighteen billion dollars a year. Enough to get the attention, of Google, or of Yahoo, or of Microsoft. The fine must hurt.

Who, in Congress, will begin to take this up? Who, among our Presidential candidates, will discuss the responsibility of Internet companies? Who?

Posted by: Hugh at February 12, 2008 10:24 AM

Hugh do you really, really want the internet regulated? Don't go near that Pandora's box. Under your plan would JW/DW be responsible for the misinformation and misinterpretations that are sometimes posted here?

Posted by: Pelayo at February 12, 2008 1:19 PM

A site, to which millions of people go, and which holds itself out as beyond reproach, beyond party, beyond all politics, but is an incorruptible "authoritative" guide, is quite different from a site that has a clearly-stated point of view. The Google site in question offers information about places and placenames. Wikipedia is taken by the young and uniniated to be just like an "Encylopedia" vetted by experts for each entry (that clearly is not true), but it is a site, they both are sites, where entries are constantly being modified, and modified by those who manically are devoting time and energy to this task. And that has turned out to mean, in most cases -- Muslims.

You assume that regulation will affect all sites equally, but a cut-off point, and the nature of the site, can both be factors in choosing which sites might require vigilant oversight. And there is one other criterion: the truth.

Posted by: Hugh at February 12, 2008 2:34 PM

Slander is slander like libel is libel, and we have laws on the books against both.

This isn't about regulating the internet. This is about prosecuting printed slander, same as if it had been on paper.

There's nothing internet-specific here, except the technical details of how Google is publishing slander.

Say I owned a newspaper. Say I had a daily contest, such that I published whatever letter was sent to me in the most copies. Say that I ended up systematically publishing the slander of lowlifes that had nothing better to do than send me copies upon copies of slanderous letters.

Then you have the same problem without the high-tech aspect.

Google publishes slander, they can be taken to court and fined. The find should be large enough to be genuinely punitive. Then Google gets to figure out if they want to systematically publish slander or not.

Very simple if you actually have a country of laws.

Posted by: hope_and_justice at February 12, 2008 2:39 PM

Hugh, I'm wary of thinking that the fact that a site "holds itself out as beyond reproach, beyond party, beyond all politics, but is an incorruptible 'authoritative' guide" is grounds for government regulation on grounds other than those that already exist for prosecuting slander (if that's what you are getting at).

Up front, I do have a libertarian streak on free speech issues. (I find it insane that anyone is even thinking about banning flag burning, for example - it is attacking the principle for the sake of its symbol.) Still, going pragmatically, I can see this position being so broad as to, in the current political climate, do serious damage to freedom of speech. For example, one could spin *this* site as an one purporting to be an "authoritative guide" on Jihad, for example, and use that to shut it down. The definitions are too slippery at that point, so I'm wary of distinctions on the basis of whether things purport to be "authoritative guides".

In this particular case, the Israeli bringing up the legal case is apparently going the slander route, which I find far better than going for government regulation by other methods, because it if first of all already on the books (here as well as in Israel), and second of all it is on the books in such a way as to link it to truth about statements.

In the current political climate, any new regulation we're likely to get regulating speech is far less likely to have a component on truth (truth is held to be relative after all) and more about hurt feelings (the idea of "truth" having suposedly been reduced to mere power dynamics, thanks to the academy).

So, I fear blowback. The US is one of a tiny handful of countries where you can say true things about Islam without fear of prosecution for hate speech or thought crime or the like (Can't do it in India, or Canada, or Egypt... the list is long). I don't want that to change; in the end that is the vital core of fighting against Jihad.

Posted by: hope_and_justice at February 12, 2008 3:11 PM

Google - thanks for supporting Jihad!

Lies are everywhere, and yours aren't helping much.

Best of luck to you, and yours, in maintaining your life and freedoms, because you will need it.

Posted by: champ at February 12, 2008 3:15 PM

Once the government regulation juggernaut starts moving, there will be no stopping it. It will affect everybody. The new law will not be written by Hugh Fitzgeerald, but politicians in Washington or, maybe, (retch and gag), Brussels.

Posted by: Pelayo at February 12, 2008 3:45 PM

Hope_and_justice, the can of worms is not yet opened, but somebody is loosening the lid.

One of those worms is the possibility that JW/DW or some other forum could be held responsible for what a commenter said. In May of 2007, a JW commenter raised just that issue because of some things one commenter said about him/her.

Posted by: Pelayo at February 12, 2008 4:06 PM

I have used google earth, and notice these so called towns appearing at an astonishing rate. At first there were very few, where some houses appeared to be. then it became empty desert, and farms. And now I can't scroll more than 5 feet without bumping into another so-called destroyed metropolis. Whoever is creating all these cities would give the impression that there were 100million arabs living on a tiny stretch of land, more dense than Tokyo.
It's actually a pretty big nuisance!
So Google Earth is saying that there doesn't need to be anything factual on their website at all?? Anyone can do anything they want in principle?

Posted by: jusa at February 13, 2008 8:33 PM