Earlier this year, we noted that the European Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the idea of various countries implementing any kind of policy that would kick file sharers off the internet -- often referred to as "three strikes" legislation. However, TorrentFreak is now reporting that, despite 88% of Parliament voting in favor of rejecting any such law for being a violation of basic human rights, the European Council (made up of the heads of state of various EU governments, has rejected the amendment drafted by the Parliament. Why? Well, TorrentFreak notes that French President Sarkozy just so happens to be President of the European Council, and as we recently noted, France just recently moved forward in approving a three strikes law, which was originally championed by Sarkozy. So, rather than listen to the vast majority of the EU Parliament, Sarkozy has apparently convinced the Council to let him push through this particular law, despite the widespread concerns about its draconian nature.

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The Register is covering the rather confusing porn guidelines in the UK, which add certain types of porn to the list of what is illegal to possess. Plenty of countries have laws against possession of child porn, but the UK is extending that to cover images that are "pornographic, grossly offensive and portray activity that threatens harm to life or limb, or involves sex with a corpse or animal." Of course, some of that is open to interpretation -- and TheReg points out that plenty of movies that were approved for viewing in the UK contain footage that probably meets those criteria. The question, then, is, if you have an offending still image from a legal UK video, do you run afoul of these guidelines? Also, oddly, the law says that you're okay if you delete an image -- but not okay if you can retrieve it after deleting. While, undoubtedly, this law is well-intended, it seems to be quite vague and it's difficult to see what public benefit it serves. If the concern is about the harm done in the making of such porn, why not go after the pornographers, rather than the possessors?

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Last month, Mike wrote about how the English Premier League was making threatening overtones towards Justin.tv, after it discovered some users on the site were streaming broadcasts of its soccer matches. It's the usual stuff from sports leagues, complaining that the sites aren't doing enough to stop piracy, and that their safe harbor shouldn't protect them, and that the DMCA takedown process isn't good enough. Now, a piece in The Guardian wonders if the large-scale piracy, along with a spending slowdown, will hit the value of TV rights deals when they come up for renewal, with broadcasters unable to justify the same level of spending should viewer figures fall.

This scenario isn't hard to imagine, but should it occur, it will be thanks to a lack of business acumen, not piracy. These sites exist, and thrive, because they serve demand untapped by the Premier League and its rightsholders. For instance, the rights situation means that in England -- where the league's based and its games played -- fewer games are broadcast on TV than in many places in the world. Here in the US, nearly every match is broadcast each weekend; just a handful make it onto UK TV screens. British pub owners tried to serve the untapped demand for this by buying satellite systems from foreign countries, but the EPL shut that avenue off in the courts. Likewise, users in the UK and elsewhere turn to sites like Justin.tv because they don't have other options. The match they want to see isn't available on television, or they're not near a TV set when the match is being played. I'd argue this drives use of the services much more than a desire for free content does.

The rights situation domestically in the UK is the way it is because of the long-held view that putting games on TV will hold down attendance; but the small stadium sizes and increasingly geographically distributed fan bases (along with high ticket prices) do this already. And indeed, the experience of other sports leagues around the world would indicate that giving fans the ability to watch their teams' games on television does little, on its own, to hurt attendance. That sort of view seems to color the entire TV rights situation for the Premier League: it tries to manufacture some sort of scarcity in an attempt to increase its revenues. But the popularity of sites that make broadcasts available online makes it clear they'd be better off answering this demand with services of their own.

Here's a novel idea: instead of trying to crack down on the likes of Justin.tv, why not require rightsholders to offer free streams of games as parts of their deals? Then, the Premier League and its broadcast partners get to serve this demand, instead of Justin.tv or Chinese P2P services, and get to capitalize on it through advertising or other means. It might have some effect on pay services by giving fans with the least willingness to pay a free service to use, but again, I'd argue that most people would still prefer to watch their teams' games on a bigger screen and in higher quality enough to pay for it. And the additional fans the services would reach could make new converts to paid services as well. Whatever the EPL decides to do, it's impossible to understand how it thinks it can benefit by alienating fans and making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to follow their teams.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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There's been plenty of attention paid to the news that the website for President-Elect Obama's transition team, Change.gov has been placed under a Creative Commons license, allowing others to make use of the content with attribution. However, I'm a bit hard pressed to see how this actually is a big deal. The whole thing is made a bit odd by the fact that federal government content is not covered by copyright, so anything that comes out of the White House is in the public domain. But, apparently since Obama has not yet been inaugurated, the campaign can still claim copyright on the content. But, why would they? Rather than going with a CC license, why not go all the way and put the content in the public domain? After all, in two months, all such content will be in the public domain anyway? It seems a little odd, counterproductive and unnecessary to add more restrictions to the content than there will be once Obama is actually in office. If the Obama team really wanted to do something meaningful concerning the content on the site, they could follow the advice of Tim O'Reilly and go beyond just putting the content in the public domain and also add revision control, thereby committing to alerting people to any changes to the content. Now, that would be an impressive change.

