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Yahoo Agrees to Censor Chinese Portal
Bonker writes: "This article at Salon indicates that Yahoo, as part of a larger pledge to 'purge the Web of content that China's communist government deems subversive', has agreed to censor 'pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability' from its Chinese portal. Yahoo is one of about 300 other ISPs and websites who have signed the 'Public Pledge on Self-discipline for China Internet Industry'."
What's going to happen when someone realizes the plans on how to build a rocket to get a man into space and in orbit are on a blocked website?
They are a business, if they want to make money in China, then they need to play by China's rules.
And somewhere, John Ashcroft is moaning with envy...
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are one of the nation's largest redistributors of magazines and other periodicals... so large, in fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a magazine for a month, it can break a publication financially.
Combine that with the fact that Walmart has always upheld a rather fraudulent reputation that it is interested in the concerns of senior citezens, religious organizations, and 'family-oriented' concerns, and you end up with something pretty scary. Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of content deemed innapropriate. Quite a few of the magazines in the U.S. have to run their covers and editorial content past Walmart for approval before they can go to press.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It amazes me that companies will put aside morals and values to make a buck in China. Yes, China is the largest untapped consumer group in the world, but the Chinese government has a histroy of its on subversive behavior. Perhaps when the government gets its head out of its ass and takes away MFN status from China we will see a change in China's treatment of its citizens. I guess maintaining a favorable GDP is more important than supporting the inalienable human rights we Americans feel are so important. I doubt Yahoo would ever do the same for North Korea and Cuba, but alas China has a billion consumers.
Is how submersive sites are judged.
Looking at the agreement summary, it is OBVIOUS to me Yahoo would sign it. While we like to focus (and we do) on how evil the chinese government can be (and they are), this may not be the best example of that.
What Yahoo seems to have agreed to:
1) Don't host anything illegal to your target audience.
2) Don't promote porn to China.
3) Don't attempt to incite revolution.
I'm sure once you take local laws into context (which their TOS already does, no doubt) it seems to be nothing they haven't already agreed to before.
Go ahead, post pictures to yahoo of hardcore porn where someone uses a bomb as vibrator and explains how to make it. See your browser smoke as they pull the page as fast as they can, even on Yahoo USA.
Never confuse volume with power.
But shouldn't someone (a large company) stand up against this oppressions of their people who deserve to have information? I hope Google doesn't fall into this soon. It's truely terrible how these people are treated over there..
I think that we should all come up with as many ways to circumvent China's "Wall" as we can. I don't see why the US is concerned with people's rights only in certain places, and never China.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
When companies like Yahoo! look across the Pacific at a large group of people fed bullshit & held under the thumb of an oppressive dictatorship and all they can think of is how they can buddy up to the gov't in order to get a crack at these "new consumers", I'd say that we have larger corporate ethics problems than Enron, kids.
Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
And I guess IBM was right in helping the Nazis?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
From on point of view, this seems a pretty dumb decision on the part of Yahoo. But on the other hand, if Yahoo just agrees to the contract to get the support of the Chinese government, then happens to drag it's feet and "forget" to censor things, it's a nice beaurocratic turn around until the Chinese government catches on and cancells the agreement, by which time more Chinese citizens will have taken a liking to Yahoo.
So, depending on how it's used and "enforced", this might yet be a good thing.
Ryan Fenton
This happened to Yahoo! in France with auctions of Third Reich memorabilia, and Yahoo! severely censored itself to a far greater extent to prevent further controversy in France. How could it come as a surprise that the ChiCom's would follow suit?
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
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Yugoslavia, Croatia, Estonia, etc... All those areas that US had troops for a long time trying to help out with humans rights and to stop WW3.
Somalia (think BH Down..)
Helping set up Isreal
Vietman- trying to free people from the communist oppression (failed terribely, but...)
Korean War..
There are many times that the US had meddled in others affairs trying to make them the way they "we" want them. Some for the better, some for the worse... but they have
Tibbon
tibbon.com
And PI got yanked because of corportate support.
