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Amnesty Calls Shenannigans on MS, Sun, Cisco
ZurichPrague writes "Amnesty International is claiming Microsoft, Sun, Nortel and Cisco, among others, have broken the law by selling filtering technology to China, helping that country implement its censorship. Is Amnesty right? Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies? C/Net has the story here."
The royal "we" might not be right in selling it, but corporations exist for one reason: to make money. For good or for ill, there are no moral obligations placed on them. They develop a product, someone wants to buy it, they sell it. End of story. Stop anthropomorphizing them.
Internet censorship is no better than a Nazi bookburning. Doesn't make a difference if they're blocking printed text or unicode.
There is definitely a moral issue here - should companies help suppress freedom in other countries?
But is there really a legal issue here? I'm not so sure.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
So, except for MS, Sun, etc. are the search engines also breaking the law?
The morals of many large US based corporations are bound by the desire and appeal of the "Almighty Buck". i.e. as long as it generates revenue, it's morally correct for the company to do so.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
At this point that's really too bad that someone is selling technology to China that blocks out websites, but does this really surprise anyone?
They're filtering the internet. It happens in libraries and schools in the U.S. all the time. In this case it's nation wide, but it's not as if the Chinese governemnt wouldn't have something to filter the internet in place if Sun, MS and Cisco weren't selling the stuff.
One could argue that China is better off with some filtering but access to the internet rather than no filtering and no 'net access. Sure, they block a lot of sites, but I'm willing to bet they don't get them all. Add on to that the fact that people are probably working just as hard coming up with ways to get around the filters.
This is a classic example of information wanting to be free, and it will be. Anything they have in place to block information will fall short. The filtering technology WILL fail, and then billions of people will have acess to the 'net. If the Chinese govt. wants to spend millions on technology from U.S. companies, that's fine by me.
Seeing that all these companies are publicly traded entities answerable ultimately to the shareholders for their actions, perhaps the first place Amnesty International should put their reports in the hands of ones who invested in the companies to begin with.
Oh, the shareholders don't care? Carry on then. There's no news here.
As much as I like AI, I disagree with them on this. People are going to get items that can be used in questionable ways - technology, guns, drugs, whatever - from someone.
I guess it's idealistic, but I sometimes think that people can deal with the issue of why do people want to censor others, or take drugs, or etc, rather than getting offended that it happens. I know that's not the case though, and I also know companies exist to turn a profit, so I guess in the end I don't really care about China censoring its citizens since it doesn't involve me directly.*
*I know that's a terrible thing to say, but it's how people feel. *shrug*
,
faeryman
AFAIK, international internet lines from a given country are not THAT numerous, and are usually owned by either the government, universities and telecom companies.
Either case, it's very likely that the Chinese government has way to control whatever goes through there. And if they cannot buy American products to do so, then they'll just develop their own.
Is Amnesty thinking that they have no programmers? And if the companies comply, what is really going to change?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Maybe / maybe not but consider this
Industrial Leaders
It is easy to forget about prominant business men when focusing on figures like Eichmann or Hoss, but the industrialists who were eager to create factories at Auschwitz were perpetrators of the horror too.
Many prominent German corporations, among them Krupp, Siemens and Bayer, were interested in what might be negotiated. Auschwitz began developing a network of outlying subcamps, thirty-four in all. Soon, the prisoners worked at a cement plant, a coal-mine, a steel factory and a shoe factory.
The biggest of these Auschwitz subcamps was the I.G. Farben plant. The plant was known as Buna because its principal purpose was to produce synthetic rubber; its other main installation was a hydrogenation plant designed to convert coal into oil. The Auschwitz factories were the largest in the Farben empire. Conditions at Buna were much like those at Auschwitz. The dawn roll calls, the starvation rations, the labor gangs sent out for twelve hours at a time, forced to work at the gas chambers and furnaces, beaten by guards, harried by giant dogs. The prisoners who died of overwork (dozens of them every day) had to be hauled back to camp at nightfall so that they could be propped up and counted at the next morning's roll call.
