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Well I guess it was going to happen eventually.... Google have just announced that they are working (conspiring is the word I'd use) with the authorities in China to create a "filtered" service which complies with China's censorship requirements.
From my own ethical standpoint I find this unacceptable. It may not be in technical breach of the UN's WSIS charter recently published at the WSIS conference in Tunisia, but it certainly goes against the spirit and intention of universal uncensored access. And to think that these people use open source to promote this kind of censorship. What is concerning is that if Google proves that this can be done for China, then we will start to see other authorities ( & possibly multi-nationals) demanding similar restrictions.
The whole purpose of the internet was to share knowledge and information, yes some of its useless and upsetting, but the only ethical censorship is self censorship.
Anyway rather than get angry, drunk or both I thought I would switch to a more ethical search engine (if such a thing exists), any suggestions ?
Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html