Friday, August 10, 2007

Google and Censorship......

I just "googled" the author Sander Hicks. Hicks is a playwright, journalist, songwriter and activist. He founded Soft Skull Press, Inc. in 1996, the same company that released the unauthorized biography of George W. Bush, (the author of which died shortly afterwards). Hicks was the lead singer in the band "White Collar Crime "from 1996 to 2003. He has some controversial political viewpoints, something that is now being increasingly regarded as suspicious (or even criminal) in these days of raging paranoia on the part of government/corporate.

The first two google entries for "Sander Hicks" display a warning: [B]"this site might damage your computer"[/B]. (!!!!!). Try it! How the hell can a website "damage a computer", according to the great gods of google? What kind of crack have the googly-mooglies been smoking now? If you try to go to Sander Hicks' website via Google, it won't even let you in (!), instead displaying a dire warning *not to go there*. So naturally, I went there. It's a perfectly normal working website, and my computer, OS and browser remains predictably intact. The site didn't crash, or spew a load of obnoxious pop-ups, or anything else sinister or weird. There are numerous websites on the net that *are* unstable, and will hang your machine., which google doesn't mention....

Can anyone shed any light on the latest round of google paranoia and arbitrary lockouts? Are there any other sites out there which come with similar warnings? The Sander Hicks censorship appears to be politically motivated. Is this the shape of the "net to come", when people with unconventional viewpoints have their webpages blocked or are subject to phony warnings, courtesy of the overlords? When the internet is subject to this kind of crap, the rest of society will probably follow suit.. down the toilet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Look at some of the group posts on blogger (also known as Google). Apparently, they constantly delete entire blogs without notification. I had mine suspended indefinitely, without so much as an e-mail. I was allowed to post new content two days later, so I naturally composed an ethical discourse on the topic of freedom of speech. So far, no more problems, but just in case I back it up on my hard drive every time I post something new.