Tale of Two Tiananmens
Y’know, what gets me isn’t just the Google bowing to censorship in this whole what’s fit for China escapade, but the amazing thoroughness of the block.
it’s downright chilling, is what it is
and I don’t mean chilling because some nation could mandate that instead of this page of image-search results their own people should see this ‘cleaned‘ page of results. I mean it’s chilling that one single private corporation should have the ability to robotically discern that 
this image from rollins.edu should be forbidden while 
this image from spspku.bjmu.edu.cn should not. Nor is it just a slanting of the weights: Way down at Page 10, Google.cn is still squeeky clean. Happy smiling people holding hands.
Maybe I’m just not keeping the faith, but it is my experience, in my half-century or so of being a human, that whether or not Larry Page et al would really stoop to using this means for any other ends is moot because way way down the line, as Sun Microsystems recently admitted with it’s Java Creator CD disclaimer on it’s privacy clause …
“Sun, as a global company, may transfer your personal information to countries which may not provide an adequate level of protection. Sun, however, is committed to providing a suitable & consistent level of protection for your personal information regardless of the country in which it resides.”
A tip to Bub for the tip on that, and while you may see differently, I read them as basically being honest about the clause most others simply slyly omit: “you can trust us, but we can’t vouch for our partners” — things age, connections extend, and you never really know who’s going to be the NEXT Emperor of Rome, or what sort of sense of ethics and fair-play they might have.
source: Tale of Two Tiananmens
