[AusNOG] Google criticises Australia on internet filter plan

[Andreux Fort]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Richard Pruss <ric at cisco.com> wrote:
> Interesting in the light of the China - Google issue.
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hEPK7hcbQKYEB2zfdxXbUwB_drzQ
> "Australia is rightly regarded as a liberal democracy that balances
> individual liberty with social responsibility," Google said, in a submission
> to Australia's government.
> "The governments of many other countries may justify, by reference to
> Australia, their use of filtering, their lack of disclosure about what is
> being filtered, and their political direction of agencies administering
> filtering."

As far as I understand it, Goog operates caches here.  While a cache
is just a cache so it doesn't sound like much, I would imagine that'd
be a major operational annoyance to maintain separate indices (for a
search index like China) - as well as the network operational hassles
of operating in China full-stop (great firewall, etc).  Rumor says
it's very hard to actually get your money out of China once you've
made it, so really no surprises with the China thing (despite the
reports that not wanting to operate in China is corporate for
machismo, my guess is they decided that it wasn't worth the very real
costs).

Maintaining seperate cache filters for Australia doesn't sound as
challenging, but it's still probably quite annoying (though my guess
is the Australian staff are unlikely to be too bothered by it, since
it's "just" a cache).  While I doubt they'll close their Sydney office
like the Beijing one, you have to wonder if they'll continue to invest
in cache infrastructure here if the filtering legislation is passed.

I find amusing the future Google's PR hack almost ironically suggests
- foreign dictators using Rudd or Abbott as their role models and
justifying to foreign governments how it's ok to be scumbags, because
Australia is.  Perhaps reality would be back on the level, then :-).

-- 
Andreux Fort (afort at choqolat.org)