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Last month, in writing about the financial crisis, I tried walking through the root causes of how the financial crisis happened and how to prevent it from happening again -- and the point I kept coming back to was the lack of transparency. It wasn't (as some people want to claim) "greed" or a "lack of regulation" that caused the problem, but bad information (though, some might blame that on greed and a lack of regulation). Aaron deOliveira points out that some folks are noticing the same thing, suggesting that the real problem these days isn't a lack of liquidity in the markets, but a significant lack in reliable information. People just don't know how much things are worth, and that's a huge problem.

Last week, on the always excellent Planet Money podcast, there was a discussion about what money really is. Many people think that it's a hard representation of value, but it's not. As the podcast noted, money is a relationship. Take a listen to fully understand what this means, but it's exactly right. Money is merely a relationship of trust between certain parties that enables trade. If I trust this piece of paper is worth a certain amount, I can do business with you. If I don't trust that the paper or trinket you hand me is actually worth anything, then I will not do business with you, and your "money" is not money at all.

The problem that we're experiencing today is that, due to a lack of clear and trustworthy information out there, no one is quite sure what anything is worth, and that makes any sort of trade difficult. Money only works when there's a trusting relationship, and you only get that sort of trusting relationship when there is a reasonable flow of information to the parties involved, such that they're confident that what they have (or what they're trading for) has value. The problem over the last few months (or, for some, years) is this realization that the information they had was bad, and they could not trust it, and thus, the "relationship" that made thing valuable disappeared. Without this trust, plenty of things that do have value are being severely undervalued, because there's no (or very little) credible information, and that's leading to panic, because no one is sure what anything might actually be worth.

So, once again, we're back to the situation where we were before: the answer should be more information, more widely distributed in a much more open fashion. We should all be demanding significantly more transparency both from corporations on any sort of investment they put forth as well as from the government who is shoveling dollars -- but not information -- into the market to try to deal with the problem. But, until it gets more information into the market, then the trust will not be regained, and the dollars they throw into the market will merely decrease in value, because there are not enough relationships built on trustworthy information.

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Well, here we go again. USA Today has a report on a "review" of "173 of the strongest papers" from the past 28 years, which found that 80% show some sort of link between mass media and something evil happening to kids, whether it involves obesity, smoking, sex, drug and alcohol use, attention problems or poor grades. And, of course, the folks behind the review are claiming this is all very damning and "something must be done" to "protect the children!" Of course, we've seen this all before. In almost every case, when you look at the actual details of the study, the link is never quite as strong as it's made out to be. In many cases, the link may be a correlation, rather than a causal link (i.e., kids who get bad grades may watch more TV, but that doesn't mean that TV necessarily caused them to get bad grades). Other times, the study's findings are greatly extrapolated in the writeup -- such as the studies that showed that kids get "excited" when they play video games, and extrapolated that to claim kids are more violent because they play games. This isn't to say that mass media for kids is healthy, but we've seen so few studies that actually support a causal link, that it's difficult to take this sort of fear mongering seriously.

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I'm quite often confused by those who consider themselves big supporters of pure free market capitalism, but who also are adamant believers in the importance of intellectual property. Perhaps the largest group of such folks are the so-called "Objectivist" followers of Ayn Rand. Capitalist Magazine is running an Objectivist defense of the recent ProIP law that was recently signed into law despite basically being a government handout to the entertainment industry. Stephen Kinsella has responded to many of the points made in the original article, and picks up on a key point that many defenders of intellectual property always pull out in their defense:

The creator of content owns the content because he created it through his own labor, and you should always own the fruits of your own labor.

