I have to laugh when I see video or pictures from the US where the "finger" is censored.
For anyone who takes offence from that: grow up. It's a finger, it's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by that it's because you choose to be offended by it. Grow up and get past that.
When someone is offended, the immediate reaction is that everyone must be offended. Those who are not offended have absolutely no bearing on this.
Thus, one person complains about, say, someone flipping Vs in a picture, and the picture is removed. How many other people saw it and weren't offended? We don't know. But they're probably a majority.
Further to that, the singular offended person has an extraordinary power to censor that which offends no one else. And the press can take advantage of that to manufacture outrage to fit their agenda. As happened with 'Sachsgate'[1] in 2008.
In all the treatment of the act of being offended, it comes across sometimes as a base human right. One that, as evidenced with the referenced link, is easy to abuse.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Brand_Show_prank_teleph...
If your computer crashes and you mutter "for fucks sake" to yourself, you're not hurting anyone. Anyone who gets upset over your language in this situation is just being 19th century.
The degree to which saying something such as "fuck you" is abrasive depends entirely on the situation - sometimes they probably deserve it, sometimes you would be being a dick.
Google cannot and is not outlawing anything. They're just building a certain kind of website.
Anyone from Southern Europe here? North Africa?
In the larger context of your comment, I have to cry when I see people moving their services outside the US, or moving to vendors outside the US, to ensure what used to be guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights.
They are free to do this, and rightly so. But people should be aware that this happens, and is a bad thing, so when a viable alternative is created, that doesn't suffer the same problem, they already know why they should move.
There is no "outrage". Nobody is being unreasonable by discussing this issue. Discussing this issue takes nothing away from the SOPA issue.