If German people don't like censorship, they can vote the government out. However, those in the mainland China have no such privilege.

So, when comparing with censorship in different countries, it might be making more sense to consider if a country has a democratic elected government.

Nice :-)

It is funny how some people believe in omnipotence of democracy. That usually comes from people living in democratic societies their whole lives. In Croatia we have recently got something resembling democracy, and from my experience: the people in _any_ country have the government they want (at least to a degree usually enabled by democracy), just sometimes the process is not so visible – in fact, sometimes it is _more_ visible, for example in revolutions.

Besides, nobody _likes_ censorship. They just find it not too unacceptable.

Clips of Holocaust deniers are censored for YouTube users in Israel.

This is rather disappointing, because the Israeli government accuses Iran of censorship and says that this is a good reason to deny Iran the right to have a nuclear program, but Israel has censorship, too.

It's not as bad as in Iran, of course, but it's still rather unpleasant.

> Besides, nobody _likes_ censorship.

Lots of people like censorship when it is applied to others. The argument is always that "this information will harm other people" or "other people can't be trusted with this information", never that "this information will harm me" or "I can't be trusted with this information".

There is plenty of censorship in the United Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom
including two schemes that are sort-of voluntary (the DA-notice scheme for publishers, and the IWF blacklist for web pages)
but as far as I know there's no censorship that blocks search results yet.

Another one:

"This morning, the internet search service Google has discontinued its service in Australia and forwards queries on the Australian Google address into neighboring New Zealand. This was due to a longstanding dispute with the Australian authorities to restrict certain search results that violate Aboriginal laws."

The thing I never understood about the whole censorship in China is that Google is censored to some extent in USA, Germany or France. Google censor their results in these countries (or in any others it operates) because they must abide by the laws of these countries.

So why would Google not abide by Chinese's law? What are they trying to accomplish here? Is it really about freeing the Chinese people from the tyranny of their government? Could their mission be that noble?

Are you insinuating anything antisemitic here? It seems like you are insinuating something here with respect to the Holocaust. Do you know that in France you could to jail for that?

... in the mean time the horror continues in Palestine ...

Amir E. Aharoni:

Why does Israel censor Youtube video of Holocaust deniers? I'd be curious to know if that question can even be asked without being immediately assimilated as a denier. The further I'll go in this rhetoric, the further it seems your brain might be triggered to think I may indeed be one. Now that is a beautiful example of mind control.

> Clips of Holocaust deniers are censored for
> YouTube users in Israel.

Amir, do you have some references/ sources/ examples of this? And can this be reproduced from other countries?

you could blame any country. E.g. almost every country got ilegal sex with underage children so you should block such content.

The difference in china is that you are not allowed to know that something is blocked and why and what is the real situation. If china would block some pages because they are against chinas law and people will be informed about it and could use their heads to find where the truth is, than it would be a different situation. E.g. in Germany people know what nacism is, what it does and agree it is ilegal and want it blocked. This is not truth in China.

I understand that Americans know nothing about living in comunism, it is impossible to explain the stupidity of the system and impossibility to do anyting with it.

China uses this as their biggest advantage – they do not have to care about health etc. of their people – people (often children) are working there 14 hours 7 days a week, 360 days a year for about 400$ a month. So they will in few year rule all the world, as everyone is buying everything from there – noone will be able to compete

Noone can protest, as they would simply kill him. And what's worse – noone knows it is somewhere different – they got information just from their leadership, and they got the same information from their childhood and from childhood of their parents and grandparents (actualy there was never a democratic regime in China). And even if they are allowed to travel abroad, then this is so deep in their heads, that they do not see this as a problem.

P.S.: and for those americans who do not understand why we in europe are setting up nacism, its symbols and propagance agains law – let's try to image what would happen if I would come out in US with Al Kaida symbols and propaganda. I would probably never got out from Abu Ghrajb, and they have killed "just" 3000 of your people. Nacists killed 80 000 000 of our people (30 milion less then komunists by the way), 60% civilians.

> The difference in china is that you are not allowed
> to know that something is blocked and why and
> what is the real situation.

No, in Germany you also won't always know what is blocked. You can, for instance, only query item name by item name of the "youth protection" authorities... they will never give you their full list, even though you're not what they pretend to pretect (i.e. you're an adult and not a kid). The line between alleged "youth protection" and banning something for adults is completely blurred in Germany.

This is NOT to say German and China censorship are the same (even though Germany served as example of how it's normal to censor to Google CEO Eric Schmidt before, so we can see the danger of setting a bad precedent).

> and for those americans who do not understand why
> we in europe are setting up nacism

Admittedly, it was the allied forces (i.e. including USA) who attempted to de-nazify Germany and it was them who e.g. started to censor e.g. certain nazi movies in Germany after World War II. For movies, the allied forces had 3 categories, category B was cut, and category C was completely illegal. Some of the movies are until today not allowed to be normally shown.

In the time that followed, not just Nazi movies were rulled illegal in Germany. Some Eisenstein movies were banned because of alleged anti-German scenes (according to Wikipedia). Many horror movies are to this day hard to get (for adults) in their uncut versions in Germany.

Some people say Google is now completely blocked in China

True for my location in China, yes (at least when it comes to search results).