[LINK] Convergence Review Interim Report

Tom Worthington tom.worthington at tomw.net.au
Sat Dec 17 10:02:59 AEDT 2011


On 15/12/11 18:53, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> ...website - complete with advertisement for alcohol. This seems to be in
> breach of the code...

Having time of day restrictions on when content is available does not 
make a lot of sense on the web.

Google label their AdWords ads with a family status: "family safe" 
"non-family safe" or "adult." The definitions differ based on country: 
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=69787

Also Google have some curious rules about alcohol: "Google AdWords 
allows alcoholic beverages like beer, cider, sake, wine, and champagne, 
but we don't allow hard alcohol and liquor": 
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1308252&topic=1310883&answer=176005 


Of course this is well down the slippery slope of web censorship. You 
might think keeping alcohol ads from children is a good thing, but the 
same system can be used to ban ads for such dangerous products as "how 
to change your religion", "votes for women", "opposition political 
party" and "democracy".


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/



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