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Censorship The Courts The Internet

Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet 81

An anonymous reader writes "Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of the country's most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of censorship-seeking celebrities includes judges, public officials, models and actors, as well as the world-cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona. Try it yourself — compare the results for a Yahoo! Argentina search for Diego Maradona (0 results) to a search at Yahoo! Mexico and Google Argentina (both with millions of results)."
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Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @03:19PM (#25738041)

    Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet

    Tomorrow:

    Slashdot Viewership Disappears Editors From Headlines

  • ummm. (Score:4, Funny)

    by rev_g33k_101 ( 886348 ) <hooah_i_say_hooa ... m ['yah' in gap]> on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @03:25PM (#25738157) Journal
    when did the translators for zero wing [wikipedia.org] start editing for slashdot?
  • Can't click on the " Yahoo! Mexico" or "Google Argentina" links on the front page for some reason.

    Me thinks it's the stupid CSS or layout of the (useless) tags that messes things up.

  • by Patchw0rk F0g ( 663145 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @03:38PM (#25738317) Journal

    Perhaps they've solved our problem of over-populated web-hits on our idiotic, media-seeking celebrities up here.

    If I recall correctly, Jon Swift purported that Irish babies would go a long way to feeding the impoverished English public.

    If anyone from Google or Yahoo! in general is reading, could we add Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears and the other paparazzi-fodder to that list for the search sites world-wide? I'm not suggesting that eating their babies would be a good idea, but I'm positive eating up their web-hits and searches would go a long way to feeding the positive intelligence of not only the English public, but the world.

    Think of it as doing your part to solve the (intellectual) hunger problems of the world. Onemillionactsofgreen.com would then meet their quota in... oh, about 30 minutes or so?!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Oh, Argentina! Don't you search for me.

  • Try searching for 'marad0na' - I'm guessing that people will start to use alternate spellings to bypass the filters... :-)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Consider that Argentina has a very severe problem with high-profile Argentinians and their families being kidnapped and held for ransom.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's a lie, plain and simple. There was a short rash of kidnappings (I don't think any at the time were famous people, though), but that's over.
        I have heard in some countries even nonfamous people go around with bodyguards (I remember a friend in Mexico, for example). Here you can see most famous people walking alone, having coffee in a bar, etc. I don't like this country much, I'm moving out ASAP, there is plenty to criticise about Argentina, but kidnappings? Nope.

  • We may all live on the same planet, but we're not all allowed to receive the same information :D Yay for not all humans being equal according to where we were born and raised!
  • Actually, this isn't true... Search "mardona" in ar.search.yahoo.com, and it says, "Hemos incluido los resultados para maradona" or, "We have included the results for Maradona." Oops. They left a back door.
  • by Viceroy Potatohead ( 954845 ) on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @05:36PM (#25739897) Homepage
    I decided to see if I could check the same filtering mechanism with Canada and the US. The only obvious thing that struck me to search for is 'lolicon', since I'm pretty sure it's illegal in Canada but not the states.

    The US results [google.com] (1,350,000 results)
    The Canadian results [google.ca] (1,230,000)

    Or am I missing some incredibly obvious other reason that these results are different?
    • My guess is that it depends on the exchange rate of Canadian dollar over US dollar, or something like that.

      Other examples with selected words from your post:

      "mechanism" : 86,9 million results (US) / 82,2 million results (Canada)
      "incredibly" : 43,6 million results (US) / 40,5 million results (Canada)
      "obvious" : 104 millions results (US) / 97 millions results (Canada)

      • by cHALiTO ( 101461 )

        Google's search algorithm produces different results in different localizations, I would think it gives more relevance to results in the same language and/or geography (i.e., in Google Argentina, results in spanish and from places close/in Argentina would be somewhat higher in ranking than the same results in Google.com).

    • No there's just less hentai in Canada, and more consumers of hentai in the United States; it's not illegal according to any statute here, we just don't have as many pervs as you do.

      That and we'd rather preoccupy ourselves with the Real Thing! [macleans.ca]
  • Search for mardona [yahoo.com]
  • Not content with simply not RTFA, slashdotters have given up on commenting on the article, prefering instead to comment on the grammar and wording of the headline.

    I'm sure that someone will point out the irony of me commenting about people not commenting on TFA any second now.

  • I just looked on Google maps, and I absolutely can't find it...

  • Do not go gentle into that good night
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light
    --Dylan Thomas

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