Freedom of speech exists, but sometimes there is a price to pay. It may be that you may not get on the product list at Walmart, it may mean you lose your job. But the one thing it does mean is the government won't lock you away for it.
(or at least most of the time the government doesn't lock you away for speaking)
They'll post a question to "ask /." and we'll happily put list a few dozen mirrors and dozen posts will the full instructions listed "in case the mirrors are /.ed".
Heck, we'll also tell them what's wrong with the plans, wrong instructions on how to correct the mistakes, right instructions on how to correct the wrong corrections, and how to make a beowulf cluster out of them.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
We already had that. It was called Tiannemian Square Massacre. The Chinese just rolled over them. After that, they took footage OFF OF OUR BROADCASTS and then identified all the other students that they couldn't catch. ...And the people at the college HELPED them.
More likely, WalMart makes its guidelines for carrying a publication known, and editors have a choice whether its mission is compatible with that.
In Australia, apparently.
/me scratches head.
When it's France, however, the folks from Yahoo stand up and defend their right to independent content. Strange dualism going on there, wouldn't you say.
It also seems that all you need to get yahoo to pull certain content or messages is a few irate e-mails... Heck, even the Saudis have asked yahoo to regulate itself according to its government's preferences.
Where's the surprise?
They've always been like this.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Wasn't there a big stink about google accidentally removing some religous web page a while back?
So why couldn't people be simalarly upset when their page isn't listed in China? Just because a page of mine links to the BBC doesn't mean that I should be censored. Doesn't the fact that we have Freedom of Speech mean that when we speak, everyone should be able to hear that wants to?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Is there a website that tracks what is banned? It would be interesting to see what yahoo or any site picks to ban from China.
Table-ized A.I.
Why are people so quick to criticize China and so quick to forget America's abuses of "human rights" and "democracy"? This is a country trying to take care of 1 billion people. 1 billion people, can you imagine us doing that? We have 20 guys who decided to crash some planes, and the administration has already curtailed civil rights significantly.
Despite what you may think, the government of the United States is not open to all opinions, and it is hardly a place where rational people are in control. Take a look at this link to see what the requirements are for people entering the US. They're not exactly being welcomed in a freedom-of-speech, tolerating sort of way, now are they?
People seem to love picking on China because it's got the label "Communist" in it's name. I never ceased to be surprised at how much stupidity the word "communism" evokes among supposedly educated, rational people. How about all those countries who are our friends, yet commit far worse human rights abuses? Good for China, that it learned the lesson, "if you make products that people want, they could give a crap about human rights".
If you want to criticize others, I suggest that you first do some cleaning of your own house.
Yahoo.com doesn't display adverts with 14 year old girls in sexual situations, and Yahoo.de auctions doesn't sell Mein Kampf. Local portals are localised. Every page on the web breaks some law somewhere; it's just that some make more effort to comply with a particular (and arbitrary) bunch of local morality and laws, so that they don't have to spend all their money on lawyers. Get over it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
There are pretty active campaigns in the USA to shut down MP3 trading, "warez", movie trading, etc etc. We all know how well that has worked. You can't get any of that stuff on the net anymore. :)
Same deal here - as long as the net gets in to China, things that the government doesn't want the people to see will get in there too. Its the nature of the net, and the Chinese people are not stupid. If they want to see it, they'll find a way.
Of course the government was going to try to throttle the information flow - that's what they do. This is one dike that is waaay to big for even their fingers, I think.
Whereas in the US, some self-serving nutball like David Koresh might be able to get 100 or 200 people to follow them, in China, a charismatic psycho can get several million.
By "charismatic psycho," I assume you are referring to Mao?
All flamebait aside, the "problem" of people following Falun Gong is peanuts compared to the real problems (mass unemployment, declining peasant incomes, etc.) facing China in its transition to an open economic system.
