"Threat to Web Freedom Seen in Italian Google Case" - NYTimes.com

The core problem here is that Google's business plan cannot possibly support prior review of everything that is posted.

Newspapers - the printed kind - have always distinguished themselves by doing just that - reviewing what is published before it is published. With some exceptions, newspapers are fully responsible for everything they publish in print.

What's so bad about insisting that entities like Google do the same?

All of a sudden, the value of what newspapers have always done might become much more apparent to many.

And the world could escape much of the garbage that now gets added to the internet because no one is intervening.

Imagine an array of print and internet-based services which really have editors doing well what editos are professionally supposed to do - edit (i.e, choose, modify, reject, etc.).

Here's another good discussion of the case.

Both of the links from this post are to media that have real editors. That makes me a lot more confident in passing them on here.....

When was the last time you saw a printed newspaper talk about this difference?