Freedom of Speech

A potential flood of very illuminating documents and information about the inner workings of Google are likely to be released soon by the Federal Court hearing Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google-YouTube, despite strong Google opposition to the court's release of the information Viacom found in "discovery."

Today's New York Times front page story "Google's computing power betters translation tool" by Miguel Helft spotlights that Google arguably owns and operates "the world's largest computer." The article quotes a Google  engineering VP explaining that Google's unparalleled computing power enables Google to "take approaches others can't even dream of."

Combine the world's largest computer, with the best automated translation capability for most all of the world's top languages, with reports from the front page of the Washington Post that Google proactively sought help from America's top spy agency, the NSA, for its cyber-security vulnerabilities, and it is not surprising that foreigners would be growing increasingly wary of Google and the extraordinary potential power that Google holds over them. 

So what do foreigners increasingly see Google doing?

New research from Piper Jaffray suggests that Google actually may have increased its censorship by ~30% in China since Google grand-standed on the world stage in January pledging that it would no longer censor search results on China.cn.  

Per Business Week's Blog, Piper Jaffrey' analyst Gene Munster: 

It appears Google impetuously over-reacted to the big cyber-security breach of Google and a reported ~30 other companies. Google alone publicly blamed China and only Google publicly pledged to stop censoring search results in China in retaliation.    

What is the evidence that Google impetuously over-reacted here?

First, Forbes reported: "Researchers Call Google Hackers 'Amateurs' -- A new report says the attack on the search giants network was far less sophisticated than it has claimed." Specifically:

GoogleMonitor.com

For Immediate Release

February 22, 2010

Contact: Scott Cleland

703-217-2407

Media@GoogleMonitor.com

Kudos to Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity for their spot-on report of quotes from FreePress that exposes what FreePress is really all about.

Their report shows, in FreePress' own words, that they are a dystopian nightmare masquerading as a public interest group protecting freedom of the press.

The Media and Democracy Coalition, the leading advocates for the FCC to effectively take over management of the Internet and the American broadband industry are gathering on Capitol Hill 11 am Wednesday (Rayburn 2123) to present their policy recommendations to the FCC for a "Bold Practical National Broadband Plan." 

Here are some questions the panelists should be asked:

January 27, 2010

For Immediate Release

Contact: Scott Cleland

703-217-2407

Media@GoogleMonitor.com

GoogleMonitor.com Launches Today

Unfortunately FreePress long ago chose to be the gutter's beacon of low-road politics and not a shining beacon of high-road politics to emulate.

FreePress was unfortunately disingenuous in its Hill op-ed today, in saying "When is comes to Internet freedom, the United States of America can be a beacon to the rest of the world. But we must start at home."

If FreePress was genuine in believing that it is truly important to have a shining beacon of positive example for others to follow... why does FreePress not lead by example itself, and let its behavior and tactics in public discourse be a positive beacon for everyone else to follow?

Please don't miss Andrew Keen's outstanding and dead-on-point op-ed in The Hill: "Internet Freedoms and Internet Radicals." 

Mr. Keen brilliantly proves how radical and out of the mainstream FreePress' and Public Knowledge's views are in calling for radical, preemptive, and draconian regulation of competitive broadband companies that have long supported, and operate under, the high-consensus voluntary principles of net neutrality. 

FreePress has one  trick, demonization. Like anything else that is overused, abused, and not true -- it loses credibility and only reflects badly on those practicing it.