Slashdot Mirror
Great Firewall Becomes Greater
Jay writes "This article on Yahoo! mentions China's new restrictions on websites as of September 1st. Apparently it's more advanced and doesn't censor the entire webpage, just portions. It also forwards requests for search engines, like google, to less effective search engines. They also mention that this might just be temporary during a Communist Party Congress. Anyone have a mirror?"
A different AP article spins things slightly differently, emphasizing that Google is apparently no longer blocked in China and mentioning the selective blocking of web content only in passing.
As any parent can tell you, telling your child not to look in the "forbidden closet of mystery" undoubtedly ends in your child doing the opposite. I think it's only a matter of time before the people of China put an end to the censorship.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
All it takes is one box being set up to mirror, or finding an unblocked box to route through...they're shooting themselves in the foot. For every major page they want to censor, there's a thousand more that aren't as prominent that will have the same political gist...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Sites that link to controversial Chinese sites. don't necessarily promote these idealogies; they are merely acknowledging their controversial nature. It reminds me a little of the Monty Python sketch about the world's funniest joke , and anyone who heard or viewed the joke would die of laughter. The premise of censorship is that offensive content contaminates the hearts and minds of people. But you can only have censorship if someone can judge content without himself being contaminated. This contradicts the premise of censorship, which alleges that these contaminating powers exist inherently in the offensive material. On the other hand, if a censor can censor without being contaminated, that implies that offensive content does not automatically contaminate the mind or heart of a person. In that case, you would be admitting that censorship is unnecessary. That is the contradiction of censorship.
Test China's Firewall
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I know that I'm going to be modded as a troll for not conforming to the masses yet again, but comon, at least be more imaginative than comparing every to 1984.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Corporations, OTOH, are not here to act as an ethical mouthpiece. They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules.
Your arguments are just a thinly veiled excuse for why corporations should feel free to do anything they like to make a buck. Don't think about what you are doing. If it's not explicitly illegal, just do it.
Ethics is (surprise) subjective.
Ethics is not nearly so subjective as you claim. If it was, colleges could not teach courses in "business ethics." The courses would all be over in one day with the summary "do whatever you can to make money because ethics is subjective."
I don't need my government to tell me that it is morally wrong to help foreign governments track down, arrest, and kill people for expressing their beliefs. I have a moral compass. I know right from wrong. So do the people running Cisco and Yahoo!. They simply choose to let their corporate greed outweigh their sense of decency.
If the Krupp offices in the US started going out and executing Jews in America during 1939 they couldn't just say "Hey, we do this in Germany all the time!"
By your "logic", Krupp in Germany did nothing wrong when they used Jews as slave labor, starving them and working them to exhaustion, and finally sending them off to be killed in the gas chambers when they could work no longer. After all, this was legal and "ethics is (surprise) subjective." Krupp certainly followed your definition of what a business should do: "They are here to employ citizens, make money, and follow the government's rules."
What's it like going through life with no sense of right or wrong?