Most of my afternoon was spent on a United jet flying to Denver for newspaper meetings all day tomorrow, but after I landed here this evening and fired up the email, I discovered some important news had occurred while I was in the air – MoveOn.org announced that it is no longer asking Google to censor political speech.
You can read the Wired magazine report on the announcement by MoveOn.org here. Jennifer Lindenauer, MoveOn.org’s communications director, was quoted by Wired as saying
“We don’t want to support a policy that denies people freedom of expression.”
There are likely very few issues on which MoveOn.org and I would agree, but we should all be able to agree that every individual has the right to speak his or her mind on the issues of the day without being censored for allegedly violating somebody’s trademark.
I commend the MoveOn.org leadership for moving quickly and making the right decision following The Washington Examiner’s publication of this article last Thursday and this editorial today. The article, written by Media Bloggers Association founder and president Robert Cox, was linked to by The Drudge Report, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Huffington Post and the Google Public Policy Blog, among many others. Cox is a member of The Washington Examiner’s Board of Bloggers.
The issue here is straight-forward: Google says it will remove any ad that a trademark holder says violates it trademark. In the context of political debate and campaigns, the Google policy gives politicians, corporations and advocacy groups a powerful tool for suppressing critical advertising about them.
I’m sure the leadership of Google never intended for their policy to become a censorship tool but that is the reality of it, as things presently stand. Obviously, there are legitimate reasons for protecting the commercial rights of a trademark holder, but not at the expense of the First Amendment.
UPDATE: Google paying a price for censorship?
One of Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit readers says he’s cutting his Google advertising budget by half. I’ve noticed similar sentiments being expressed in comments on Examiner.com and elsewhere.
UPDATE II: But what about Cafe Press and MoveOn.org?
Michelle Malkin lauds the positive move by MoveOn.org regarding the Google ads but notes that the case of MoveOn.org threatening the owners of the Cafe Press remains outstanding. Michelle is right, MoveOn.org needs to decide if it is always for freedom of political speech or not.
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