Censorship Sunday

February 26, 2012

I flipped through the home page of Techmeme and spotted three unrelated stories about blocking, filtering, or paywalling information. I don’t have much money on the roulette wheel of what’s right, wrong, free, or for fee. I do find it interesting that the frequency of information blocking stories seems to be rising. Is it Sunday? Is it a coincidence.

The first story is about that ace “real” news outfit, the Wall Street Journal. The News Corp. wants to make money. If the alleged wire tap thing won’t work, why not make it really confusing about what happens when a person clicks on a story in Google News. You can read the confusing explanation of a wild and crazy “real” newspaper’s approach to readers who want to read a story. Point your browser thing at “WSJ Pulls Back On What Google Searchers Can Read For Free.” I don’t have the mental stamina to figure this filtering stuff out. I do read the dead tree edition, and I use it to clean windows when I have finished flipping cellulose and chemicals.

The second story concerns PayPal, which is now widely viewed as the Bell Labs for big money ideas. The story I noticed was “PayPal Cracks Down on Erotica E-book Sales.” I presume PayPal “knows” inappropriate content when it processes an electronic purchase. The ability to define what is an acceptable purchase is fascinating. I am curious what “erotica” means, but I suppose I too will know it when I see a digital transaction. I prefer paper checks and old fashioned cash. If I were a supreme court justice confuse about inappropriate content, I would consult the brain trust at PayPal for sure.

The third story made me smile. The Chinese are credited with the “Great Firewall of China.” The country with a mobile death van should be able to filter the Internet. Who knows what type of information might trigger another monk to set himself or herself on fire. The story I noted was “Google+ Workaround Found By Chinese Critical of Internet Censorship.” The clever engineers who want to check out social media and read about interesting religions can do so.

Censorship is definitely a topic for Sunday. Search is tough when info is just not “there.” That is one way to solve certain problems in relevancy and precision.

Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2012

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.