Mediaboss Marketing

Remember Justine Sacco, the PR exec who famously tweeted, Going to Africa. Hope I dont get AIDS. Just kidding. Im white! before hopping aboard a flight to South Africa last December? The tweet went viral while she was airborne and, by the time she landed, half the planet thought she was an insensitive racist jerk. Then she got fired.

But that wasnt the worst of it, not by a long shot. To this day, Googling her name generates hundreds of thousands of results that, near as I can tell, all reference her ill-conceived brush with infamy. Shell probably have to change her name to escape the episode and Googles web crawlers and indexers.

Unless, of course, Sacco moves to Europe. In its infinite wisdom, the European Union Court of Justice has ruled that people can demand that Google (GOOG) remove links in search results for their name, and the Silicon Valley company has to comply. And theres no appeal on such a ruling by the EUs highest court. This is a done deal.

Bet you didnt see that coming. I know I didnt. Apparently, neither did Google.

On the surface, it sounds reasonable enough. Youve done something dumb or somebody important posts something terrible about you, why shouldnt there be a recourse to set the record straight?

Someone who really wants to dig stuff up on you might still be able to find whatever it is youd like hidden (although, among the billions of online pages, without a search engine, Im not sure how). But why should one or two incidents dominate the first place everyone looks to find out about you and color your personal brand for all of eternity?

But when you stop and think about it, when you let the implications of this unassailable ruling sink in, the idea is so wrong and its implementation will have to be so subjective that it will undoubtedly threaten not just the integrity of the Internet the integrity of what used to be a free society.

Consider this: Should we erase an entry from the Library of Congress for any reason? We wouldnt burn any books Fahrenheit 451 style but just delete the references so we can make believe they dont exist that the events they chronicle never really happened and make everyone search through thousand of shelves to find them.

And which references to which books would we erase? The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Youve got to admit, that was some pretty evil stuff. Im sure there are white supremacy groups that would love to see that go away. How about Ball Four, the blockbuster that embarrassed Major League Baseball and tarnished Mickey Mantels pristine reputation? Or The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the Enron scandal? What about novels like Atlas Shrugged? I know an awful lot of people that would kill to see all references to Ayn Rands controversial and politically charged work simply vanish into thin air.

The EUs highest court says we all have the right to be forgotten, that events from the past however lawful and accurate their representations might be simply stop being relevant or become excessive, in time. We should all have the right to move on with our lives and let the past be forgotten. Let bygones be bygones.

See the article here:
EU's Google Ruling is Institutionalized Censorship

THOR: THE DARK WORLD (CENSORED) | unnecessary censorship recap | funniest moments / best scenes
In anticipation of the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Avengers 2: Age of Ultron by Disney... I mean Marvel... let #39;s take a look back at a recap / synopsis of the 2013 Thor: the Dark World...

By: NinjaPandaProductions

Follow this link:
THOR: THE DARK WORLD (CENSORED) | unnecessary censorship recap | funniest moments / best scenes - Video

Censorship BANS #39;The Xpose #39; from EXPOSING
Yo Yo Honey Singh Himesh Reshamiya #39;s The Xpose under censorship scruntiny for BOLD Content -- Sonali Raut #39;s transparent Saree Subscribe now to watch more of Bollywood Hangover Videos http://www....

By: Bollywood Hangover

Read the original here:
Censorship BANS 'The Xpose' from EXPOSING - Video

Gang of 4: Wolfgang Halbig and the Sandy Hook Circus! Youtube Censorship!
Another lively Go4 discussion featuring +kateslate11 +freeagentmedia +redpillrevolution +freeradiorevolution Join the discussion below!

By: Free Radio Revolution ULTIMATE!

Read more here:
Gang of 4: Wolfgang Halbig and the Sandy Hook Circus! Youtube Censorship! - Video

Opinion Education World finance, economic and labor leaders met with the German chancellor. Adam BerryGetty Images

Its the time of year when efforts heat up by student and faculty to get speakers they dislike disinvited from campus. Every spring, the campus disinvitation movement seems to get more intense, and this year its participants have claimed some high-profile scalps.

On Tuesday, former University of California Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced he would withdraw from his address at Haverford College in the face of student protests. Dr. Birgeneau, who seemed to most like a safe choice, was apparently unwelcome because of his alleged mishandling of Occupy Wall Street protests on his campus.

One day earlier, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, withdrew from Smith Colleges commencement after an online petition by students blamed Lagarde as being a primary culprit in the failed developmental policies implanted in some of the worlds poorest countries.

The highest profile success of a campus disinvitation movement this spring was when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew from Rutgers Universitys commencement after months of intense protest by faculty and students. The faculty objected primarily to Rices role in the Iraq war and the execution of the War on Terror.

While Birgeneau, Rice and Lagarde reportedly withdrew, it strikes me as unlikely this took place without some encouragement by administrators who got cold feet in the face of angry students and faculty. If the speakers had refused to withdraw, they might have suffered the fate of Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University earlier this year. Hirsi Ali, an atheist, activist and fierce critic of the treatment of women in Islamic countries, was set to be honored with an honorary degree from the Massachusetts university. When students rallied against her, she refused to bow out. So Brandeis made the decision for her by officially disinviting her in April.

Not all disinvitation movements are successful. Sean Puff Daddy Combs successfully spoke at his alma mater, Howard University, on Monday, despite some objections. And, last year, big names, including Fareed Zakaria (a TIME columnist) and Greta Van Susteren, weathered a push by students at the University of Oklahoma and Georgetown, respectively, to get them disinvited as commencement speakers.

Students and faculty have the right to protest speakers and to criticize their colleges for choosing speakers they dislike. Yet to function as a true marketplace of ideas, the university community must be open to hearing from people from different walks of life, professions, experiences and philosophical and political points of view. When students (or faculty, who should definitely know better) work to exclude a speaker from campus, they are thinking like censors, not scholars. A scholarly community should approach speakers with even radically different points of view as opportunities to be engaged, not as a political loss that must be avoided at all costs. Exercising a little intellectual humility might lead students and faculty away from asking what can I do to get rid of the speaker? and towards what might I learn if I hear this person out? After all, if youre only willing to hear from people with whom you agree, its far less likely you will learn new things.

Universities have only themselves to blame for this messnot just for caving to pressure, but for teaching students the wrong lessons about the value of free and robust discourse. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), of which I am the president, has found speech codespolicies that heavily restrict speech that is protected under the First Amendmentat 59% of the more than 400 colleges we survey, and deals every day with campus censorship of often even mildly offensive speech. Colleges have taught a generation of students that they have a right not to be offended. This belief has inevitably morphed into an expectation among students that they will be confirmed in their beliefs, not challenged. Its no wonder, then, that they apply increasingly strict purity tests to potential campus speakers.

Colleges could stem the tide of disinvitation season by encouraging intellectual curiosity, humility, the reservation of judgment, recognition that one does not know everything and the simple act of granting the benefit of the doubt. Not coincidentally, these are precisely the lessons universities should be teaching students. Their failure to instill these habits has led to campuses that have become depressingly intolerant. If this trend is not reversed, disinvitation season will only end when campuses give up on inviting speakers who have anything to say.

Visit link:
Caving on Commencement Speakers Is Censorship, Not Scholarship