Freespeech on the web: is the internet really the bastion of free expression that we think it is?

• Author: Rosen, Jeffrey
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

When Internet users in the U.S. search on Google for "Tiananmen Square," the results include photos of a man blocking a column of tanks--the iconic image of the 1989 student democracy protests in China and the violent government crackdown that followed.

But the same search on Google's Chinese platform, Google.cn, yields images of Chinese soldiers raising the flag and tourists taking snapshots. No tanks. No protesters. No sign of the violence in which at least hundreds of students were killed. (See p. 24.)

That's because the Chinese government censors the Web, blocking phrases like "Tiananmen Square" and "free Tibet." And Google--eager to do business in China--cooperates by ensuring that search results on Google.cn don't include material the Chinese government doesn't want its people to see.

'THE DECIDER'

Today, anyone with Internet access has the potential to reach a global audience. But though technology enthusiasts celebrate the explosion of free speech online, there is less focus on how the Internet is actually regulated, and by whom. And as more and more speech migrates online, the ultimate power to decide who gets heard--and who doesn't--lies increasingly with Internet service providers, search engines, and other Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and even eBay.

The most powerful Internet gatekeeper is California-based Google, which controls 63 percent of the world's Internet searches and also owns YouTube, the world's largest video-sharing site. This gives Google enormous influence over what millions of people see on the Web. A large part of this responsibility falls to Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel, whose colleagues jokingly call her "the Decider."

Wong and her colleagues have the difficult job of deciding what controversial material appears or doesn't appear on Google.com, on its foreign search engines, and on applications like YouTube, to which 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

She stresses the company's main goal: to spread the open culture of the Web, while still taking into account local laws, customs, and attitudes.

"What is the mandate?" says Wong. "It's 'Be everywhere, get arrested nowhere, and thrive in as many places as possible.'"

Voluntary self-regulation by Internet companies means that, for the foreseeable future, Google will continue to exercise extraordinary power over global speech online. But can we trust a corporation to always be good--even one whose informal motto is...