The problem is this just isn't true and never has been. Simply providing the labor does not equal ownership. As Kinsella notes in his response:

His argument? "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." And likewise, for "music, movies, software." But note the mistake here Johson makes: "If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it." The "therefore" is the giveaway: he says this because he thinks of the creation of the loaf as the act that gives rise to ownership. Then this leads to the analogy with other created things, like music. But creation of the loaf is not the reason why the baker owns it. He owns the loaf because he owned the dough that he baked. He already owned the dough, before any act of "creation"--before he transformed it with his labor. If he owned the dough, then he owns whatever he transforms his property into; the act of creation is an act of transformation that does not generate any new property rights. So creation is not necessary for him to own the resulting baked bread. Likewise, if he used someone else's dough--say, his employer's--then he does not own the loaf, but the owner of the dough does. So creation is not sufficient for ownership.

Exactly. Creation alone does not grant property rights if none existed prior to that transformation. I would even take the argument a step further. Even if you own something due to the fact that you created it, once you have given away or sold that product, you no longer have ownership of it -- and claiming you do actually removes property rights from the lawful owner.

That is, if I make a loaf of bread, and then sell it to someone, I no longer have control over that loaf of bread. I cannot tell the new owner that he can only make French toast with it and cannot feed the bread to the pigeons. That's for the new owner to determine. I certainly cannot tell him that he cannot take the bread and try to resell it or even give it away to others. That's part of the free market. Yet, intellectual property enthusiasts do want to remove these property rights from the recipients of copies of the original good. Despite their claims of being property rights supporters, they are actually the opposite. They are trying to deny property rights to any recipient.

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It seems that the Associated Press continues to struggle to figure out how to deal with this whole online thing. It's still trying to revamp its pricing structure after a bunch of newspapers canceled their contracts as they were pretty pissed off that the AP is effectively competing with its own member papers. The AP has also had a bit of a run-in with bloggers over its ridiculous fair use policies. Its latest move seems to, once again, be getting pretty much everything backwards. Famed film critic Roger Ebert is complaining that the AP has sent down word from on-high that all entertainment articles must be 500 words or shorter -- including film reviews, interviews, news stories, trend pieces and (best of all) "think pieces." Apparently, if you need more than 500 words to get people thinking, you're a bit too verbose. On top of that, the AP is asking those same entertainment writers to focus on more salacious, attention grabbing stories in picking what to write.

It's not difficult to see what's going on here. The AP is trying to be more "bloggy." Shorter, more attention grabbing pieces? Apparently, it's decided that people online only want to read the quick hits on salacious stories. Of course, despite what some may think, that's not really true. The AP has an opportunity to be better than all of that. It could draw serious attention by creating real content that people want, rather than running after the latest fad. But, apparently, that's not in the AP's plan. It has the resources to do what various small-time blogs can't do, but apparently, it's going in the other direction. Perhaps it's not too surprising, but it's no less a mistake.

Yes, short, attention grabbing stories get traffic, but that doesn't mean good, thorough journalism would get ignored. The problem the AP is having isn't that its stories are too long, or not attention-grabbing enough. It's that it still views itself as a gatekeeper of information, rather than an enabler of both news gathering and news distribution. Of course, with each misstep by the AP, others are quickly moving in to take its place.

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The battle against spammers rages on, both in the tech and legal worlds, but sadly, with little success. Despite the advances in anti-spam technology and spammers getting sued, shutting down and having their service providers cut off their operations, the torrent of spam hitting email inboxes continues unabated. While there are several anti-spam tools that may be good enough for most users, it's clear that a technological solution alone to stopping spam remains far off. But perhaps the biggest hope is to take aim at spammers' profitability, as their margins look a little vulnerable. A BBC story cites some earlier research that says spammers sending out 350 million messages a month can earn roughly $100 per day, while the entire massive Storm botnet could generate around $2 million per year. Neither is a figure to sniff at, but nor are they really huge sums of money -- suggesting that frustrating spammers by disrupting their services and raising costs, as well as trying to hold down responses even more, could diminish the profitability of spam to the point where it's no longer attractive. Ironically, the rise in spam plays a part, too, since spammers are in essence competing with each other for users' attention and clicks, so the more spam that gets sent, the worse the response rate for the individual message or campaign (for instance, the researchers' response rate was less than 0.00001%). But the underlying issue remains the fact that people click on spam and buy stuff through it. Changing that might be even harder than developing the perfect spam filter.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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An interesting and important ruling came out of the UK last week, as a journalist had a lawsuit against her thrown out by a judge, because it appears that much of the evidence came from police wiretapping her phone conversations with a source in the police department. The judge ruled that journalists have a right to protect their sources, and the police wiretaps were illegal. I'm not familiar enough with UK wiretapping laws to know if they needed a court's approval for the wiretap in the first place -- but on the whole this seems like a reasonable decision, as the case itself was quite troublesome. Basically, it sounded like the police wanted to plug leaks from within the department, and then bugged the journalist to find out who the leaker was, and with that info charged both the source and the journalist. That certainly seems like an abuse of police power to try to prevent future leaks, so it's good to see the court dismiss the whole thing.

