Canadian Industry Group Wants Google to Censor Internet Searches
Didn’t the Pope just declare the Internet “a gift from God?” Not according to the Canadian recording industry. I’ll just quote from VICE.
If you believe the chief lobbyist for the music industry in Canada, it’s a sad fact of life that honest, hard-working Canadian artists just aren’t making money anymore because of all the illegal downloading and the Google. Is this true? No. Is it a reason to censor the internet? No. Will common sense stop the music lobby from trying to trick the government into censoring the internet for their benefit? Of course it won’t.
On January 16th, Graham Henderson, the head of the Music Canada (previously the Canadian Recording Industry Association) complained that Google was making it hard to find legal sources to purchase music in Canada, and was providing easy traffic for sites distributing illegally copied music. His solution? To ask the government to mandate that internet service providers censor sites and search results that link to suspected pirated material. Reaction to this plan has so far been decidedly negative. Why is it such a bad idea?