Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
More transparency into government requests
Monday, June 18, 2012
About two years ago, we launched our interactive
Transparency Report
. We
started
by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we’ve been steadily
adding
new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries. And just a couple weeks ago, we
launched
a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results.
The
traffic
and
copyright
sections of the Transparency Report are refreshed in
near-real-time
, but government request data is updated in six-month increments because it’s a people-driven, manual process. Today we’re releasing data showing government requests to
remove blog posts or videos
or hand over
user information
made from July to December 2011.
Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this proved an aberration. But now we know it’s not.
This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.
For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn’t comply with either of these requests.
In addition to releasing new data today, we’re also adding a feature update which makes it easier to see in
aggregate
across countries how many removals we performed in response to court orders, as opposed to other types of requests from government agencies. For the six months of data we’re
releasing today
, we complied with an average of 65 percent of court orders, as opposed to 47 percent of more informal requests. We’ve rounded up some additional interesting facts in the
annotations
section of the Transparency Report.
We realize that the numbers we share can only provide a small window into what’s happening on the web at large. But we do hope that by being transparent about these government requests, we can continue to contribute to the public debate about how government behaviors are shaping our web.
We’re assembling a Big Tent in Dublin tonight precisely to address these alarming issues.
Estonia’s President Toomas Ilves
is among the participants. Years after earning its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, his country fought off a cyber attack. The Estonian government emerged determined not to shut down the Internet, but to keep it open and free.
Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize winner
Aung San Suu Kuy
will also be in the Irish capital this evening to receive an Amnesty International award. As her experience and our Transparency Report show, freedom can never be taken for granted. We must remain vigilant in its defense.
Posted by Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst
Estonian President debates Internet Freedom at Big Tent
Friday, June 15, 2012
Around the world, Internet freedom is under threat. According to the
Open Net Initiative
, more than 620 million Internet users - 31% of the world’s total Internet users - live in countries where there is substantial or pervasive filtering of online content.
On Monday 18 June, we’ll be hosting a
Big Tent
on the Internet and free expression at the
Mansion House
in Dublin, as part of the official
programme
of Ireland’s Presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (
OSCE
).
This event follows the thought-provoking Big Tent we held in The Hague last November, at which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the
keynote speech
.
Monday’s Dublin Big Tent features another special guest:
President Toomas Ilves
of Estonia, pictured at left. Years after earning its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, his country fought off a massive cyber attack. Instead of cracking down on the Internet, Estonia emerged determined to keep it open and free.
We’ll also be hearing from one of the fathers of the Internet,
Vint Cerf
; the U.S. Department of State’s Innovation Advisor
Alec Ross
; and the author of the acclaimed book War Horse,
Michael Morpurgo
, who will offer a lyrical take on free expression in the modern world.
By coincidence, Myanmar’s recently freed Nobel Peace Prize winner
Aung San Sui Kuy
will also be in the Irish capital on Monday evening to receive an Amnesty International award. As her experience demonstrates, freedom can never be taken for granted. We must remain vigilant in its defence.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Writing a new chapter for French books
Monday, June 11, 2012
For the past six years, we have been embroiled in a debilitating dispute over digitisation with French book publishers and authors. Today, we are announcing agreements that end all our legal battles. We are forging partnerships that we believe will put France ahead of the rest of the world in bringing out-of-print works back to life.
Much of the world’s information is found on the printed page. But almost 75 percent of the world’s books are out-of-print and unavailable except to the lucky few who can find old copies in libraries. In order to make this treasure available to everyone, anywhere in the world, we digitised millions of out-of-print works in U.S. libraries.
Until now, legal challenges, not only in France, but also in the United States, have kept us from realizing our goal. French authors and publishers sued us, separately, for copyright violations back in 2006. U.S. authors and publishers also sued. Although we reached an agreement with the American
Author’s Guild
and
Association of American Publishers
in 2008, a U.S. District court in New York last year rejected the agreement.