Ultimately, around 25,000 people were killed during the construction of the I.G. Farben plant.
Help fight continental drift.
is suing those very same corporations for selling this techology to parents to filter out porn.
More info at Teen Magazine.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
These hippies believe the entire world needs to conform to their view point and anything and everthing else is wrong. How open minded....
Their own Red Flag linux most likely has better filtering technology.
They will probably find that MS sold them an inferior "innovated" version of their own technology.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
The technology is neither a state secret nor a type of munitions. No law was broken. What is a problem is that the technology was allegedly used to violate human rights. Whether this is right or wrong depends on your fundamental belief of what a corporation's primary goal is: maximizing profits, or benefitting the world.
The other angle is that the technology has legitimate uses (for example, in a corporate setting). If the technology is used for bad purposes, are the creators liable for it? Place the blame where it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of China.
I'm partial to the PIC since its, well, a PIC and I'm used to developing for them.
The First Amendment only applies to America. In fact, to be more specific, it only applies to public areas. The First Amendment does not apply on my property. And it doesn't apply on Chinese property either.
Besides, we're practically the only country that fights so vigorously for every form of free speech. The Europe Union has no problem banning hate speech it finds destructive, and other countries have their own free speech problems. I do agree with Amnesty is fighting for more free speech. But its absolutely wrong to call these actions illegal when American companies are providing solutions to allow other countries to enforce their own laws.
--
Old actors don't die, they just go to Old Navy
Although I know nothing about the laws governing censorship, including the export of products for censorship, I do think Amnesty is wrong in this case. Amnesty Internation needs to focus on the fact that China is censoring its citizens. If Microsoft, CISCO et al. don't provide solutions, someone else will.
Since I heard about China buying censoring technology from the US, it has bothered me that companies' ethics aren't better. IMO it's a major source of social decay in any country when companies are allowed to do whatever they want. What kind of example are they setting as corporate citizens of the community?
What if I wanted to write software for the mafia? I could just pretend the software wouldn't be used for illegal purposes. Would that be ethical of me? Could I be aiding and abetting (to assist or support in the achievement of a purpose) known criminals? Of course. How is this different than aiding known human rights violators?
That's what I thought. The controllers are similar in functionality, however, the Atmel has dedicated Xtal pins where you would have to use two i/o pins on the PIC.
Oh dear, I'd better go get my shovel..
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Is it still civil disobedience if the law is in another country and in no way applies to you?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Nowhere in that C/Net story does anyone accuse those companies of breaking a law. And what law would they be breaking?
I am confused.....you say they have broken the law.
What law have they broken. US laws don't govern the sovergn country of China.
Or would you like them too ?
Would AI get bent out of shape if China started using Free/Open Source software extensively in its filtering and blocking efforts? If so, why? By its nature free software is free for anyone to use, even totalitarian regimes who want to use the software to limit the freedom of those they rule.
This whole thing sounds a lot like the old "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Not "Shenannigans", but "Shenanigans"
Good or bad? Well, the communist regime is scared to death of letting the information flow freely inside of China. That would jeopardize their position. Personally, I want the information to be free. But it doesn't matter what you, me or Amnesty says... the communist regime does what they think is necessary to keep their country together under their control.
As for the US filtering technology they bought... it's just an interim solution. There's a love and hate relationship between the communist regime in Beijing and the US... they love getting the new technology, but they don't trust the US. Once the software shops inside of China are up to speed, they're going to build their own filtering software. All in the plan of being self-sufficient.
As far as the US courts are concerned human beings are far inferior to corporations.
We're talking about secondary or tertiary effects here, at best. China happens to be using technology purchase from US manufacturers for something that's morally reprehensible. How or why should these manufacturers be held responsible for the way that it's used unless it was sold directly to them for that sole purpose? Unless Amnesty can show that these companies helped advise them on such censorship solutions, I don't think they have a case. If they want, Amnesty can basically point the finger at anybody who's involved in the chain, including Intel for supplying processors and Belkin for supplying ethernet cables. Probably as "guilty" are open source projects, which not only give them a product but the source to manufacture it at will!
