Of Lacrosse and Machine-readable Passports

The American-Indians have been known in modern media to have a strong sense of community and have often been depicted protecting their "lands", even in less-than-diplomatic ways. This time, however, a news article I've read may have placed them under a different light: a victim of discrimination.

The Iroquois are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America, particularly found in the United States and Canada. They helped invent the game, lacrosse. From July 15-24, 2010, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship was held in Manchester, UK. But unfortunately, the Iroquois Nationals team was not able (allowed?) to participate in the event.

The UK has denied them entry into its territory for not having machine-readable, US- or Canada-issued passports. Not considering themselves to be citizens of the US nor Canada, the Iroquois lacrosee team, though eligible to get the passports, refused to acquire the said documents saying that doing so will be a "strike on their identity" as Iroquois people. After days of negotiating for their entry into the UK, the Iroquois Nationals decided to just forfeit their participation in the World Championships.

While some people may say that it is an "odd" and stupid decision to forfeit rather than just accept the papers, (One comment, read "Your people were conquered a very long time ago, get over it. Most of them are half white anyway") I admire the Iroquois for choosing what is more important to them. I admire them for letting go of a chance to win at a championship, and showing the world that they are champions of their own ideals.


May the Filipinos have the pride and the guts to do the same.

IMHO: Google and other search engines should offer a remedy for offensive search results

You googled your name one boring day just to check what pages and links and pictures will show when your names is searched. To your sheer surprise, hate blogs and pages which you don't want possible employers see appear on top of the search results. You panic and you should. Can you ask Google to remove that result?

To illustrate: When you search the name Michelle Obama, you may be directed to a results page where there's a picture of her that was edited so that she would look like a monkey in formal attire.

I searched for Google Webmasters Guidelines and Google's Terms of Service just to check how one can ask for a remedy for results like this. In one website, it reads, "Google Buys Search Ad For Offensive Michelle Obama Image Result" and apologized for the offensive search results, to wit:

"Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."

Google said, "We Don't Change Search Results For "Political Reasons", and it sure shouldn't but it really didn't offer remedies that a person may avail of when confronted with other reasons other than political. It didn't even direct the readers to a link where Google users can report. But should it? In my search for a remedy, I stumbled upon this Google site where you can report websites which you think is a spammer. You just have to fill out the form. You may also report through this websites that copy your content, photos, images, etc without proper attribution. But in the specified reasons for reporting, there is no option to report a website because the content is offensive. But then, what standards do you apply to this? Will hate legislation for example, which is implemented in some countries, be invoked to challenge the validity of a certain result pages? Will implementation be considered a curtailment of freedom of speech? Can you attack the algorithm used?

The anatomy of a search engine for me is complicated. Maybe because I don't understand algorithm too much. But when I think about the legal repercussions of this issue, I am tempted to research on it and make it a topic for my SLR, because in my humble opinion there should be a remedy--whether you are in the Philippines or in South Africa. But I have other topics to choose from. I will let Dean Carlota decide.


Tip: Before you go out on a date, google your suitor first.

Paulyn Duman
Blog#5

Other links:

Google Basic
How does Google know a website exists?

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