June 14, 2006

Finding A Usenet Message Censored In Google Groups - "de.soc.politik.misc"

[Original research!!!]

Some Google Groups Posts Removed in Germany (Google Blogscoped):

Gary Price of ResourceShelf informs me [Philipp Lenssen] that there are new cases of censorship in Google Germany, but this time, in Google Groups, as Chilling Effects shows. Considering that Google has a quasi-monopoly on the Usenet archive, this is unsettling, especially as all of this happens in the background and we don't know which posts have been removed. (We do know the reason for the removal; it supposedly contained hate speech/ "Volksverhetzung," e.g. promoting Nazi opinions). In China, Google only blocks a path to the censored sites, and the Chinese gov't is responsible for blocking the sites themselves; with Google Groups, Google actually holds the newsgroup content on their servers.

Found it - at the thread level

http://groups.google.com/group/de.soc.politik.misc/browse_frm/thread/35488eb1d5d5da1f/f1b90810dd318edb

In response to a legal complaint we received, we have removed one or more messages. If you wish, you may read the legal complaint .

Someone who can read German and gets "de.soc.politik.misc" independently should be able to narrow it to the exact post.

Update1:

The censorship notice at the bottom of the Google Groups screen :

http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=1489

Turns out to refer to the same Chilling Effects document as one mentioned in the above post:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/international/notice.cgi?NoticeID=4249

Update 2:

Another: (not listed in the post!)

http://groups.google.com/group/de.soc.politik.misc/browse_frm/thread/89ebdac43bd3f7b0/7555566e41f75434

Update 3: Changed title to be more specific, and I found a source for "de.soc.politik.misc"

Update 4: Found two specific posts, see following entry

By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google | on June 14, 2006 02:40 PM (Infothought permalink)
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)

Subscribe with Bloglines      Subscribe in NewsGator Online  Google Reader or Homepage