China is very concerned about *accurate*, independent depictions of economic dislocation being more widely available. They don't want to publicize worker protests when local well-connected "entrepreneurs" close down state-owned enterprises, cutting off social benefits to thousands of workers while enriching themselves. They don't want to publicize the corruption of local tax collectors that impose arbitrary taxes on peasant farmers.
Instead, they want (oddly like George W. Bush) to promote the message that all these problems are a case of a few "bad apples" in what is a sound system, and that the Communist Party (with Jiang Zemin at the core!) is hard at work solving these problems.
The average Chinese peasant knows damn well that the goverment isn't offering any kind of "pay your taxes, the future will be better" promise. Instead, they are getting the "pay your arbitrary, illegal local tax levies, you don't have any recourse to the central government anyway" reality.
For the July 4th holiday, I spent a few days in a town in the Midwest. Downtown looked pretty dead, and everyone shopped at the Wal-Mart by the highway.
At one point I checked out the magazine section at the Wal-Mart, to catch up on the world. No such luck.
Outside of Time and Discover, there were absolutely *no* magazines that involved politics, current events, or any level of deep thinking. Everything was geared toward teenage girls, monster-truck fans, and needlepointing nannies. There was no Economist, Atlantic, or Harper's. I didn't even see US News or Newsweek. There certainly wasn't anything cutting edge or progressive.
Out of curiousity, the next chance I had, I checked out bookstores in the local yellow pages. 'Local' meaning a large rural area, about 50 miles by 100 miles. There is one medium-sized town in the area, and they have a Waldenbooks and an independent bookstore. But outside of that, the 5,000 sq. mile area held no other general-purpose bookstores. Just two children's bookstores, and around 10 Christian bookstores.
When Wal-Mart's the only game in town, after having driven most or all other retailers in town out of business, I think a new level of civic responsibility falls upon them. Similar to the way that a scrappy little operating system company in Albequerque can do as they wish, but when it moves to Redmond and becomes the dominant monopolist of the industry, new rules apply.
I'm not arguing for a law per se, but I think Wal-Mart, by taking over whole regions (one of their in-store slogans is "Why shop anywhere else?"), has now placed an ethical burden on itself.
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unlike the situation in China, you can move if you want. Move to an area where you have choice, move to a place that will sell you mags that you want.
I live in Seattle, and have plenty of choice; I was visiting the Midwest. But "move to a place you like better" is rarely a complete answer in itself, anyhow. Perhaps a person needs to take care of his grandmother. Perhaps he runs the family farm and doesn't want to give up on it. Perhaps he just likes the area and has friends there.
The fact that a person lives in a town without magazines outside of Wal-mart's selection does not mean that is not important to him. At most, it means that the selection issue is not strong enough to outweigh the things that keep him there. People are more complex than your explanation indicates.
Or if you don't want to move, open your own mag stand that sell all the mags that you want (and hopefully others will too).
Similar argument. Unless I feel strongly enough to move to that Midwestern town and take on Wal-Mart, I don't have a legitimate complaint?
I don't think that Walmart effects the nation as much as it reflects the nation. People want bland entertainment void of the ideas that stimulate.
I actually don't think Wal-Mart is intentionally screening out political magazines (although perhaps they are). So I agree with you insofar as you're saying Wal-Mart offers only what it thinks will sell. But my point is that it would be pretty hard to sell magazines against Wal-Mart in that town. Wal-Mart is the preferred shopping destination, not downtown. Even in a hip, BoBo urban neighborhood, a newstand is going to make most of their money from very mainstream magazines (ie, sports, entertainment, cars, home and garden). Even if all the political wonks in that Midwestern town stop by Fred's News to pick up The Atlantic once a month, it won't be enough to keep him in business, because Wal-Mart's got the bread and butter customers. So what ends up happening is Fred's News goes out of business, Wal-Mart doesn't offer The Atlantic, and the fact that there are two dozen potential buyers of The Atlantic in town is ignored.
Walmart is reflective of the status quo and if you don't like that, then please change it.
