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Sphinn Home » Searching
Argentina Forcing Google & Yahoo To Censor Search Results
Searching News Source: http://searchengineland.com
Published: Nov 13, 2008 - 06:47 am
Story Found By: Ramkarthik 1652 Days ago
Category: Searching
A search on yahoo for "Diego Maradona" produces zero results with the message: On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it.
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from barnaseo 1652 Days ago #
Votes: 0

This is an incredible story - congrats to OpenNet Initiative for reporting this (and SEL + Ramkarthik for spreading the word :)  My first thought was that the Argentinean government had these results removed - it´s no secret that the Los Kirchner censore with a ´soft hand´ (critical journalists are not invited to press conferences, economical figures are´adjusted´ etc.). I was quite surprised to read that it´s actually private parties who have their online presence removed.  I´m no expert in law, but find it hard to understand how an Argentinean private party can oblige international SE´s to have their ´names´removed from the SERP´s (and as a result other people with the same name loose their online presence as well). Under which law do these SE´s operate? Any ideas?

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from hugoguzman 1651 Days ago #
Votes: 0

This truly is an amazing piece of news, because if it sticks, it sets all sorts of precedents.What good is search if entire topics (a famous socer player’s name in this case). Truly sad on a personal level because I was born in Argentina and I’m a huge fan of soccer and Diego Maradona (the player...not the personality).

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from onreact 1651 Days ago #
Votes: 0

We’ll see more and more of that kind of censorship. Australia wants to implement Chines style Internet filtering, Germany censors Google all the time etc.

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from robwatts 1651 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Interesting - rep management anyone?

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from yetanotherben 1651 Days ago #
Votes: 0

I had to click on the Diego Maradona link to believe it...stunned at the rowth of censorship.  Should the trend not be reversing?

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from DarkMatter 1651 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Though it’s somewhat irrelevant, I’m curious as to why a famous soccer player would want ALL of his related search results (including his own website, if he has one) to be censored. I can understand censoring BAD press...but all press?

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from CozyKittens 1650 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Censorship is sort of bad. At the same time Google and the rest have acted like they own everything and are extremely irresponsible when it comes to policing what is in their system. If someone wants to opt out of Google, Yahoo and the rest they should be able too...just like you should be able to opt out of linkscape. Also,  they need the various immunity priviledges granted them under the CDA revoked.

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from asnider 1650 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Shouldn’t these people be going after individual site owners, not the search engines? The precidents that this could set are frightening.

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from shalom 1650 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Also, although somewhat unrelated... If we are talking about censorship lets look at some examples where Google does not censor.... such as searching the word "jew" in Google - you get top ranking antisemtic site like jewwatch which Google wont remove. Instead they advertise the message:Offensive Search Resultswww.google.com/explanation      We’re disturbed about these results as well. Please read our note here.I’m against sensorship but if they can, and there is a greater potential for harm if they don’t, then it might be best

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from tonnywilliams 1648 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Google first received an injunction to block references to the individuals on its Argentina search engine in mid-2007, after refusing to do so voluntarily, said Alberto Arebalos, Google’s director of Latin America global communications and public affairs. A group of about 70 fashion models, represented by the same lawyer, initially asked the Internet company to block all search results with their names with the intent of blocking pornographic sites that used the models’ pictures. Google responded that it would only block specific problematic links---------------------Tonnywilliams DUI

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from tonnywilliams 1648 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Google first received an injunction to block references to the individuals on its Argentina search engine in mid-2007, after refusing to do so voluntarily, said Alberto Arebalos, Google’s director of Latin America global communications and public affairs. A group of about 70 fashion models, represented by the same lawyer, initially asked the Internet company to block all search results with their names with the intent of blocking pornographic sites that used the models’ pictures. Google responded that it would only block specific problematic links---------------------Tonnywilliams DUI

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