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A guilty verdict in a rape and murder case in the UK is raising some questions about the country's emergency call system and its ability to deal with callers who can't speak. In this case, the 17-year-old victim dialed 999 (the British equivalent of 911) while she was being abducted, but she was obviously unable to speak directly to the operator without alerting her killer. The system followed its usual procedure for silent calls, giving the caller a recorded message to either tap their phone or hit the 5 key twice. That is fine for somebody whose only problem is that they can't speak; but for users who can't listen to the message and don't know to hit keys (which doesn't have to be an extreme case, but could also be the victim of a stroke or other medical emergency), it doesn't offer much help. Authorities are working on a text-based system for people with hearing and speech impediments, as they should, but again, that leaves many incapacitated people out in the cold. There will surely be a search for some technological solution to the problem, but maybe what's needed is some more common sense. For instance, is it very well publicized that people should hit the 5 key if they can't speak? Why not advertise that and make it more well known as a start? Inevitably, this sort of case will attract a lot of attention to the supposed technical shortcomings of the emergency call system, and indeed, it's something that should be a target for constant improvement. But the solutions to consider shouldn't only be technical ones.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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We recently pointed out yet another telco-funded study warning about how the internet was going to be overwhelmed by massive traffic growth if the government didn't step in and give telcos everything they wished. However, the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINTS) has responded to the report noting, yet again, that the data put forth by the telcos is totally overblown. The actual evidence suggests internet growth is not nearly as rapid as the original report stated and, in fact, there's substantial evidence that the rate of internet usage is slowing. Just as we've seen from various earlier studies, it appears that regular upgrades to equipment, rather than wholesale gov't handouts to telcos, should be more than enough to keep the internet humming.

But don't be surprised to start seeing other fear tactics come into play. For example, an anonymous reader sent in news of a report coming out of Australia, warning that we shouldn't just be worried about bandwidth running out, but that all the energy it takes to run the internet will now be putting a strain on the electric grid. Of course, that seems to assume the same rapid pace of growth that the original (incorrect) report claimed, so I don't think we need to worry about our electricity running out due to people downloading too many videos any time soon. But, still, you should probably expect to see such arguments show up coming out of politicians in the very near future.

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The Wall Street Journal is running a story about how it's been fined by Singaporean courts for two editorials the paper published over the summer. The story notes how nearly every foreign publication distributed in Singapore has been sued in court at one point or another, and the article goes through detailing the specific charges against it by Singapore. Obviously, the WSJ's story can be seen as biased since they were a party in the lawsuit, but from the description, it sounds like Singapore was upset that the WSJ accurately reported on a defamation lawsuit by a former government official against an opposition party candidate, and later a critical study by the International Bar Association on the rule of law in Singapore. It's difficult to see how those reports can be said to be "contemptuous of the judiciary," but in a country that isn't known for taking criticism well, perhaps it's not that surprising.

Still, what's most interesting is that in response to this, the Wall Street Journal has chosen not to publish this particular story about the decision in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal -- though, the story is obviously available online. Apparently the WSJ recognizes, probably accurately, that if they published the story about the decision, where they are somewhat critical of that decision, they would probably be in for yet another "contempt" charge. To some extent, this decision makes you wonder how effective suppression of the press can be going forward. Yes, countries can build filters and block out certain publications, but online content can always be filtered through eventually. The very fact that the WSJ is purposely leaving the editorial out of Asian editions of the paper seems more likely to draw more attention to the story from within Singapore as well, accomplishing exactly the opposite of what the country thinks it's doing in fining the paper.

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Last week, the Toronto Police Homicide Squad launched a new website containing profiles of unsolved murder cases and wanted persons. Each profile contains details of the investigation -- a written synopsis, photos and links to Google maps or even YouTube videos -- and allows visitors to submit tips directly to the police. It serves not only as an appeal for information, but also as a resource for grieving families. Some of the "cold cases" date back decades, and the police are hoping that increased attention on the web (or even from the press on the website launch) might lead to a break in an investigation.

