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American Companies Help China Censor the Net

Posted by michael on from the taking-care-of-business dept.

KyleNicholson writes "It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions. Here is a report by Amnesty International."

11 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Wouldn't be the first time... by cuyler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...if I recall correctly, IBM is an American company. Although I haven't read it (it's on the list of books I have to read) this book deals with the assistance that the 3rd Reich got from IBM.

    1. Re:Wouldn't be the first time... by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hey, in the 30's we didn't know IBM was evil! I mean, the Nazis. Well, we did know, but that didn't stop a lot of Americans companies from helping them. I don't suggest this mitigates IBM's responsibilities, but it does enlarge the topic of culpability, and the difficult question of ethics in corporations devoted to profit. (The current Ford is a remarkable contrast to his ancestor.)

      A conspicuous example was the ferocious anti-Semite Henry Ford, who received the highest civilian medal from Adolph himself -- and saw no reason to reject it. Another prominient American medalist was aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. As with newly-Soviet Russia, a lot of people made very poor judgments, and others may have had more sinister motives. IBM -- and I have to read that book, too -- appears to have been a case of willful blindness.

      This is all a good reminder of the moral indifference of technology itself. Like a gun, it can be put to purposes as varied as the imagination of the humans who use it.

    2. Re:Wouldn't be the first time... by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately, people aren't blessed with 20/20 hindsight.

      In the 1930's, nobody knew the extent of what the Nazi regime was going to do -- including most of the Nazis. They were just one of many right-wing nationalist regimes.

      If IBM was evil for selling typewriters and calculators to the Nazis, then you are evil for buying Arab oil, chinese consumer goods, or a korean car.

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
    3. Re:Wouldn't be the first time... by MacAndrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've wondered about this -- I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of sanctimony -- but I just don't buy it. It is easier to reconstruct what people knew and when they knew it than to decide when people of reasonable intelligence should have or probably did read between the lines. but for me, the 1935 Nuremberg laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and imposing numerous indignities were a point of no return. It was evident well before that that Hitler and his crew were a bunch of thugs. Finally the 1938 Kristallnacht was as blunt as one could get -- yet was met with apathy in the West. Our major affliction was not ignorance but isolationism, and it took Pearl Harbor to change our philosophy to interventionism.

      There is no binary switch between moral and immoral conduct. Nor was there a precise moment of epiphany that it was time to spurn the Nazis. But of course some companies crossed the line. And why should we think they did not -- not even one of them? Even today we see that corporate run the gamut from pristine to deplorable, so logically some companies must have continued doing business even after the writing was on the wall. They should acknowledge their mistakes, or at least all the facts surrounded their conduct, address any necessary restitution, and get on with things. We expect no less of ordinary shoplifters.

      If the plight of the Nazis Germans is not enough, recall that the infrastructure American companies helped Germany to build was in time turned against us.

      The example I mention elsewhere in this thread is Henry Ford, a virulent anti-Semite who even bought a newspaper to publish his views. A google of Ford and Nazi provides plenty of reading. Most dramatic is Ford receiving the highest Nazi civilian honor in 1938.

      Parenthetically, we are to varying degrees engaged in the problems with the trade issues you identify, perhaps too much, perhaps too little, according to whom you ask. But we do not have to be guiltless to smell something rotten from the past.

    4. Re:Wouldn't be the first time... by MacAndrew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, well, partially true -- and one of the reasons I admire President Truman taking an internationalist stance and promoting the Marshall Plan, with its radical notion of giving money (largely purchase credits to stimulate American production) to former enemies. And NATO, and the UN, and the Berlin Airlift, and .. he did some important work stabilizing post-war Europe.

    5. Re:Wouldn't be the first time... by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I disagree... the is a distinct point when a regime moves from a normal-everyday repressive dictatorship to a system as evil as wartime germany.

      Remember to that the German propaganda minister, Joeseph Goebbels, was a public affairs genius who portrayed a very different view of Germany. When people are given a choice between accepting a positive spin from an official source or accepting the unpleasant truth from an unknown source, they often choose the spin.

      Also remember that the US was fervently anti-communist and the Nazis were fighting the communists in Spain. Reports about concentration camps existed, but were not widely circulated and often disbelieved. (Also remember that most camps in the 30's were more like the the US's interment camps for Japanese-Americans than the Nazi horrors of the war)

      I am not trying to make excuses for the actions of corporations. But I do not think it is fair to cast blame without trying to realize their point of view.

