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steve2470

(37,457 posts) Sun Apr 15, 2012, 11:19 PM Apr 2012

Google's Brin Bashes Hollywood, China, Facebook as Enemies of Internet Freedom

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403063,00.asp

Google co-founder Sergey Brin unloaded on Facebook, Apple, anti-piracy advocates, and government censors in an exclusive interview with the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper published Sunday. Brin referenced "very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world," telling the paper that he didn't think it would be possible to create the company he founded with Larry Page in today's climate.

Brin, who reportedly took a lead role in confronting China over Internet censorship in 2010, said he had been proven wrong in his belief that it wouldn't be possible for an authoritarian government to restrict the Internet for very long.

"I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he told the The Guardian.

Government censorship like China's, which has been emulated by other regimes around the world, combined with efforts by the entertainment industry to control the flow of information over the Internet, and what he criticized as the "restrictive" practices of Facebook and Apple have left Brin troubled, he told the newspaper.