The EFF catalogues the chilling effect of anti-terrorism.

October 25, 2001 6:05 PM

The EFF catalogues the chilling effect of anti-terrorism. Like Google clearing its cache of certain pieces of information and a fellow who was banned from flying because of the books he was carrying.
posted by skallas (6 comments total)

I don't think this proves a "chilling effect." That term suggests people refraining from doing something they wouldn't otherwise do because of (in this case) the vague concept of "anti-terrorism." With respect to Google, it doesn't sound like their action was caused by a "chilling effect," but rather because they decided for themselves that it was the right thing to do:

"Google has approached government agencies and private organizations, offering to remove from their 'cache' the web pages that were removed from other sites..." Doesn't sound like they felt a gun to their head.
posted by pardonyou? at 7:00 PM on October 25, 2001

The worst kind of censorship is self-censorship, which seems to be running amok.

The Federation of American Scientists, one of the few sites out there that keeps a eagle eye on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, removing material is particularly disappointing to me. Just today I was looking for some info they had previously listed on government evacuation bunkers in the event of nuclear war (no specific locations were given on this page). They seem to have disappeared into thin air.
posted by zeb vance at 7:04 PM on October 25, 2001

What about the Wayback Machine?
posted by tpoh.org at 7:41 PM on October 25, 2001

Google removes pages from its cache all the time if the publisher of the pages makes an issue of it. There's nothing particularly insidious about the practice, and Google is probably wise to avoid pissing off any copyright holders over publishing cached files -- a practice that a judge might not like if it ever went to court.
posted by rcade at 7:49 PM on October 25, 2001

The worst kind of censorship is self-censorship

no it's not. the worst kind of censorship is censorship by an oppressive government, right?

i'm all for self-censorship, really.
posted by palegirl at 9:21 PM on October 25, 2001

Google will be taken to court someday and its cache will go away. Why? Because its clearly a copyright violation when some company makes a copy of my work and profits from that copy. Google is a for-profit company and makes money from advertising. Their cache service is making a copy of my content, without my permission, and serving it to users, again, without my permission.

This is completely different than a local cached copy made automatically by your browser for technical reasons, versus a server-based copy made by some third-party company for the enhancement of their services. I'm just surprised it hasn't gone to court yet.
posted by yarf at 5:52 AM on October 26, 2001