Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Google and Yahoo's Shareholders Against Censorship

Collective bargaining tends to achieve the necessary echo effect :

"The New York City Pension Fund wants shareholders to force Google and Yahoo to refuse Internet censorship requests by governments. The fund, which owns nearly $280 million worth of Google shares and $110 million in Yahoo shares, filed resolutions for shareholders at the two Internet companies to vote on at the next shareholder meetings. The resolution states that U.S.-based technology companies "that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights."

Go, go, go, shareholders. So that by the time censorship ends up where it's most aggressive for the time being, we can feel proud of ourselves living in a World 2.0, a world in which we all have universal access to the collective wisdom of everyone. Wait, that used to be part of both, Google's and Yahoo's mission statements once. From another perspective, the companies themselves have their hands tied by the overal Western world's revenues generation greed, and outsourcing inspirations in China's booming economy. But pretending it isn't happening is like ignoring the existence of the thought police these days.

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