What Is It with EU Countries and Search Engines?
First it was France. Now Germany is jumping into regulating search engines, and toying with the idea of creating its own:
German experts want search engines regulated
28 June 2006BERLIN - German experts demanded on Tuesday that internet search engines be brought under regulation to ensure that they appoint humans to exercise editorial control over search results.
Marcel Machill, a lecturer in journalism at Germany’s Leipzig and Dortmund universities, told a seminar in Berlin: “It is important that their power not be allowed to develop without monitoring.”
He said he was concerned that web users typing in the words “Nazi Party” had been led to a neo-Nazi website until they were warned that funnelling under-18 web users to such sites breached German law.
He said he hoped that Germany would establish a public corporation to build its own search engine with “editorial responsibility” to compete with the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft MSN.
The idea that a government could build, maintain, and keep current a search engine that anyone would be interested in using and that would generate objective results without political intervention is truly absurd.
Oh, and raise your hand if you think bureaucrats and law enforcement will be able to resist normally disallowed snooping into the search habits of their citizens. Didn’t think so.
If you have a problem with other countries regulating search results, be sure to write a letter to your member of Congress opposing the DOJ’s partnership with ISP’s to track downloaders of child porn. It’s the same scenario. Germany is trying to protect children.
Comment by Kevin Irwin — June 30, 2006 @ 1:44 pm
#1, point taken, but Germany wants to BE the search result, not just have the right to inquire about or identify who is downloading child porn.
Comment by TBlumer — June 30, 2006 @ 2:40 pm