Google Board to Shareholders: "Reject Anti-censorship Resolution"

[gonzo]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Defining "evil" isn't easy, and for Internet search behemoth Google it seems to have become much more complicated lately. The board of directors for the company, which has as its corporate motto "do less evil," has recommended shareholders vote down at the annual meeting on May 10 a resolution that would require the company to resist governmental censorship efforts.

The resolution, drafted by the Office of the Comptroller of New York City and included in a proxy statement Google prepared for the annual meeting, calls freedom of speech and freedom of the press "fundamental human rights" and notes "free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the [United Nations'] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to 'receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.'" Because "the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and … some authoritarian foreign governments such as the governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain…shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet."

The New York City comptroller's office serves as the trustee for several public-employee retirement funds that together own 486,617 shares of Google's Class A common stock valued at approximately $228.2 million. (Interestingly, the City Council of New York in February took a similarly tough stand in resisting the Patriot Act's provision that libraries, businesses, and governmental agencies comply with secretive federal requests for personal information about customers and employees.)

Rest of story at avnonline.com