Isn't Yahoo REQUIRED to filter out pro Nazi content on their German site?
Isn't e-bay REQUIRED to prevent selling Nazi artifacts to visitors from Germany?
So limiting peoples freedoms in Germany is OK, but its taboo in China?
- Remember kids, dressing up like Hitler in school is not cool.
In the short run, I don't think it makes any difference that some entrepeneurs are making money from the tyrants. In the long run, those who are oppressed by tyranny will eventually be freed by nothing but knowlege.
Sex - Find It
Now Amnesty thinks Windows is reliable and does what you want it to do.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
American companies seem to like supporting "oppressive" technologies in public... What's to say they haven't already created a great firewall of america?!?!?!?
These companies should be fined. I know they did nothing wrong, but these were the very companies which did nothing to prevent DMCA from becoming a law. Actually they thought it would help them. The crime is exactly the same. They implemented something that might be used for doing bad. Actually this is much worse. While Johanson (Don't know the real spelling) only wrote DeCSS, but did nothing against copywrites, these companies actually sold their software to China for the specific use of Censorship.
While they are at it Amnesty International should also sue the companies providing censorship software to the Libraries (which blocks unsuitable material), France (which blocks nazi material), etc. Oppenheimer is actually the worst perpetrator. He produced a technology knowing well how it would be used. And it killed millions of Japanese. I think Oppenheimer should have been hanged.
At the end I think Amnesty International is after some quick bucks.
...I'm gonna pistol-whip the next guy who says "shenanigans!"
If you don't get the reference, get thee to Blockbuster.
A little off-topic, but the US Government is guilty as all hell of something like this. The similarity being they've given away _weapons_ to all sorts of crackpots for purposes of causing 'ill'. So I don't think these companies should have any flack dished their way for supplying a technology to China. Who has their policy of filtering in place, and will continue to do so whether these companies sell them technology or not.
Careful not to miss the human side of this issue. I don't know what the people rotting away in prison said on the Internet, but Amnesty doesn't think they deserve to be locked up.
Note: the above link is not English. Non-Francophones may wish to give machine translation a shot.
After the war, IG Farben's HQ in Frankfurt was taken over by the US Army and the company split up. The process of denazification could not be complete though because the plants were vital to the reconstruction of post-war Germany.
What is relevant is that this was the first "Corporate Death Penalty" of a major corporation for moral reasons.
I seriously do not think that obtaining the technology is a limiting factor in here. Even though, I have been an amnesty member for some years, I believe this shot goes to wrong direction. Maybe they could have pointed at only the Websense company, whose main purpose is producing filtering technology. Maybe they should not have pointed at any of those companies. When you know that currently you can get killed and tortured for using internet in china I think there is some more concrete issues to concentrate on. Like concentrating all power into freeing those (I heard there were tens of) people) who are in prison because they "used the internet" right now - maybe amnesty could instead make these companies look like saints and request help in this task for them.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or C|Net and I read different reports, but the Amnesty International press release is considerably grimmer than what C|Net selectively relates.
To give you a hint, the document is entitled "China: Internet users at risk of arbitrary detention, torture and even execution."
This is censorship with a big rock, not benign filtering, the occasional arrest and whoops a death or two in custody. "Benign" filtering software would probably be useful to track down suspects, a sinister dimension. Change anyone's minds?
This does remind me of the risk of trusting the press; even if the Amnesty report proves to be baloney, C|Net did not accurately describe it, or provide a link to it.
Code is speech, right? Don't I have a first ammendment right to distribute it to whomever I want? I don't think it's wise for the government to make (more) laws on what kinds of software can and can not be exported.
On the other hand, I'd like to see some Congressmen condemning Microsoft's executives as treasonous scum, and a call on real Americans to use Open Source alternatives.
