Google is to enter the political arena in earnest this week when it debates freedom of speech, intellectual property rights and how to connect Africa to the Internet at a special UN conference.
The Silicon Valley giant will attempt to position itself as a force for change that can finance Web entrepreneurs in the developing world, champion the rights of consumers against "over-zealous" copyright laws and use the Web to protect diverse minority cultures and languages.
But Google will declare itself unrepentant over the controversial decision to censor its search engine at the behest of Beijing. At the first Internet Governance Forum in Athens, which starts today, the firm will insist that its presence in China does more good than harm by getting more information to more people.
That claim was firmly rejected on Saturday night by Amnesty International, which is five months into its joint campaign with London's Observer newspaper (irrepressible.info), which calls for an end to online censorship and the persecution of bloggers.
The forum will be attended by delegations from more than 90 countries, including China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam, all of which have been criticized for curbing freedom of expression on the Web.
Amnesty will present a petition, signed by more than 47,000 people, demanding an end to such abuses, which in the worst cases have seen people jailed.
Google's motto, "Do no evil," has taken a battering in recent months. They will try to repair some of the damage during three "workshops."
Andrew McLaughlin, head of global public policy at Google, said the first event, "Building local access," would discuss getting Internet access to more people in developing nations.
At another session, "Access to knowledge and free expression," Google will warn how developing countries fear that Western intellectual property rights work to their disadvantage.
But Google is bound to be put under pressure over its foray into China.
"Google.cn is censored but we've come up with a technique for deciding what is to be censored that is basically technical, not editorial, and very reactive. That leads us to blocking from our site the minimum that the ISP [Internet service provider] level requires," McLaughlin said.
"I'm sure there are lots of people who will say it's just too distasteful, it's too gross, it's too political, you shouldn't do it. That's a totally legitimate point of view," he said.
"We've made an empirical judgment, though, that being able to hire Chinese employees and have them be part of the Google culture and be free-thinking, freewheeling Internet people ... when you add it all up, we think we're helping to advance the cause of change in China," he said.
Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International, does not accept Google's argument.
"One of the things we haven't seen from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft is any move by them to use their collective bargaining power to negotiate with and change the terms in which they operate in countries like China," she said.
"We do see Google with a search engine in China that gives very different results from the one for the rest for us," she said.
"I think the starkest example is the picture search for Tiananmen Square," Allen said.
We get the man in front of the tank; in China you get a happy, smiling couple, standing in Tiananmen Square as tourists," she said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS