[ILUG] Mother of God!

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 06:09:06PM +0000, Colm Buckley wrote:
> >Trying to get together with the other search providers, and
> >encouraging a mass boycott of the Chinese terms would have been
> >better. Also,  simply staying out of the market entirely would have
> >been better for the Chinese people in the long term (though not
> >Google).
> 
> Do you think so? 

Yes, I think so. A big company not paying ball might go a long way to
creating worse PR for those who do. There's a reason NIKE changed their
behaviour, for a good example. 

> What proportion of searches from Chinese people do you suppose are
> related to the banned terms?

A very very very small proportion. Well maybe a bit higher, since the
Chinese like to ban some obscenities too.

> Is it really better to deny them all search functionality than remove
> some results?  

It's less evil. It may not be a better end-user experience I'll grant
you that. But all-round, as citizens; Google's behaviour is much more
damaging. 

Your kind of pragmatic argument here is really dangerous. After all, as
a citizen wouldn't it be much easier to walk around with an RFID implant
since birth? We wouldn't have to flash our passports, carry driving
licenses, there'd be no dole fraud, more criminals would be caught etc.
It'd be a mroe convienent end-user experience too, no annoying cards to
carry. It'd be great wouldn't it? We should have them now!

Infringements on our civil liberties *always* come in disguise like
this, and they are always sold to us on the basis of improving our
convienence or improving the convienence of law enforcement. It doesn't
wash, it's not enough. We have to look at the trade-off that's being
made, the TCO from a civil liberties point of view. 

In this case, I don't agree with the trade-off, and regardless I
absolutely think that the behaviour can be reasonably regarded as evil.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net