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It's not really a question of how relevant ED is. The issue is that a government had Google censor something which is well within the bounds of free (albeit of

• tokenadult 17y ago
  Governments (courts) also enforce judgments for defamation, but we don't call that censorship either. One way I like to exercise my free speech is to be careful in my use of legal language, and to remind readers here that not every action that keeps something from being Web-indexed or posted, even if it is an action taken by a government, is properly called "censorship." What happened here appears to be Google responding to a citizen complaint under an Australian law that I might indeed disagree with, but which does not constitute a prior restrain on what is published on the Web, and indeed has not stopped the website in question from continuing to be posted. After edit: Google also removes on its own initiative spam links from its search results. No one seems to complain about this except the spammers. I think that is great customer service, except that Google recently needs to do more of that. That too is not censorship. It is simply Google deciding what its business model is for delivering search results. You have the right to operate a website. Google also has the right to operate a website. Google decides whether or not to comply with applicable local law if there is some legal issue raised by its serving up search results in a particular place. If Google really doesn't like local law, it can use its bully pulpit to advocate a different law, or hire lawyers or lobbyists to change the law.