I do what I can. And I think my hypothetical above suggests why Wal-Mart in this case could be distortive, not reflective.
Matt Jensen
NewsBlip.com
Seattle
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...here.
It's simply amazing how many people buy into the "China is good to it's people, country X could learn a thing or two..." Damn, I'd love to ship them out to China for a few years and live how the actual citizen lives. When was the last time they had to stare down a tank barrel in hopes of furthering your cause against YOUR government. Or hijack TV and Satillites because it's the ONLY way you can communicate through the oppression? These people are total head cases. I invite them to actually take a look at the Chinese constitution, a document fit for nothing better than to be used as toilet paper seeeing how far it deviates from actual practice. Here's a small introduction to it for anybody who is curious (in last month's ep of /.)
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If the late 90s taught us anything, it would be "greed is bad" and "check your numbers". Now, companies are selling their integrity for access to the Chinese market. Sadly, it's a good business move.
Stop the brainwash
What would you consider to be examples of American `organizations' acting in a `totalitarian and domineering' manner overseas? What are your sources for these examples?
Here's a speech on the topic. A newspaper article is here originally published in the Boston Globe. There's a good essay on the subject here, although I am sure you'll pooh-pooh this one as you do anything associated with the UN, the author is extremely credible. I leave the rest of the trivial google searching you can use to do your own research to you.
Or to turn the whole thing on its head, since it is plain to even the metaphorical "Blind Freddy" that large companies get away with whatever they are not specifically prohibited from doing, and act in a totalitarian and domineering manner (click to look 'em up if you have trouble) whenever they possibly can (hence the extremely large amount of legislation existing to regulate corporate behaviour especially monopolistic behaviour) what point, exactly, are you attempting to make?
So the states having at least a case against Microsoft for anti-trust doesn't come under the definition of totalitarian? Did you follow that dictionary link or not!? And isn't, in fact, domineering a perfect word to describe "sharp" business practise, say, like Intel's? Both international American companies, both guilty of both these things both at home and abroad.
Boy you really bit on those 2 throwaway links - and here's what makes it so funny I especially picked those ones just for you! See, if you were actually as informed as you pretend to be, you would have put "domineering, totalitarian, american, company" or something like that into google, just like I did and found some sources of your own, just to make sure there was nothing out there to flaw your argument, or to make sure you'd get in pre-emptively if there was a source you believed that wasn't on your side on this one. Like say, the Boston Globe, that one stung a bit, didn't it? Illustrating in that excellent story that drug companies are acting in both a domineering (throwing their weight about) and totalitarian (running drug trials like that is the very definition, surely) fashion.
Did you do any of that? No, of course not, even when I explicitly suggested it in my previous post. Go away and do some homework you lightweight! LOL!
"So what you are saying is that, to be non-distortive WalMart must offer every single magazine in circulation, so as not to offend or displace 12 customers? Even if that magazine loses them money?"
What I'm saying is that, because Wal-Mart has become so huge in the lives of these small towns, they should make an effort to enhance the civic life by offering some civically-oriented magazines.
If there are 12 people in the area who will buy The Atlantic, Wal-Mart will not lose money on it. Magazines are usually distributed in bundles of about a dozen, and Wal-Mart will, in this hypothetical, sell them all. Perhaps this Wal-Mart could only sell 0 to 1 copies of Tikkun or Foreign Policy, in which case they would lose money. I wouldn't ask Wal-Mart to carry magazines that never sell. But I think they *should* carry civically-minded magazines of broad interest, even some that are marginal sellers, at a small loss, as a way of giving back to the community. (This is, to a small degree, what Fred's News does, too.) (Note that if Wal-Mart uses its well-known automated supply chain systems for magazines, they can manage supplies fairly well, can probably create their own bundles of 1 Foreign Policy, 1 This, 2 That, and might not lose anything at all on the political mags.)
