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Interesting article, Kevin! Thanks.

<<Google, as a private company, is generally not bound by the free-speech
guarantees in the First Amendment, which applies to restrictions imposed by
government. >>

Not "generally." Absolutely.
THEY, Google, has the right of free speech, which means they don't have to
say what they don't want to say.

I bet somewhere in the "about Google" fine print it says that they won't
provide racial-hate-crime stuff to Germany (or whatever/wherever).

<<But Edelman said that private or not, the company has a public
responsibility as a widely used resource. >>

Dictionaries are widely used. American Heritage decided in the 1970s (or
late 60's maybe) to include the word Fuck. It was their right under American
law to do so. Other dictionaries weren't pressured to follow suit. Nobody's
saying dictionaries have the responsibility to list every utterance they've
ever heard.

Encyclopedias have the right to pick and choose what they put in AND what
they say about it AND what pictures they include. They can't put in
everything in the world.

Google kind of turns the World Wide Web into an encyclopedia. And they do it
very, very well. And if they block listings of Aryan nation bullshit, I
don't mind at all.

Especially since it's to countries which don't quite have the full freedom of
speech we do.

Sandra