Strange Self-defeating Censorship In Belgium
Posted on October 23, 2006
With the demise of the Soviet Union, Belgium now appears to be the most Leftist country in Europe, which makes it a great enemy of free speech. Brussels Journal will tell you all about that from time to time. Belgium even shut down a major political party for “hate speech” a couple of years ago — showing the usual Leftist respect for democracy. But the latest episode there appears to be wacky even by Belgian standards:
“Microsoft and Google have agreed to remove content managed by Copiepresse of Belgium from their indexes, with Google further being requested to pay nearly $43 million in fines.
Instead of battling with Copiepresse on its home turf in Belgium’s Court of First Instance, Microsoft chose to comply with the firm’s requests to remove German and French language articles managed by Copiepresse from its websites.
You don’t want people to be able to find you via a Google search??? That’s equivalent to being invisible these days. Lots of companies pay big money to boost their Google rankings but not in Belgium it seems. I guess it is just some sort of feverish anti-Americanism.
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