Something interesting happened this week. On 20th of April, Google announced that the company has launched a new tool called "Government request" which reveals a map of the censorship around the world. Up to now there are 42 countries included that have requests content removal and 20 countries that have requested Google to provide information. The statistics is measured in the period 1st of July 2009 to 31st of December 2009.
For the first time the internet search leader has demonstrated so detailed attention towards the censorship. That is quite impressive.
From Google promised to update the information on every six months. This looks like kind advice to the governments and all government agencies all around the world to be careful with their desire to control the information flow in internet.
Top 5 countries with removal requests from the governments are: Brazil, Germany, India, the United States and South Korea. Top 5 countries with data requests are: again Brazil, again the United States, the United Kingdom, India and France.
Here you can take a look at the first statistics on governments' requests.
Country | Removal Request | Country | Data Request |
291 | 3663 | ||
188 | 3580 | ||
142 | 1166 | ||
123 | 1061 | ||
64 | 846 | ||
59 | 550 | ||
57 | 458 | ||
42 | 324 | ||
32 | 55 | ||
17 | 98 | ||
16 | 86 | ||
Less than 10 | 67 | ||
Less than 10 | 67 | ||
Less than 10 | 62 | ||
Less than 10 | 45 | ||
Less than 10 | 44 | ||
Less than 10 | 44 | ||
Less than 10 | 42 | ||
Less than 10 | 41 | ||
Less than 10 | 30 | ||
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Less than 10 | |||
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Less than 10 | |||
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Less than 10 | |||
Less than 10 | |||
Less than 10 | |||
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Less than 10 | |||
Less than 10 | |||
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Less than 10 | |||
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Of course, there is a publication about the new transparency tool in the Google blog, which explains why the company launched this tool. In the beginning it cites the Universal Declaration on Human Rights:
"Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Written in 1948, the principle applies aptly to today's Internet - one of the most important means of free expression in the world. Yet government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content...."
Well done, Google!
I will be interested to see some information about Bulgaria. I remember that there was a period that when you wrote "trash" in Bulgarian language in google.bg, the first result that appeared was the government's website. Hasn't it reacted and complained to Google?
photo:http://www.ifc.com/makemediamatter/
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