Summing Up Google’s Censorship Requests
By Jay Pfoutz – Opinion Article
Google has published Transparency Report, which is indeed helpful, because it allows users to see how Google’s operations run. Particularly in the bounds of censorship. Some of the data is aggregated below, but is taken from the Transparency Report.
Governments all across the world find data, videos, pictures, that might be offensive to the nature of their country. Therefore, they make requests to Google for removing such content, or at least removing it from view. This data is dated from July to December 2011.
Some of the governments are lenient, and some are just plain ridiculous, in my opinion.
Here are the most ridiculous governments (namely countries):
- Brazil – Mainly because of Orkut, Google received 128 requests for removal of content. 😛
- United States – Mainly because of YouTube videos denoting harassment (some 1,400), Google received 117 requests for removal of content. :O
Copyright removal was another form of requests (data in past month)…here are the ridiculous ones from that list:
- Microsoft Corporation with 448,236
- NBCUNIVERSAL with 217,449
- BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) with 150,063
- RIAA member companies with 77,767
Top Potential Copyright Violation Sites (Oh no…SOPA/PIPA would be on this):
- FilesTube.com
- ExtraTorrent.com
- BitSnoop.com
- Kat.ph
- Torrentz.eu
And that’s not close to all of them.
Check out the full Transparency Report for more interesting data: google.com/transparencyreport/removals
Related articles
- Google alarmed by rise in govt. censorship requests (panarmenian.net)
- EYE-BALL Opinion on – Google Report on Political Censorship (bleyzie.wordpress.com)
- Google Reports Rise In Removal Requests (rferl.org)
- Google reports ‘alarming’ rise in censorship by governments (guardian.co.uk)
- Prison Planet.com ” Google reports ‘alarming’ rise in censorship by governments (gunnyg.wordpress.com)