In France, however, we have found a way to move ahead. Both the French Publishers Association (
Syndicat national de l’édition
) and the French Author’s Association (
Société des gens de lettres
) have withdrawn their suits.
In this win-win solution, publishers and authors retain control over the commercial use of their books – while at the same time, opening the possibility for out-of-print books to reach a wide audience. We remain hopeful of reaching a solution in the US allowing us to make the world's books searchable and discoverable online.
This agreement represents a new step in our broad
support
for French culture. Over the past two years, we have signed agreements with several French collecting societies representing musicians, screenwriters and other creators. Our international culture center is based in Paris.
We are taking other measures as well to support French publishing. As part of this agreement, we will sponsor publishers’ new Young Reading Champions Program, which promotes the pleasures of reading among young people. We are also supporting the Publishing Laboratory -
le Labo de l'édition
- which helps publishing startups and traditional partners test digital technologies.
Our project with the authors is equally exciting. We will support their initiative to build a comprehensive database of published writers, a process that will help identify copyright holders and help them receive payment for their works.
Our hope is that these partnerships will boost the emerging French electronic book market. They make France a pioneer in spreading knowledge in the digital world. Watch this space for more progress on putting the written page online – and keep on reading.
Posted by Philippe Colombet, Strategic Partner Development Manager of Google Books France
Follow the French elections on Google
Friday, June 8, 2012
After electing a
new President
in May, French citizens head to the polls again on Sunday for Parliamentary elections. Over 6,000 candidates are competing to win just 577 seats in the Parliament. It promises to be an exciting contest and, as with the Presidential election, you can follow all the action on our special politics and elections website,
www.google.fr/elections
.
Built together with French news agency
AFP
(Agence France Presse), the site gives easy access to up-to-the-minute information about the election. You can sort news and videos from Google News and YouTube by political party or specific campaign theme - and interact directly with with political parties via their Google+ pages.
Throughout Sunday evening, a special Google Map will show the results of the first round of voting. The results will be displayed live, as they are published by the Ministry of the Interior, across all of France’s 577 electoral districts.
The French website is the latest edition of our Politics and Election platform, which has so far been rolled out in the
US
,
Mexico
,
Egypt
and
Senegal
in an effort to give internet users easier access to information about elections.
See you Sunday, and as we say in French: bonne navigation!
Posted by Florian Maganza, Policy Analyst
Hosting a ‘Big Tent’ in Japan on crisis response
Friday, June 8, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
Lat Long
,
Japan
and
Google.org
blogs
)
When natural disasters strike, more and more people around the world are
turning to the web
, social media and mobile technologies to connect with loved ones, locate food and shelter, find evacuation routes, access medical care and help those affected, near and far.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen some powerful examples of technology helping people and organizations cope with disasters, including:
Families in Japan turning to person finder to
locate loved ones
feared lost;
Volunteers establishing
SMS services
and using
crowdsourcing tools
to collect information after the Haiti earthquake and engage the diaspora;
First responders using digital maps to coordinate efforts to
provide medical care
;
Students in New Zealand using social networks to form a volunteer army after the Christchurch earthquake; and
Online volunteer communities
self-organizing to provide emergency crisis-mapping services around the world.
This is really only scratching the surface of the amazing things people are doing, and we’re just beginning to understand the potential. So we’re hosting a
‘Big Tent’ event in Sendai, Japan on 2 July
to explore the growing role of technology in preparing for, responding to and rebuilding from disasters.
At this day-long forum, through a series of panel discussions, keynotes and technology demos, we hope to learn from some of the leading local and global, public and private sector voices on managing crises. The day's speakers will include:
Margareta Wahlström
, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction;
Will Rogers of the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
;
James Kondo
, President of Twitter Japan;
Members of
Google’s Crisis Response team
, and many more
We chose to host this event in Sendai - the largest city in Tohoku, the region devastated by last year’s Great East Japan Earthquake - to focus this forum on Japan’s impressive disaster response and recovery efforts, which demonstrated some new and innovative ways that technology can aid the efforts of responders to reduce the impact and cost of disasters.