"Even if they disagree with the content? "
Not carrying Actual Human Entrails is a decision of taste, which I support. Tell me what is so disagreeable about carrying a few mainstream political magazines. I think your response will be "but it's their choice to make". To which I say, a chain of Wal-Mart's size and power ought to offer this, if only to be friendly and neighborly.
As I said, I saw no content at all. No National Review, and no Mother Jones. So if they are in fact avoiding political magazines for content, they are opposed to all politics in their store, and not one particular view. In a way, I find this creepier than if they just carried one political viewpoint.
"Anyone within the reach of the United States Postal Service can get virtually any magazine they wanted delivered with a simple phone call."
Maybe you don't appreciate all the services that a good newsstand provides to a community. Most obviously, it allows me to read anything of interest without having to subscribe to all the magazines the newsstand carries. Browsing is valuable. It gives me cheap access to everything, it shows me magazines I might not know about, and it shows me an interesting cover story on a magazine I normally am not interested in.
There are other benefits, too, some of them more subtle. For example, if you're in a newsstand with a real range of content, you get a different feeling than if you're in Wal-Mart's (current) magazine aisle, large as that aisle is. You sense some of the variety in thoughts and lifestyles of people around the world, and it is ennobling. If Wal-Mart would drop 5% of the dreck they carry and include some more intelligent stuff, you could get the same kind of feeling in Wal-Mart.
"And no, in a capitialist society, if you do not care enough to make a market decision then you have no legitimate gripe."
You're trolling me, right? So after September 11th, our response should have been to tighten embargoes on Afghan imports, because The Market solves all. Brilliant.
So, who's censoring whom? Let's look in today's news...
, 00 .html
...
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53873
{{{
Israel Blocks Palestinian ISP
By Noah Shachtman
For hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, getting to work, school or the market has been virtually impossible since Israel's latest anti-terror campaign began. Now, they won't be able to get online, either.
Early Monday morning, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops took over the offices of Palnet, the leading Palestinian Internet service provider, shutting down the firm's operations. The move -- part of Israel's 3-week-old "Operation Determined Path," which has kept seven of the eight major Palestinian cities under strict curfew -- reduced Internet access to a trickle in the West Bank and Gaza.
"The Israeli army stormed the office building where six (Palnet) employees were believed to be staying in order to maintain Internet service during this difficult time," the Palestinian pro-democracy group Miftah said in a statement. "Explosions were heard and the fate of the six (Palnet) employees is unknown.
IDF sources verified that troops were operating in the Palnet building, but
could not confirm any details of the operation.
}}}
FP.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
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It is amusing, isn't it, especially since 'my books' have nothing to do with it - I was just using the dictionary definition I posted. Definition 2b. from memory. So yet another link you didn't click for fear of voiding your arguments eh, neocon? Newsflash: Totalitarian is also an adjective, and since companies are not governments it can hardly be the noun definition we're all talking about here, right? Simple logic.
And then you go on to say that running drug-trials in an attempt to find a better AIDS drug is `domineering'? don't forget totalitarian.
Wrong again sport. I didn't say that at all - the Boston Globe article did. Stings, doesn't it? You mean to say you actually support how the companies in that article were behaving in Africa?
Sigh. You should have a sig, and it should say "Anything you say can and will be ignored while I, neocon, make up stuff you didn't say and attack that instead."
"why should successful magazines subsidize unsucessful magazines?"
...(b) contrary to the beliefs of the founders/principles"
There's nothing wrong with letting the profitable subsidize some unprofitable stuff, if overall *success* means more to you than just profit. This is why, for example, book publishers and movie studios will put out prestige titles that they know won't sell well, and are likely to lose money. They let the Bruckheimer flicks subsidize the occasional deep flick. In part because they want a shot at awards, and in part because studio execs are like everyone else in that they want to be viewed as sensitive, intelligent people and not money-grubbing hacks.
"So lets say they carry 10 "mainstream" magaizines at that lost - thats $1M a year in losses [for the whole chain]."
