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You are so very right, the people behind Google Book Search are doing a great job of making culture easily accessible to (almost) eveyone. Here in Portugal, we have a relatively more liberal system and there haven't been, to the best of my knowledge, any books banned from libraries or schools (I only remember one such controversy involving a book from José Saramago, who a few years later would, ironically, become our sole Nobel laureate in literature). I must say that when I read the list of books that were under the threat of being banned, I was appalled.
It's a shame that there aren't any links to the Banned Books page from the Google Book Search main page.

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Can we assume Google won't be running this worthy initiative in China? If they do, a list of banned search results would fit nicely.

Sadly, Google is currently an agent of censorship.

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@Shedlord
Why do you call it an agent of censorship and not a censorship victim? When a government censors some news article from being published in a paper do you also say that newspaper is an agent of censorship?
Sadly, you don't know what you are talking about.

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You can use proxy-surfing to access any website on the internet. So as such there is no censorship on the internet. Use Tor.

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@Qwfwq
Shedlord is absolutely correct in labelling Google an agent of censorship. Google themselves censor search results at the request of the Chinese government. They agreed to do so in order to enter the Chinese market. That is entirely different to being forced to censor in a market they're already in.

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Erm, please explain. Who is banning those books? Where are those books banned?

In America?

I do not get it.

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Kris,

A lot of public schools (in the US) won't let these books be in their libraries or be taught in classes -- hence "banned" status.

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@Adam
You said yourself Google censors search results at the "request" (that putting it mildly, it really is at the demand) of the Chinese government. Should Google and other companies embargo China? Would that solve anything? It surely hasn't for the last 50 years. Historically outside intervention, at any level, has never led to the opening of any political system - change usually starts from the inside (take for example what happened to Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Portugal, Indonesia, the European countries from the former Soviet block, etc), and the fact of depriving the Chinese population of any access to outside influence would not be helping in any way.
I'm sure that Google's objectives were mainly commercial, and it had to make regretable compromises to enter that market. Regardless that does not make it an agent of censorship, only a vehicule, like many others, of the Chinese state driven censorship. In the countries where Google has not been tied down its actions indicate a very respectful atitude towards the individual freedoms, like was demonstrated in its fight with the US government over the release of records from its database or its support to initiatives like the Banned Books week.
The easiest thing to do is to point a finger - try instead to have a more global view of the problem to better understand it.

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Wow then. It is curious that Orwels 1984 is banned. It describes really good how was the life in Soviet Union.

Or maybe it is not curious because at all because it also describes what will life in America look like soon (or is already).

Please read it and recommend it to your children.

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@Qwfwq
I stand by the word 'Agent' to describe Google's role here, but 'Vehicle' will do for the sake of argument.

"Should Google and other companies embargo China?"

A company denying itself profit by deciding not to participate in a market for ethical reasons is not an embargo.

"This type of censorship has never led to anything productive. It has always been used to oppress the views of those who challenged the status quo. When these companies say 'a censored search engine is better than none at all,' I believe this is a slap in the face to the Chinese men and women who fight this repressive government." - Tony Cruz, Amnesty

...or to put it more bluntly, if you block information about a government-sanctioned massacre, for example, you make it easier for similar events to be sanctioned again.

"Don't be evil", as someone once said.

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@Shedlord
The difference between the words agent and vehicule is fundamental for this discussion and I find it hard to understand how you can stand by one and accept the other for the sake of argument.

My country, Portugal, was under a dictatorial government for over 40 years, which, fortunately, ended the year before I was born on the sequence of a pacific revolution in 1974 and after years of colonial wars in Africa. As expected being a member of the first generation living in freedom, I've listened to the stories told by my elders, who lived under that repressive government, tales of political persecutions, tortures, murders and censorship. All newspapers, books, plays, lyrics, radio and television broadcasts were censored by the state police, and all sentences that might even slightly suggest any defiance to the government in power were striked out with a blue pencil by the censors (we still use the "blue-pencil censorship" expression in Portugal) and its authors were in most cases brought in for interrogation. If you wanted any freedom of expression (and escape the military draft to fight - and die - in Africa) one had to clandestinaly go abroad to foreign countries (about one fourth of our population is made up of emmigrants) or go underground and be constantly on the run. And most of the population lived in misery, ignorance and fear, and it was exactly this "climate" that allowed the repressive system to strive for so many years.
I think that the difference between being an agent and a vehicule of censorship is easy to see, and both notions are not reconcilable. The agents of censorship were effectivelly the government and its ignoble censors, and I cannot in all conscience put the authors, and publishers who had to submit to that censorship to make a living, and as such were the vehicule of that censorship, in the same bag with the actual agents of censorship. In my opinion, completely different levels of responsability are involved, and must be judged accordingly.
As you probably know the internet is as free as the political state that controls the infrastructures that allow access to the Internet. And in China, these infrasctures are under the control of the Chinese government. For internet companies like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft to be able to enter the Chinese market and make their services available to the Chinese population they had no choice but make the demanded concessions to the Chinese government.
Is Google serving state-sponsered propaganda to the Chinese population? I don't think so. Is information about the repression suffered by the Chinese population censored by Google outside of China? No they aren't.
I respect and even understand your view that for ethical reasons, companies should not participate in the Chinese market, but I also believe that this would be an even greater disservice to the population. In the actual context, your view would deny the Chinese citizens access to any outside information - how is this different from an embargo to information? And what alternatives would the Chinese citizens then have - either be deprived of any internet information or have to access it through fully government-sponsored Internet services. Can you honestly say that these would be better alternatives. Would this not be a slap in the face of the actual Chinese population? It's relatively easy to make such radical statements from the confort of one's home, where there is freedom to speak and one can live without making the sort of compromises that are demanded by a repressive system. Not compromising, however, would only further isolate the people living under repression, and that, obviously, would not help promoting the opening of the system. Change happens gradually, it has happening in China in the last few years and I believe (hope) that it will continue to happen.

As for Google "being evil", I find those derogatory commentaries unfortunate, and they started because of unscrupulous editors and bloggers looking for "big headlines" and have only spread due to the reactionary sheep mentality that afflicts much of the online community. This company has been praised multiple times for the outstanding work conditions given to its workers, it activelly supports and promotes the development of open source software, makes their APIs freely available for developers to explore, has made freely available services like Blogger, Google Scholar and Google Book Search which help spread cultural and scientific information, they participate in events like the Banned Book week that defend the civil liberties - and yet some try to denigrate their image with unsubstantiated claims of "evil" policies. This makes no sense to me. They are not alone, sure, plenty of other companies and intitutions like Project Guttenberg, NCBI, etc. play very important roles in the free flow of ideas and information, and that is all for the best. I think that what is perceived as Google' sin is that they make millions - this is a very provincial view in my opinion. Give credit where credit is due, and reward the companies deserve our praise, and perhaps this mentality will catch on with more and more companies.
It's a pity that this discussion is already buried deep inside DLSQ blog, perhaps the editors should start again a new "Is Google Evil or not?" article - I'm sure that it would be a very lively debate.

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