Should Google censor its images?

[sparkeh]

Just reading this story about a racist image appearing at the top of the search results for "Michelle Obama" and it got me thinking.

 

Google says it won't remove the image as it is its policy not to meddle with results unless require by law. I can their point but surely stuiff like this should be removed?

 

Thoughts?

[webman]

Why should Google remove it?

[sparkeh]

Why should Google remove it?

 

Well I guess it depends on where you stand on the "Freedom from/Freedom to" argument.

 

Personally I think it more important to respect a black woman's freedom from being photoshopped into a monkey rather than someone'e freedom to do it.

 

Guess I am wondering why should it stay?

[webman]

Ah. So are we on about this one particular image, or any or all of them?

 

Once Google start removing images, which isn't in line with any policies already set, it sets a precedence that they will just remove images when it suits.

 

Who decides what gets removed and for what reasons?

 

[Diello]

Because it's a dangerous legal step - if they start policing some content, they'll have to police all content. At the moment they're safe under the Safe Harbour law, if they started getting rid of some content, that would be out of the window, they'd then be sued by every copyright holder in the known world for all the links to torrent sites, other illegal downloads, porn in countries where it's illegal, etc. etc. The list would be endless. Google are safe under the fact they're a link index, the issue of content lays with the company hosting the content.

[OutToLunch]

Well I guess it depends on where you stand on the "Freedom from/Freedom to" argument.

 

That has nothing to do with Google though does it? You'd be looking at the freedom from/to of some pleb somewhere to knock up nasty pictures in Photoshop - all Google is doing is showing that that picture has been made and is on a site somewhere... You'd have to chase Yahoo, Bing and any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of search engines who have it somewhere in their results too; then any other images anyone else doesn't like since Google would have now removed one on request.. Search engines don't produce content, they report it - it's exactly the same as when Google quite rightly doesn't remove torrents it finds unless it gets hit with a DMCA request, I'm sure I remember everyone having a good laugh at the idea of them having to do that when it was posted here.

 

.... Then eventually after everything that offends anyone in anyway has been removed, move on to any of them that show up Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman written jokes.

[OutToLunch]

http://i.imgur.com/VTfRt.png

 

... What happens when you start shuffling content around according to who complains