Alina Stefanescu has the scoop on Google’s latest capitulation to would-be censors, this time to French and German Euro-weanies who have banned access to certain hate sites from within their borders. This isn’t the first time the Internet’s would-be librarian has backed down to bullies.

Do our friends in Europe really think that ignoring hate sites will make them go away? Wouldn’t it be better to keep them — and keep access to them — up and running, so you have some inkling of what they’re up to? And if you’re of the “they’re only censoring hate groups, so what’s the problem?” mind set, take note that they’ve now added evangelical Christian and anti-bortion sites to the list of the damned.

That said, I’m not all that worried about it. The beauty of the Internet is that it’s a formless, boundless, ever-evolving beast. Because it’s immune to jurisdiction and venue, it’s also immune to censorship and regulation. It’s probably the closest thing to a free-market-in-a-vaccuum we’re ever going to get. If Google’s German and French-language sites continue to filter politically incorrect content from search resluts, it’s only a matter of time before an uncensoring, open-access Google clone takes over and starts winning over Net consumers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 29th, 2002 at 8:17 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.