Current Events Watch

From Saturday’s LA Times:

Google ready to pursue its agenda in Washington

Its employees supported Obama, and four Googlers served on his transition team. Now the Internet giant hopes to win support for network neutrality and expanding high-speed Internet access.

By Jim Puzzanghera and Jessica Guynn, January 24, 2009

Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Reporting from Washington — Another inauguration took place in Washington this week — Google Inc. officially became a political power player.

In October, Google was only hours from being sued by the Justice Department as a Web-search monopolist. Today, less than three years after it made its first Washington hire, the Internet giant is poised to capitalize on its backing of President Obama and pursue its agenda in the nation’s capital.

Google’s executives and employees overwhelmingly supported Obama’s candidacy, contributing more money than all but three companies or universities. And only DreamWorks employees gave more toward inauguration festivities.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt campaigned for Obama and was one of four Googlers on his transition team. He is now as likely as any corporate chieftain to get his calls to the White House returned.

At the top of the company’s policy priorities are two that consumer advocates largely champion. First, it wants to expand high-speed Internet access so people can use its Web services more often. It also is pushing for so-called network neutrality: prohibitions on telecommunications companies charging websites for faster delivery of their content.

“Google is not just a benign corporate entity. It has a variety of special interests,” said Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who has sparred with Google over data-privacy issues. “They’re in a great position to push their agenda through with the support of the president and the Democrats in Congress.”

But Google’s newfound political ties heighten concerns about its grip on the online advertising market. The company could play better defense against strong competitors trying to curb its influence.

Last fall, Justice Department lawyers, who had been lobbied heavily by Microsoft Corp. and large telecommunications companies, were about to sue Google on antitrust grounds. They wanted to block its controversial search-advertising partnership with Yahoo Inc., but Google abandoned the deal rather than fight in court.

Competitors worry about Google’s close relationship with the Obama administration, said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“The question going forward is: Will Google turn into just another business entity looking for favors in Washington, or will it manage to keep the 767 flying at 30,000 feet above the political din?” he said, a reference to the Google founders’ private plane.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment. Obama vowed generally this week that his administration would not be beholden to anyone.

Google says the main reason it has improved its standing in Washington is that Obama’s tech priorities mirror its own. He has endorsed network neutrality. His technology agenda also calls for expanding broadband Internet access to rural areas and appointing the first government-wide chief technology officer (Schmidt has been mentioned for the position but reiterated this week that he was not interested).

“This administration is more focused on science and technology,” Schmidt said in an interview. “That’s positive for all of technology, and particularly Google.”

…

Source

I think it’s interesting that Microsoft was pushing the Justince Department “to sue Google on antitrust grounds“.

Is YouTube guilty of being an accessory to mass murder? Depends upon whom you ask. Some within the blogosphere are claiming that at least partial accountability should be laid at YouTube’s virtual feet for the Jokela High School shooting rampage in Finland yesterday, executed by one Pekka-Eric Auvisen [pictured left], aka Sturmgeist89 to YouTube fans. After all, the 18-year-old had just the day before uploaded his final video, entitled “Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007″, which by title alone should have raised a red flag or two, one might think. Particularly since the post was obviously not a re-cap of the previous day’s breaking news, given that it was posted on, well, 11/6/2007. Perhaps there’s some wiggle-room in YouTube’s content filters, to allow for a typo here and there.

I know that the powers that be at YouTube can’t be expected in a matter of relative few hours to purge all TOS-infringing videos and redirect to that cryptic “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation” page. They did, however, quite expeditiously remove the violating video, which opened with a picture of Jokela High and then cut to gun-wielding self pics awash in red (to a rather aggressive metal soundtrack courtesy of musical superstars KMFDM, with their ever-popular hit Stray Bullet) soon after Storm Spirit had already blown away his seven fellow-classmates and the principal of the school, wounding a dozen-plus others in the course of his four hour scholastic shooting spree.

By the way, although YouTube yanked his vids and page and all things Sturmgeist, you can still watch his final day video here on LiveLeak, if you’re so inclined.

In addition to the video, he also made a final post on his YT page, as reported by Scientific American:

The gunman, named by Finnish newspapers as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, had updated his posting on the YouTube video site only hours before the massacre, warning that he planned to “eliminate all who I see unfit.” He says his weapon of choice will be a semi-automatic .22 pistol and that his targets are “students and faculty, society, humanity, human race.” He adds: “I am the law, judge and executioner. There is no higher authority than me.”

Well, he made pretty clear his intentions, without question. But is YouTube responsible for letting this guy get away with murder? I think not. He would have carried out his agenda with or without an online platform from which to reveal his sinister plot. I agree with Greg Sandoval over at CNET news when he says that, “Blaming YouTube in such a situation would be equivalent to holding the US Postal Service responsible for delivering the messages sent by the Zodiac Killer.”

Athough I don’t hold anyone liable in any way for Auvisen’s running amok, other than the Sturmgeist himself, I still find some things disturbing.

His previous YouTube account as NaturalSelector89 had been suspended for falling foul of the TOS, one can only imagine the reasons why. NaturalSelector89, though, had a pretty decent run before getting the boot, online from March through October. Not a problem, he was reborn as Stormgeist89 shortly thereafter, simply by registering for a new account. Repost the old videos, copy and paste the old profile, and you’re good to go, fresh start, cool beans.

From the introduction of his online reincarnation until his final foretelling post, his video contributions maintained a consistently violent theme, including of course the grand academic finale. Still no red flags? Anyone? All righty then.

Like I said, all evidence of his existence, as both first and final persona, has been expunged from YouTube. But not only was I able to locate a copy of his final video, linked to earlier in this post, I also happened upon something else rather disturbing … I found the screen shot of his last YouTube profile page here. (Don’t bother trying to click on any of the videos or stuff, it’s not a live page, of course.) Did you read that diatribe? If not, I suggest you at least go back and give it a glance. It’s actually rather upsetting. Again, no warning signs raised? Even if YouTube isn’t paying attention, you’ll notice that he had nearly 200,000 channel views since October 19, and a respectable 332 subscribers to his feed! You’d think someone would have at least considered a left mouse-click on that “Flag As Inappropriate” icon. And isn’t it a bit disconcerting that so many users would read the guy’s profile, watch his posted vids and think, “Yeah, I want to add that RSS feed to my Yahoo! home page!” Apparently there are a lot of angry folks out there. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of us. Watch your back.

No, YouTube isn’t responsible for the Finlandish carnage. Nor is anyone other than Pekka-Eric himself. (Or was, past tense … he’s dead now, too.) But still, looking back, wouldn’t one think that, given all of the available one-click-away information, at least a single person might have sounded the alarm? He was obviously a popular guy, lots of virtual followers, who were well-aware of his predispositions and intentions. How could this have been allowed to happen? Or is it true that only hindsight is 20/20? I don’t know. Had I happened upon his YouTube profile page and videos pre-Wednesday, would I have taken any action? I doubt it. I suppose recognizing and admitting to that may well be the most disturbing thing of all.

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