I'll take your numbers for now. But those are costs, not losses. If the 50% of political mags that sell go for $4 each, then they pay for themselves. Also, assume 300 other titles, again 12 copies per title, 80% of which sell, at $4 (cost to store is still $2). Total costs are $7440, total sales are $11760. So yeah, I think a store can afford to subsidize quality with $240. Monthly sales * 1000 stores * 12 months = $140 million, so $1 million for more variety is a small cost of doing business. Since Wal-Mart is by far the biggest retailer in the country, they have many, many costs of doing business that are over $1 million. Please keep their scale in mind.
And again, they can fine-tune their offerings because of their huge scale and their automated supply chains. They don't *have* to buy 12 copies of The Atlantic per store!
Plus, they might easily find they grow the market for The Atlantic. At least they can, with some pride, start advertising their magazine selection the same way they advertise their movie and music selection ("oh yeah, we got it all here, what do you want, rap, country?" You've seen the ads). There's no way they could advertise their current magazine selection without the media laughing at them. Advertising could very easily lead to an increase in magazine sales across the chain that makes this whole cost/profit discussion moot.
"for WalMart, carrying the "enlightened" stuff you want them to is
Well, we don't know that in this case. We know it for certain kinds of music selections, but we don't know if the lack of politics/issues magazines is on principle or simple supply/demand projections.
>You're trolling me, right? So after September
>11th, our response should have been to tighten
>embargoes on Afghan imports, because The Market
> solves all. Brilliant.
"Well first off, there is nothing to suggest that we'd be any worse off with regard to Afganistan than we are now if that had of happened. But second, no, I am not suggesting that economic principles can be applied to military conditions. I have no idea why you attempted to twist words as such. Notice how I prepared my statement by saying "in a caitialist society". Would you describe Afganistan as fitting that bill? Would you say that terrorists respond to market pressures? No, of course not. "
Oh, I see. I thought you meant that since the U.S. is a capitalist society, or that capitalism is the basis of our morality, market forces are the accepted and proper way to deal with disputes. But now I think you mean it is just practical. That is, we are all capitalists here, and we all (including Wal-Mart) respond best to market forces, so they are the most effective means to use. In which case your comments are advice, and not based on a moral imperative.
Well thanks, but my own opinion is that I'd be more effective (if I wanted to devote serious time to this concept) by complaining about Wal-Mart on Slashdot, and organizing some kind of consumer movement, than I would by packing up for this small town and trying to set up my own Fred's News to compete with the local megastore.
I guess you could call organizing consumers a form of market decision, although it's not really the organizing itself, but the act of me not buying that is my market decision. And isn't my staying in Seattle a market decision, through which I'm stating that I prefer not to live in that town and shop at that Wal-Mart? That's what you suggest above, that I "avoid doing business with them". But that's very different from before, when you suggested I move into town to compete with them.
That's a problem I have with "market forces" as the primary answer to any problem in this country. A human can only do so many actions, and many of them conflict with each other. And it may be impossible to tell from an action what message, if any, they were trying to send. As in my earlier post, it may be that someone in that town doesn't like what Wal-Mart has done to that town, but has other family or business ties that keep them from moving. ALL that can tell you is that Wal-Mart isn't such a living hell to them as to overwhelm everything else in their lives. One can't take their presence there, alone, to say much of anything about what they think of Wal-Mart. But that's okay. People are complex, and despite what Randians may think, it's perfectly okay to view them as complex, driven by many (sometimes conflicting) motivations.
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You conflate the principles of democracy with those of capitalism. You urge me to think like a capitalist, yet suggest I change my life and startup a business to make a political point, rather than to make money. Your two suggestions (organize resistance, or start a competitor) would put me on opposite market positions (producer/consumer). I find this all confusing.
Is any action acceptable, so long as it is a "market" action? Don't my arguments in this thread count as "tell[ing] friends and family to all complain?"
Anyway, I've enjoyed our discussion so far, but I saw nothing new and useful in the last exchange, and I don't feel you responded to my diabolically clever points. So for now I'll agree to disagree. Cheers,
Matt