If these girls met someone is a coffee shop or a pub or even at the zoo, would the coffee shop, pub or the zoo be liable?

Great exposure for MySpace.

That sounds like a challenge. I think here in Australia it would come down to our slander laws, which are a bit confusing and vary from state to state. I have no idea how much protection politicians get from the slander laws. I know they can say whatever they want about each other in parliament. If anything it would be the political backlash that would protect a blogger.

Do you have any more details of those cases?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Google-shuts-down-controversial-blog/2007/02/22/1171733908232.html

Internet giant Google has finally caved in to complaints and shut down a controversial website that posted a death threat against a New Zealand politician.

Authorities in New Zealand have complained to Google for weeks about the cyfs weblog, critical of the country's government-run Child Youth and Family (CYF) service.

CYF, part of the Ministry of Social Development, is responsible for removing children from homes for care and protection.

The weblog had called on people angry at CYF to post messages containing personal information about individual social workers.

With New Zealand's so-called anti-smacking bill, which would make it an offence for parents to strike their children, going before parliament, postings to the site were critical of Green MP Sue Bradford who introduced the bill.

"We really try to remove as little content as possible. We don't want to be a mediator of content and we believe blogs are a platform for free expression and we do everything we can to work with bloggers to keep the content up," she said.

Grand said Google would be happy to have the authors of the site post a new blog, as long as it did not again break the site's terms of service.

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An old story:

http://noluv4google.com/article.php?list=type&type=92

Kissing up to the Chinese government, Google has custom-built a search engine for China and Tibet that censors and distorts information sensitive to the Chinese authorities - "sensitive" topics include "human rights," "democracy," and "freedom."

Jilted users worldwide broke up with Google on Valentine's Day- read their pledges and poignant breakup stories here. Valentine's Day has past, but the breakups go on!

*Are you wondering: why pick on Google? What about Yahoo!, Microsoft and other technology companies cozying up to the Chinese authorities? We're outraged at their actions too - particularly the news that Yahoo! gave the Chinese government information on another Chinese dissident who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the "crime" of supporting democracy. Click here to take action and tell them you have NO LUV for them either.

Google's new web search platform - Google.cn - filters search results according to criteria set by the totalitarian Chinese government. For instance, a search for "Dalai Lama," will omit thousands of websites and users will be instead directed to sites and articles condemning the exiled Tibetan leader in Chinese government-run media and websites with a ".cn" suffix. Searches for other subjects sensitive to Beijing such as "Falun Gong", "Taiwan independence," and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" will yield similar results. The net result is more than simply censorship - it's a promotion of Chinese government propaganda on issues critical to people in China and Tibet.

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http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,16534309-31037,00.html

September 08, 2005

INTERNET giant Yahoo Inc defended itself today against accusations that it supplied data to Chinese authorities which led to the imprisonment of a journalist, saying it had to abide by local laws.

Press watchdogs accused Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd of providing details about email communications that helped identify, and were used as evidence against, Shi Tao, who was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets abroad.

Google is a bit of a worry sometimes.  Often you can be searching for specific information and it will list a site on the menu with a phrase indicating some crucial information concerning our government or another.   You then find that you can't access the site or it's listed as confidential.

I believe that Google has a very strong censorship when it comes to political sensitivity.

We're all bloggers.  Freediver is the main blogger because he maintains a weblog and we're bloggers who contribute blogs to his blog.

It's a silly name, and it seems to cover anybody who contributes to a blog or online journal. A blogger can write about any topic and can be any person who writes something to a website.

Nah mate, only if we copy documents from a confidential Government document. In which case, we'd have to break into the archives at the Parliament House and upload them. Everything else is legal.    ...At the moment


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Are you SURE that's the definition of a blogger, mantra? 

Blog is short for web log - ie an online diary. It usually refers to people who write regular articles that are available from one location, rather than people who contribute to forums.