55 Is Google Censoring in the United States?

So asks Travoli, who normally posts witty reviews of gadgets large and small. Google Video features short clips of improvised explosive devices exploding (those outside the United States can see them here and here). Travoli reports that friends in Canada and the South America were able to watch the videos, though he wasn’t. Friends of mine in Ramallah, England, Canada, and the United States were able to confirm that, yes, the videos are available everywhere in the world but in the United States. Others are now testing from Poland and Central Asia.

In fact, an audience reared on action movies will find the clips a bit boring, unless they consider that similar explosions go off in the real-life markets of Baghdad almost daily. So why censor these clips in the United States but nowhere else? To protect Americans from the discomfort of seeing what their boys and Iraqi civilians are up against in Iraq? Heaven forbid anyone should make Americans feel uncomfortable.

UPDATE: Turns out the answer is “No.” After more feverish testing, drawing in people from as remote and exotic places as Kyrgyzstan, one bright friend had the idea to try posting a video to Google Video. Turns out you can choose to have your material not appear in whatever country you choose. False alarm.

[tags]censorship, google[/tags]

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  1. google is in a sense censoring some stuff to comply with the dmca check http://www.google.com/dmca.html, but that can hardly be considered their fault, american congressmen and american voters are to blame here.

    now considering google probably has to censor “hate speech” (ya mami) in some of their euro centric engines I can’t see what’s the big fuss about china.

    the big fuss would be google choosing to censor beyond what is forced upon them by stupid laws, if you don’t like the law in your country work on changing it, would do the whole world alot of good as a freaking side effect.

    Comment by Alaa — February 21, 2006 #

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