..than fight.
Probably. These are corporations in the business of making money, particularly if they're selling the same products they sell to other areas.
The artical doesn't mention whether or not amnesty is refering to out of the box appliances, or custom solutions designed from the ground up to the customer's specs. Anyone care to shed some light?
That's the old, "if we don't do it, someone else will, so why not?" argument. If we don't sell weapons to UNITA, someone else will, and dammit, we don't want the Belgians and Germans to make money when we could be! Why bother with an arms embargo on Serbia, when someone else will just sell them weapons?
The fallacy with this argument is that first, the technology being sold by Cisco, et. al. is not irreplaceable, but it's not exactly easy to simply duplicate in a commodity fashion. It would take a concerted effort to conduct this blocking using other equipment. Sure, it wouldn't stop them, but it would make it more difficult, thereby giving the information more of an opportunity to achieve freedom. Of course, the information doesn't just suddenly attain free status on its own, it takes people to make it free.
The other fallacy is that there's a moral equivalency between profiting from unethical or immoral behavior, and choosing *not* to profit from it. If someone does something wrong, and you assist them in that endeavor, you're doing something wrong, too.
I certainly don't expect big companies like M$ and Cisco to deny themselves the opportunity to do business with the Chinese government. I'm not naiive. However, even big multinationals are very sensitive to public opinion. Witness Nike and the sweatshops, the growth of Fair Trade Coffee, and so on. If we do nothing when companies engage in amoral profiteering, it's no wonder we expect it from them.
I don't share your belief that the Chinese system of control over information flow will somehow magically disappear on its own. Not only that, but the US supposedly represents freedom of expression. How are those millions of Chinese going to feel about American rhetoric about freedom when we've been profiting from the squelching of freedoms in their country?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
What laws were broken by selling stuff to China? the companies are doing what they are there to do - to make a buck; while the moral grounds on which these actions stand may be questionable, so far the story does not provide any evidence whatsoever that these companies are breaking US or Chinese laws.
At the same time, I just want to repeat Lenin's lil phrase "A capitalist will sell the ropes for the hanging of another capitalist".
To a great (and depressing) extent, this is very true. Corporations are not doing things because they are The Right Thing (tm), but because it makes more profits. But then the reason for corporations to exist is always to make profits, so what the hell you guys expect? look at all the company motto and "visionary statement", around and around it circles the "stockholders." Not the hungry kids in wherever, not the mother earth, and sure as heck not the principles of all that's good and right.
So to have a system like this, you gotta live with the consequences, which is that sometimes companies will do morally questionable things, and sometimes illegal things. the illegal we can bust them - but the morally questionable, well...
Lastly, what you guys think if the US government started buying censoring technology, MS, Sun, Cisco, whoever won't jump on it right away? and how exactly is that any better from selling the same technology to China / Cuba / whatever?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Procmail developers were sued by Amnesty, because they helped in censorship and filtering.
geez, that government must be really -evil-, thank god that the equipment of those companies doesnt get used for censoring in their home country, oh wait..
if amnesty international wanna make a difference why dont they go after weapons manufacturers? after all a gun is more likely to kill than a firewall or router.......unless the firewall is actually on fire hehe ;P
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Yes, I speculated about this, with reference to American figures, in our last go-round. Ford was a big player.
IBM supplied machines to Nazi Germany to count the number of people, um, "processed" in the camps.
Corps have always been about money first, people second. IT seems to be particularly ruthless. Maybe it's about time we got some ethics into the business?
Bah. Ferdinand Porsche designed, built, and sold transportation (guess where Volkswagen got its start?) and armor (yes, there was a Porsche-designed tank) to the Nazi military machine. Does that mean Porsche the company is bad? Should you not want a Porsche? BMW provided engines for the Luftwaffe, and after the war were no longer allowed to make airplane engines, so they turned to cars. Should you not buy a BMW now because of that?
