-- the police came and charged my tenant with selling drugs, so I kicked him out.
and
-- every day I obsessively searched through my tenant's belongings when he was at work to make sure he wasn't violating any laws, in my sole opinion, and then when I thought I found something illegal, I kicked him out.
Google can't judge what is or isn't child pornography. Lawyers and judges can't even do it. Nothing is child pornography, no matter how explicit, unless it appeals to the "prurient interest".
And in fact I'm not even located in the United States. The child pornography laws in my jurisdiction are less vague and more narrow than those of the United States. Is Google's crawler programmed with laws of every jurisdiction worldwide? I rather doubt it.
It would be perfectly legal for Walmart to take a non-proactive approach to photo developing. Machines do it all anyway - the only human step is picking up the stack of photos and putting them in an envelope. But Walmart has directed its employees to search through all photos, searching for kiddie porn, and to call the cops. That's a personal stance of Walmart's CEO.
Google is similarly protected - it has no legal liability in the United States for serving as a passive conduit for anything its users care to distribute. It's unfortunate that Google's CEO is adopting a similar stance.
-- the police came and charged my tenant with selling drugs, so I kicked him out.
and
-- every day I obsessively searched through my tenant's belongings when he was at work to make sure he wasn't violating any laws, in my sole opinion, and then when I thought I found something illegal, I kicked him out.
Google can't judge what is or isn't child pornography. Lawyers and judges can't even do it. Nothing is child pornography, no matter how explicit, unless it appeals to the "prurient interest".
And in fact I'm not even located in the United States. The child pornography laws in my jurisdiction are less vague and more narrow than those of the United States. Is Google's crawler programmed with laws of every jurisdiction worldwide? I rather doubt it.
It would be perfectly legal for Walmart to take a non-proactive approach to photo developing. Machines do it all anyway - the only human step is picking up the stack of photos and putting them in an envelope. But Walmart has directed its employees to search through all photos, searching for kiddie porn, and to call the cops. That's a personal stance of Walmart's CEO.
Google is similarly protected - it has no legal liability in the United States for serving as a passive conduit for anything its users care to distribute. It's unfortunate that Google's CEO is adopting a similar stance.