Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip • Hacker News Board

Re: Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip

#211

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 1:37 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #210

Karunamon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretending not to know this does not benefit your argument but rather betrays ignorance, real or feigned. If you're going to insult me, spit it out already. Humor me. What possible negative action will the US government take against Google for their refusal to take down a video?

Be less sympathetic to their lobbying efforts, for example. Google spends almost 10M per year on lobbying: http://allthingsd.com/20120123/googles-2011-lobbying-expense... obviously there are many areas where good relationships with the govt are important. If they piss off wrong people, then part of these 10M will be wasted, since they won't listen to what Google has to say.

So the problem is some nebulous undefined possible fear of reprisal (note that I specifically excluded that above..), not the fact that a request was made in the first place.

Sorry but you don't get to extrapolate that far.

Facts: WH asked Google to see if a video violated their ToS.

Google said it did not.

That's all. Anything else is conjecture.

Re: Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip

#212

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 9:47 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #211

smsm42 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be less sympathetic to their lobbying efforts, for example. Google spends almost 10M per year on lobbying: http://allthingsd.com/20120123/googles-2011-lobbying-expense... obviously there are many areas where good relationships with the govt are important. If they piss off wrong people, then part of these 10M will be wasted, since they won't listen to what Google has to say.

So the problem is some nebulous undefined possible fear of reprisal (note that I specifically excluded that above..), not the fact that a request was made in the first place. Sorry but you don't get to extrapolate that far. Facts: WH asked Google to see if a video violated their ToS. Google said it did not. That's all. Anything else is conjecture.

No, the problem is that the request was made by the government. If you choose to deliberately ignore vast powers that federal government has, and by which company of Google's size can be directly influenced, you are free to do so, but as I said, it just betrays ignorance, feigned or genuine. That does not change the fact that these powers exist, and the fact that these powers give every request coming from the government special weight compared to a request by ordinary citizen.

Re: Google rejects White House request to pull Mohammad film clip

#213

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Sep 19, 2012, 9:54 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #211

smsm42 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be less sympathetic to their lobbying efforts, for example. Google spends almost 10M per year on lobbying: http://allthingsd.com/20120123/googles-2011-lobbying-expense... obviously there are many areas where good relationships with the govt are important. If they piss off wrong people, then part of these 10M will be wasted, since they won't listen to what Google has to say.

So the problem is some nebulous undefined possible fear of reprisal (note that I specifically excluded that above..), not the fact that a request was made in the first place. Sorry but you don't get to extrapolate that far. Facts: WH asked Google to see if a video violated their ToS. Google said it did not. That's all. Anything else is conjecture.

>That does not change the fact that these powers exist

And it doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence that is about to happen. Having the power to do something and doing it are two different things.