      --
      Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  2. Business ethics have nothing to do with it by rlowe69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions."

    I really don't like this comment. These companies have nothing to do with China's policies, they are merely selling them a means to enforce those policies.

    These companies are conforming to a Capitolist society (ours) which dictates that if they don't help China, their competitors will profit instead. How about blaming Capitolist ideals for this? It holds more water than your ethics reasoning.

    --
    ----- rL
    1. Re:Business ethics have nothing to do with it by Bastian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you propose that if you can do something evil and profit, it is ethical to do so if you know full well that if you don't do it, someone else will.

      Let's extrapolate that to its logical extreme.

      Let's say I offered to pay you $500,000 to shoot someone in the head, and you knew that if you didn't do it, I'd go to someone who you know doesn't really care about having blood on his/her hands and would do it if you wouldn't. Is it then okay to shoot our poor captive in the head?

      How about if I were going to go shoot someone in the head, and asked you to sell me the gun. You know full well what my motive is. Would you really sell me the gun and ammo and defend yourself by saying that you had done nothing wrong, and were just engaging in commerce?

      Blame capitalism all you want. Capitalism is just an ideal that has some shitty implications. If someone helps to bring them about, we blame the person, not the ideal. If a neo-nazi went around burning synagogues, we wouldn't say, "Oh, don't blame him, blame neo-nazism!" If I joined a cilque whose culture was such that the best way to gain respect is to spraypaint storefronts, I would still be to blame for spraypainting the storefronts if I did it.

      Sorry, I don't think your ethics reasoning holds water, either.

    2. Re:Business ethics have nothing to do with it by Bastian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I never made any mention of legal/illegal.

      When I say 'is it okay' and 'defend yourself', I mean in the moral sense.

      Besides, in this particular case I think the arguments are equally valid (for different reasons) in both law and ethics.

  3. ..don't worry by zogger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..don't worry, the same action is coming soon to a country near you. The US and europe will be doing similar in the not too distant future. "Hate crimes", bogus "you are a terrorist because we say so", guilty until you have no chance to prove your innocence in front of a military junta tribunal, etc, etc. It's all "on track". Red China is the globalist wet dream poster child nation socio/economic ideal. I call it technofuedalism. And like all other tyrannical regimes in the past, most will go along with it, claiming "they didn't know", or "money has no conscious" or the famous "just following orders/doing my job".

    Humans don't change, they use every bit (and byte) of available technology to oppress people, to be predators, this is the nature of governments made up of at the top clinically insane megalomaniacs, similar to the international profits at any cost konzern heads. No matter how much these governments and the corporate cartel sponsors start out as a "deal" for the people, they always de-evolve into heinous dictatorships. The time line is the only variable, but the outcome never varies, that be carveth in stone. Whether the slogan is "hail caesar!" or "sieg heil!" or "let's roll!" or "power to the people!", or "allah akubar!" or "viva la revolucion!" or whatever, it always turns into a dictatorship.

    One of the first clues is government controlling the media and your access to it, and pushing their propoganda media efforts at you. This is called the "big lie", just keep saying it over and over again, eventually the bulk of the people believe it, because it's easier than finding out what's really going on. The second clue is not allowing citizens to be adequately armed. The third clue is massive government sponsored demonization of citizens outside their nation and inside, a de-humanizing effort to reduce some humans to less than human status. Currently in china you might belong to the "evil cult", in the US you might be called a "racist" for wanting the borders controlled, in europe you might be called a"nazi" if you really don't approve of massive socialistic command and control efforts, on and on. It never changes. In the past it was "he's a dirty injun" or "she's a filthy jew" or "they are just ragheads" or "they are guilty of crimes against the state", the all encompassing "terrorist" label that fits most situations.

    When governments go down that path, expect the "disappeareds", executions, torture, kangaroo courts, death camps eventually, it just happens, some nations at different times than others but it always happens.

  4. Blame the stockholders by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're the ones who would sue for the companies' failure to uphold their interests.

    They're the ones who would cause the stock to fall when a competitor entered the market instead. And it's a BIG market.

    There is no mystery about what is being taught in business ethics classes. Business ethics is first about due diligence and accountability to shareholders.

    Every system, including capitalism, has shortcomings. Of course there is a much better system, but I don't think it's been invented yet.

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!