пятница, 2 марта 2012 г.

Watching the Web

On May 17, Civil Court No. 46 of Buenos Aires instructed Internetgiant Google to eliminate anti-Semitic search suggestions from theirArgentinian browsers. The precautionary measure was handed down inresponse to a petition presented by DAIA, a political umbrellaorganization for Argentinian Jewish groups, in the framework of aclass action suit brought on behalf of the entire Jewish community,which argued that these searches lead users to anti-Semitic andHolocaust denial sites.

The petition noted that Google was providing search results for76 websites that DAIA regarded as "highly discriminatory." Acceptingthis position, Judge Carlos Molina Portela ordered Google to removethose sites from its index, prevent its algorithms from offering 13additional suggestive search possibilities, and refrain from placingadvertising on another 22 sites, all of which contain anti-Semiticlanguage and promote Holocaust denial.

The petition was based on the work of the Observatorio Web ("WebObservatory"), a cooperative project by DAIA; the Latin AmericanJewish Congress (a chapter of the World Jewish Congress); and AMIA,the Jewish community of Buenos Aires. Stemming from a growingconcern over anti-Semitic messages, the project was founded in March2010 to combat all forms of discrimination on the Web.

"We have been working with industry leaders such as Yahoo,Mercado Libre, Taringa, Psicofxp and VXV, and INADI [the Argentiniangovernment agency working against discrimination] to defend theInternet as a space for freedom of expression, without prejudice ordiscrimination," project director Ariel Seidler tells The JerusalemReport.

"During 2010 we had meetings with Google," Seidler continues."Google argued that it was a matter for the courts to decideregarding the removal of the sites from their indexes. We alsotalked about videos from YouTube and blogs with highlydiscriminatory content, but they decided not to remove them."

A summary research report by ObservatorioWeb titled "The Growthof Websites that Attack Communities" was published in "Clarin,"Argentina's most widely-read newspaper, on December 27, 2010. Inresponse, Google posted the following on its blog for Latin America:"There is much content that can be disturbing or that may seemobjectionable, but... does not violate our criteria of freedom ofspeech. Google is committed and works in every country in which ithas a presence, including Argentina, to prevent the proliferation ofviolent or racist content. This will not impede groups ororganizations that wish for different policies or have morerestrictive criteria of freedom of speech."

As a result, the group petitioned the courts. Judge Portelaaccepted the petitioners' position that the search engine leddirectly to sites that clearly defy international and domestic humanrights and anti-discrimination legislation due to their anti-Semitic tone or attempts at Holocaust denial.

Google Argentina responded to a query from The Report by saying,"As this is a legal matter, we will not comment on it. However,Google does not endorse hate speech." Similarly, a Google spokesmanin Israel said the company "rarely comments on specific judicialcases."

While this is not the first time Google has been forced to removeanti-Semitic material from its websites in various countries, theArgentinian court decision does appear to be a legal precedent.

"This is the first time Google has been forced to remove materialfrom search results in response to a court order," Andre Oboler, anAustralia-based computer scientist and social media expert whowatches for anti-Semitic content on the World Wide Web for theZionist Federation of Australia, tells The Report. "It is, however,not the first time Google has removed anti-Semitic content from itssearch results. Sites like Jew Watch have been removed from Google'sFrench and German versions for years, but this was the result ofgrassroots pressure."

Oboler tells The Report that since the early 1990s, "Google hasmade a point of making its results automated and has resistedpressure to manually interfere with them."

However, in January 2011, several news agencies reported that theEU was investigating the company in light of allegations that Googlewas manipulating the outcome of its searches to favor heavyadvertisers, a sign that not all is automatic.

It may be no coincidence that the first formal legal attempt torestrict anti-Semitic content on the Web was made in Argentina.While Jews escaping persecution in Europe found a home there beforeWorld War II, an unknown number of Nazi war criminals also foundrefuge in the country afterward.

Jewish officials applauded the court decision. Claudio Epelman,executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, tells TheReport that, "in general" he opposes the limitation of free speech,but then adds, "We defend freedom of expression as a supreme valuethat only the law can limit. In this case, the judge decided thatthe content of Google promotes anti-Semitism. In many countries,including the Republic of Argentina, this is a crime."

In contrast, Cynthia Wong, director of the Washington, DC-basedGlobal Internet Freedom Project, Center for Democracy & Technology,declared in a prepared statement: "At the end of the day, enlistingcompanies to become greater gatekeepers on content online reallydoes shrink the range of speech that we can access.... It'sdangerous to try to shut down speech, because you don't get thatkind of robust public debate about what should or should not beacceptable in a democratic society."

But web expert Oboler says efforts must go beyond the companiesthemselves. "I think this is a good move by the [Argentinian] court,which must ultimately enforce the law, and for Argentina, whichclearly has effective laws against online hate," he explains."Ultimately it is up to national governments and not corporations todecide the protection given to citizens and the resulting limits onfree speech."

Even prior to the ruling, Argentine media professionals hadalready established the Forum of Journalism of Argentina (FOPEA),dedicated to guaranteeing free speech, transparency and free accessto public information.

Dr. Miguel Julio Rodriguez Villafane, a professor of law andformer judge, acts as a consultant to the forum. "While the right toinformation occupies a privileged place among basic rights, it mustbe remembered that right is not absolute," he tells The Report.

With regard to limitations on the right to freedom of expression,says Villafane, it is necessary to refer to international treatiesdealing with racial or religious hatred, including, for example, theUN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime ofGenocide, the American Convention on Human Rights, the UNInternational Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of RacialDiscrimination, and the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights, among others. These conventions, to whichArgentina is a signatory, he says, provide the basis for theArgentine judge's decision to issue the injunction against Google.

Villafane, who also is president of the Iberoamerican Associationof Rights of Information and Communication (AIDIC), is known as amilitant defender of freedom of speech. He also was the judgepresiding over the extradition to Germany of Josef Schwammberger, aNazi war criminal captured in Argentina, in November 1987. "I'm infavor of freedom of speech and also against racism," he concludes.

Coincidentally, May 17 was also World Internet Day, marked inArgentina with large online events promoting the commercial andeducational use of the Web. "Internet is also used as a channel forthe dissemination of discriminatory ideas. We work to make it aspace of free communication - free from discrimination," concludesthe Latin American Jewish Congress's Epelman.

(c) Copyright Jerusalem Post. All rights reserved.

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