Police have long since used online tools to search for evidence themselves, but we're starting to see them engaging online communities and developing tools and methods to appeal to the public for information through the web. A few years back, a cop from a neighboring city received a lot of press for uploading a surveillance video to YouTube, and now Toronto's Crime Stoppers service has its own YouTube channel and Facebook page. Though, in the surveillance video case, the media coverage of the YouTube angle seemed to help a lot more than the actual video (and comments on some of the Crime Stoppers videos make you wish the comment audio preview was mandatory.) The Toronto police have found a lot of success in solving and preventing crime using these tools, and they recently presented their methods to an Interpol audience.

It's great to see law enforcement embracing the web as a means of two-way communication with the public, though it may take some time before these latest efforts pay off. The new site looks like it could use some more design work, and previous success has involved engaging a largely younger audience on social networks, rather than trying to draw witnesses to a separate site. As long as they continue to experiment, police are bound to find the right methods to make these tools useful.

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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TechCrunch has a story from last week about a top Belgian politician who apparently got drunk in a New York City bar on a diplomatic trip to the US. A bartender at the bar wrote about it, noting how the politician, Pieter De Crem had acted in a way that was embarrassing. Additionally, his aides admitted that they came to NYC despite the fact that they knew the meetings they had lined up had all been canceled due to a UN meeting in Geneva. The whole thing got an extra spotlight of attention when a staffer complained to the bar owner, and the bartender was fired. But what's most interesting is how De Crem responded, going on a bit of a rampage against bloggers:

I want to take this opportunity and use this non-event to signal a dangerous phenomenon in our society. We live in a time where everybody is free to publish whatever he or she wants on blogs at will without taking any responsibility. This exceeds mud-slinging. Together with you, other Parliament members and the government I find that it's nearly impossible to defend yourself against this. Everyone of you is a potential victim. I would like to ask you to take a moment and think about this.

The thing is, he doesn't seem to dispute any part of the original report. He complains about this idea that people can publish without responsibility -- but if the problem is defamation, then why not deny the claims? If the report was true, then what, exactly, is the problem? The problem isn't that anyone can publish anything -- it appears to be that De Crem and his entourage didn't do a very good job hiding their questionable behavior.

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The WSJ is running an article about some guys in Spain who claim to have patented an algorithm that can detect if an electronic device is in "standby mode" and cut the power. The issue, of course, is that plenty of electronic appliances and gadgets don't really turn off. Instead, they continue to draw power even if switched "off." In reality, they're in standby mode, and continue to draw power. Some estimates say that all of these devices drawing power represent 10% of power usage, and in some techie areas, such as here in Silicon Valley, some estimates say that 26% of power usage comes from such "standby" devices. Perhaps I'm missing something, but what needs to be patented to simply tell these devices to actually turn off, rather than put themselves in standby mode? There's often a reason why these devices go into standby, rather than truly turn off, and removing that ability may end up causing more problems than it solves.

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It's been really weird to see various politicians in the US go after online gambling in a variety of questionable ways, from Kentucky's attempt to seize domain names to the federal government forcing banks to block financial transactions for any gambling site. But one of the oddest moves has been to go after any publication that allowed online gambling ads to show up on their website. More than four years ago a bunch of websites, including Yahoo and Google were sued for allowing gambling ads to show up on searches. The two big search engines eventually settled with the federal government to try to block out gambling ads, but this particular lawsuit, based on California state law, continued.

It took a while, but a court has finally ruled that the search engines are protected by section 230 of the CDA, and they aren't responsible for ads posted by users -- even if they happen to get through the filters that Google and Yahoo set up to try to prevent gambling ads. There are a few important points to note here: (1) Just because the site is getting paid for the content, does not mean that section 230 safe harbors don't apply. We often hear people say that if a company is making money they must lose the safe harbors. That's simply not true, (2) Just because the search engines proactively try to filter out the content, they don't lose the safe harbors either. In fact, in this case the judge seems even more sympathetic because of that. There's a misconception out there among many that if you do meddle in the content at all, you give up your safe harbors. Again, that's not true.