While hard hit coastal areas remain bare, with only foundation lines to mark the many homes that have been lost and too many families still living in shelters or temporary housing, central Sendai and much of the Tohoku region are beginning to buzz with new life and commerce as the community rebuilds. There is still a lot of work to be done, but
we’ve already learned a great deal
from this region and the inspiring response and rebuilding work being done by people in Japan and around the world, and we believe there’s much more for Google, public and private sector leaders, NGOs and technologists to gain by coming together here.
For those interested in joining us in Sendai, please register to attend
here
. Though space is limited, we’ll accommodate as many of you as we can.
Posted by Nigel Snoad, Crisis Response Product Manager
Honoring Czech and Slovak Journalism
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Throughout Europe, we have been working hard to aid the often wrenching transition from offline to online journalism. We have forged partnerships with newspapers and newspaper associations and sponsored a series of digital journalism contests. Our latest effort comes in the Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where we worked with the Open Society Fund to support a series of journalism awards.
The Czech and Slovak Journalism awards are eight years old, so we wanted to bring something new to the event. Our answer was to create organize "
public online voting
” for a special Czecho-Slovak award. Our sponsorship also supported two entirely new online categories, the Google Digital Innovation for professional journalism and the Google Digital Innovation for citizen journalism.
A total of 685 entries from 409 authors too part, almost a hundred more than the previous year. Online blogs comprised the single largest share of all entries. The winners of the Google prizes are:
Google Digital Innovation: Citizen Journalism
Czech Winner: Mikuláš Kroupa, Michal Šmíd, Lenka Kopřivová:
"A memory of the nation"
Slovak Winner: Editorial team SME a
SME.sk
- "
Online updates from the day of voting about ESM and government trust
"
Google Digital Innovation: Professional Journalism
Czech Winner: Petr Holub, Sabina Slonková (Aktuálně.cz): "
Corruption in health system
vs 'Thanks, we are leaving' campaign"
Slovak Winner: Martin Filko "
Series of blogposts about Slovak health system
"
Czecho-Slovak Winner of public voting (the biggest impact on society)
:
Czech journalist Sabina Slonková (Aktuálně.cz): “
Special investigation: Top secret salaries
”
Congratulations for helping bring high-quality digital journalism to Slovak and Czech readers.
Posted by Janka Zichova, Communications Manager, Czech Republic and Slovakia
Data journalism awards announced
Friday, June 1, 2012
At the
News World Summit
in Paris this week most of the discussion was about how technology is transforming journalism. A good example is the rapid growth data journalism, the analyzing and filtering large data sets to uncover news.
Last November we announced our support for the first international
Data Journalism Awards
organised by the
Global Editors Network
and the
European Journalism Centre
. Winners were announced this week in Paris at the News World Summit.
1.
Terrorists for the FBI
(Mother Jones and UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, USA) Data-Driven Investigations (national/international)
2.
Methadone and the Politics of Pain
(The Seattle Times, USA) Data-Driven Investigations (local/regional)
3.
Riot Rumours
(The Guardian, UK) Data Visualizations and Storytelling (national/international)
4.
Pedestrian Crashes in Novosibirsk
(Nikolay Guryanov, Stas Seletskiy and Alexey Papulovskiy, Russia) Data Visualizations and Storytelling (local/regional)
5.
Transparent Politics
(Polinetz AG, Switzerland) Data-Driven Applications (national/international)
6.
Illinois School Report Card
s (Chicago Tribune, USA) Data-Driven Applications (local/regional)
Congratulations to all the winners who will each receive a prize of EUR7,500 We hope you’ll take a look at their projects.
Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relations, Europe, Middle East, and Africa
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