Roddick vs. Google, Round II

May 24, 2002 11:23 AM

Roddick vs. Google, Round II begins with Roddick's blog entry again charging Google with "insidious censorship." John Hiler leaps to Google's defense. And we discover that the AdWords director has never heard of weblogs.
posted by brookish (14 comments total)

I think you meant Roddick vs. Google, Round II.
posted by bcwinters at 11:34 AM on May 24, 2002

Roddick has every right to say what she wants, she doesn't have a right to an audience or to a service.

She's mixing her definitions by calling this censorship.
posted by Mick at 11:44 AM on May 24, 2002

thanks for correcting the link (doh!).

Mick, she does make a good point about the fact that it isn't technically censorship, but it is the supression of the free exchange of ideas. And Hiler makes the point that the policy is untenable and impossible to enforce fairly. It is a Bad Policy, whatever you call it. Hustler can have and ad, but chewfirst.com can't. Something's wrong.
posted by brookish at 12:06 PM on May 24, 2002

If they pulled her site from Google's index, that would be supression of the free exchange of ideas. She bought a Google Ad Word by agreeing to certain non-negotiable terms. If she doesn't like them, she can buy Google and change them, otherwise, too bad.

Google is a private company, not the public library.
posted by tomorama at 12:55 PM on May 24, 2002

I'm pretty much sick of Google.
posted by fleener at 1:10 PM on May 24, 2002

I'm pretty much sick of Roddick.
posted by dissent at 2:23 PM on May 24, 2002

I'm pretty much sick of Google.

Huh. Well, my searches'll be that much faster now. Thanks.
posted by yerfatma at 2:29 PM on May 24, 2002

"Yet again, I said something that makes people nervous." My God, Roddick's getting a David Icke complex now.

Much as I love your blog, Brooke, I've got to say this about Anita... she's tiresome enough without trying to bolster her persona with this "they can't take the truth" conspiracy hokum. Is it too much for her to say "yes, I'm a blatant capitalist and a wily marketing guru and that's why I'm constantly trying to make everyone aware of my socialist credo"...?

I'm a rampant socialist myself and am always happy to engage in debate, even evangelise to some degree. But it's not part of my own personal marketing campaign, nor is it a shield, or a weapon, or a justification for my more consumerist moments.

Because there are rarely enough hours in the day both to do the right thing and to shout about it.
posted by skylar at 3:53 PM on May 24, 2002

Because there are rarely enough hours in the day both to do the right thing and to shout about it.

That is just so .... right.

Skylar, point well taken and appreciated.
posted by brookish at 5:19 PM on May 24, 2002

John's wrong when he says, "ads are not free speech protected by the First Amendment."

http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html

Actually, John's wrong in quite a few places in his article. Looks hastily thrown together to me.
posted by syzygy at 7:03 PM on May 24, 2002

Hi Syzygy... yeah you're right, that was hastily written - it's a blog, not an article.

Thanks for that interesting link. It seemed to focus on First Amendment protection from "government restrictions on commercial speech". I'm not sure where the government comes into play in the Google AdWords story... it seems to be largely a business issue between Google and its customers.

In any case, the standard IANAL (I am not a lawyer) disclaimers apply. I did interview Fred von Lohmann at the EFF and Wendy Seltzer of Chilling Effects for these Google censorship stories, which is where I got the legal background that I relied on for that blog post.

If I got the facts wrong, I'd love to hear about it! I'd hate to participating in spreading misinformation...
posted by kaname at 7:40 PM on May 24, 2002

Of course, the First Amendment is completely irrelevant in any case, because the text reads "Congress shall make no law", not "Google shall make no rules". If the government were seeking to restrict the ability to Roddick to say what she wants, that would be a violation of the First. But this is just Google. Google can do whatever the hell it wants.

Sheesh.

Remember, freedom to say also includes freedom not to say. No newspaper may be required to publish what it doesn't want to; no webhost has to support sites which violate its terms of service; no search engine has to, by law, link to everyone. (Television and radio make use of a public resource, the airwaves, so are subject to certain limited requirements.) Of course, if Google decides to stop linking "pro" and "anti" sites on its search engine, people will quickly find it less useful for researching anything controversial, and their business will eventually suffer.

For my part, the sentence "Ads are not free speech protected by the First Amendment." is oversimplified, but the main thing is that the First Amendment has no application (very nearly always) in speech transactions between private parties.
posted by dhartung at 8:34 PM on May 24, 2002

Brookish - you're lovely ;)
posted by skylar at 1:14 AM on May 25, 2002

and it looks like it is finally over.
posted by mathowie at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2002