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Some researchers at Microsoft have been studying cyberchondria, the phenomenon of people searching the web for medical info, then concluding they've got some horrible disease or affliction. They conclude that "Web search engines have the potential to escalate medical concerns." That seems like something we already knew, but the researchers suggest one potential way to deal with the issue would be to teach search engines to recognize when they're being used as a medical diagnostic tool, and get them to respond with something other than pages about brain tumors, rare diseases and other worst-case-scenario maladies. One suggestion is a list of possible issues related to the symptom a user searches for, ranked in order of likelihood. That sounds fine, except, is that really all that different than the situation today? If a susceptible user searches for the cause of a headache, and something like a brain tumor gets mentioned, whether in passing or at the bottom of a ranked list, won't they fixate on it or some other serious condition? While online health information could certainly be made more useful, trying to change it so as to carve out cyberchondria seems pretty pointless, as the hypochondriacs will simply find another source to feed their anxiety.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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This is a case from the Insight Community, a powerful new marketplace that connects companies with intelligent communities like Techdirt. Click here to learn more.

Once again, we're asking small business owners for their insight into how to deal with the financial crisis. If you're not a member of the Insight Community sign up today to earn money for your insights.

As you probably know from our earlier cases, American Express is sponsoring a conversation here in the Insight Community concerning how small businesses are dealing with the financial crisis. Already, a bunch of the insights generated by those earlier discussions have made their way to American Express' OPEN Forum blog. Some great examples of the type of content include Zack Miller's post on Black Swan Contingency Planning and Dennis Howlett's Quick Tips for Small Businesses. If you decide to participate in this case, we suggest those two posts are great examples of the level of quality to strive for.

This time, we're looking for more insight from small business owners on issues as we approach the end of the year.  How are you approaching your strategy for the end of this year, as many are worried that holiday spending won't be what it's been in the past?  Alternatively, how are you gearing up for this financial climate as we head into 2009 and how would you recommend others do so.  We're also curious how the changing political environment, and the various efforts to create various stimulus packages (or bailouts) might impact the way you do business.

To enter, please submit a post around these concepts. Please try to avoid just listing out the questions here and answering each one separately. The description is just a conversation starter, from which we hope you'll craft an interesting, insightful, compelling, and relevant blog post that will be helpful to small business owners, such as yourself. The goal here is to go beyond what everyone else is talking about, and dig a little deeper.

This case uses the "claiming" system. You can claim a slot and reserve that spot for yourself, guaranteeing payment if the response actually does meet the guidelines laid out in the case description. Any insight that is selected to then be placed on the American Express OpenForum blog, also will be designated a "top insight" and the authors will be granted the additional bonus on top of the guaranteed claim amount. Please be aware that claiming a spot but failing to submit an insight will lead to a poor rating and an inability to participate in future cases.

• Earn up to $200 for Insights on this case.
• Insights Due: 10 Dec 2008, 11:59PMPT

View Case Details at InsightCommunity.com

Two separate stories in the NY Times provide fodder for those who view Google as the new scary borg. The first, looks at Google's sometimes slippery slope role as a "gatekeeper" of information within certain countries. For example, it looks at Google's agreement to help block access to certain YouTube videos in Thailand and similar decisions in other countries. The article plays up Google's reluctance to be involved in making these sorts of decisions (and highlights how the company hopes that more countries learn to accept free speech a bit more), but it still leaves you with this questionable feeling of Google as quasi-government censor. No matter how well-meaning the people may be who are making the decisions, it still feels questionable.

The second article isn't just about Google, but talks about how, with various online services, many people are effectively giving up their privacy. This is hardly a new topic, and it's one that's been discussed repeatedly -- often with a nod to the famous Scott McNealy quote from almost a decade ago: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." The article touches on a lot more than just Google, but does mention the fact that Google seems to have access to all sorts of data that, when clumped together, could be seen as a violation of privacy for some.

Between the two stories, you can see why there's a growing sense of worry among some about how Google could become dangerous. It has access to all sorts of data about you -- and has the power to make decisions about what you can access, often with no explanation or recourse. Put that together, and you get this picture of Google as the benevolent dictator of the internet -- where it may be using its powers (mostly) for good, but there's plenty of potential that eventually it could turn evil. And, to some extent, it's worth highlighting these issues, so that people don't become complacent about Google's actions. But, there's an undercurrent to these stories that seem to miss out on a few things: if Google really does start abusing either of these "powers," unlike with a dictator, people have pretty easy choices to go elsewhere. Furthermore, as more concerns are raised about any potential abuse, people are rapidly working on technologies that solve both issues -- allowing people to surf the internet much more anonymously, while also routing around censorship. So, while it's not problematic to highlight these potential issues with Google, that doesn't mean that there aren't necessary checks and balances in place.

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