Google Still "Doing No Evil"?

I appears that the Bush administration now wants access to Google's massive database of search entries and have subpoenaed them to get it, all in the name of keeping pornography away from children. Google has claimed that it will fight against this request,that they play no major part in this lawsuit and this subpoena reaches too far out of bounds. The government claims that the information within these databases is needed to defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, passed in 1998, and which never went into effect as it prevented adults from accessing completely legal sites. The website for the COPA commission can be found here.

This could be an important case not only because of it's immediate effects of google, but on further rulings in similar cases. This could be a big deal for all of the major search engines and an other website for that matter. Some sources are reporting that other search engines have already agreed to comply, but still remained anonymous. It also effected google shortly after the announcement as their market share prices fell 8% (a record for the stock).

Funny thing about this one is that I heard about it from the local broadcast news (Fox news out of Louisville, KY for anyone inquiring) before any other source(which is normally Slashdot). More impressive is that this sort of news is making it onto the less tech savvy media channels, and that my mother knew about this before I did. Does this mean that the general public is becoming more interested in privacy legislation? More aware of the reduction of rights in the name of protection? Are they starting to realize that the internet is a global network of resources and that the United States, although they did found the basics of it, does not own it. Do they realize that a law passed in America, plays little part on a server in Norway or Finnland? In any case, I hope to hear more about these issues on more media channels in the future. Another interesting fact that I had not yet realized is that according to Nielsen/Netratings, Google now handles 46% of all web searches. Yahoo was in second with 32% and MSN in third with 11%. I did not realize Google had taken hold of the market that much. Any comments/rantings about the topic at hand would be nice, or pretty much any activity other than bots posting about their surf videos would be nice.

In personal occurances, not much has been changed really. I will be working nights again for a while, and am currently adjusting my body to the new sleep schedule. I am watching a new anime series called Samurai Champloo, which although it sounded bad from the recommendation of a friend, is actually quite entertaining. I am almost done reading 1984 by George Orwell for the 3rd or 4th time, which ties in closely with government restriction of literature/materials/pictures. If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend that you do(I would even have to say the best book I have read).