Please, Google, do the right thing
One of my favorite quotes is from one of my least favorite people: Mike Tyson. “Everybody has a plan,” he said, “until they get hit.”
His words—and Google’s motto—sprang to mind as I read the news in TechCrunch that Google recommended a ‘No’ vote on two proposals, one on human rights and one on censorship.
The censorship bit calls for minimum standards:
1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.
2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.
3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.
4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.
5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.
6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.
The proposed Human Rights Committee would review and make non-binding policy recommendations regarding human rights issues.
Most of the commenters on TechCrunch slammed Google for encouraging people to vote against these proposals. Fabian Schonholz, however, felt otherwise:
This is a little ridiculous.
If you want to operate in any country, any company, american or otherwise, should respect the laws, customs, traditions and ways to operate that the country dictate. The only thing a shareholder can do is force the company not to operate on the countries that insult their sensitivities. It is presumptuous of any of us to think that we have the RIGHT to change how countries operate and behave.
I agree with Fabian; at the same time, I don’t think the proposals suggested anything in contrary to what he says. The censorship proposal, for example, explicitly states that the company will conform to legally binding requests. So it seems more like a case of not wanting to rock the boat than anything else.
In addition, Google is likely to get its way; last year, shareholders rejected a different proposal to stop the search giant from self-censoring.
Nonetheless, I’d like to know the rationale for the ‘No’ recommendation on the Human Rights Commission. Google’s mum on the topic—the proxy statement offers no explanation and there’s nothing on their blog—but it just doesn’t seem consistent. How can you not be evil if you don’t even have thorough information about the human rights implications of your actions? What is the business activity that might be shut down if these two proposals go through?
If you’ve got more information about this, please let me know in the comments. If you want more information, say that too.