Pretty much any German, Italian, or Japanese company that's been around since WWII will have done something to support the war effort at the time. Is that a reason to boycott them now? I think not.
And as far as China and censorship goes, how are they any different than France (except in severity), who don't allow any searches, auctions, etc on Nazi memorabilia?
(And before anybody gets it in their head, let me just state outright that I'm not a Nazi sympathizer. I'm simply making a point.)
If the American state works so hard to supress freedom in other countries, in order to get more freedom for American citizens... Why should the major americans have higher moral standards?
I mean... They're getting money for selling a product, thereby making the american economy better => more freedom for american citizens, to do what they think is fun!
RIGHT?!?!
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
I'm declared shenannigans on those open source types... they scare me with their NetBSD toasters, and that free software - Not in my capitalistic country - NEVER!
And that Stallman guy looks like he's out to take over the world with his beady eyes and long beard - you know he's up to no good...
I don't think Amnesty is attempting a legal argument. I also doubt there is a law on point, though one could be written. The only significant effort to restrict exports that I can think of was the gov't's efforts to contain cryptography. Also, export of many goods to certain restricted countries ("axis of evil") is very tightly regulated. China's not on that list.
As I point out in another post below, the Amnesty allegations go well beyond suppressing freedom of speech, to torture and execution.
Should it be a legal issue? (he asks rhetorically)
...and Microsoft filtering technology than build custom hardware and write or customize their own code. This way our Chinese friends won't have to wait nearly as long before ways to hack and/or circumvent the censorship scheme become known.
Meanwhile, those who are inclined to worry about what gets into whose hands could perhaps focus their attention on something more worthy of our worries, like the shitload of soviet plutonium that is still unaccounted for.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Internet censorship is no better than a Nazi bookburning. Doesn't make a difference if they're blocking printed text or unicode.
/. have been so eager to criticize?
These companies might be selling technology that could be repurposed to suppress freedom to an oppressive regime, but the Open Source community is willing to give it to them for free.
If Amnesty had published an article on the Chinese government using ipchains or squid in the Great Firewall, or using Perl to search proxy logs for who was looking at unapproved sites, would
Is there a war crimes charge for slashdotting a human right organization? Poor Amnesty International!
Trying to influence other countries by restricting technology is a losing proposition--it just forces them to become more independent. If we wanted to get the attention of the Chinese, restricting imports of their low-cost products would do much more. But we aren't principled enough for that--instead we give the Chinese MFN status.
Its not the corporations who exist expressly for the sole purpose of profit. Its also partly the US Govt fault.
Arms dealers for example, would love to sell arms to anyone who is ready to shell $$. However the government restricts the sale via the Export Regulations act to govts/entities which MAY use the technology for aggressive actions against other entities.
Shouldnt the export regulations be extended to materials which can be used by govts/entities against their own citizens ?
The sword cuts both ways.
h tml
Check this list out.
http://code.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.
ABC
BBC
CBS
All blocked. I especially like the http://sourceforge.net block.
Is this the price of freedom is knowing how powerless we are against power?
dgd
And this would bother a Libertarian because?
The amusing thing is that while Libertarians advocate that individuals take responsibility for their actions, this doesn't apply to businesses, whose sole responsibility is to make profit. For them, NOBODY has moral responsibility for the actions of a business.
So you get people willing to make excuses for Cisco, who very definitely was knowingly involved in building the Great Firewall of China. So if a business chooses to belch megatons of pollution into the atmosphere from its own property, this is OK. If Cisco wants to build products for customers who want to use them to target people for execution, this too is OK. I've seen complaints about pure food and drug laws from any number of Libertarians. The engineering consulting firm that designed the Auschwitz gas chambers is still in business.
One cornerstone of Communist doctrine is that "The capitalists will sell us the rope required to hang them." I am certain that Marx and Lenin had exactly the kind of capitalists discussed above in mind.
My point is that a real Libertarian would look at the above paragraphs and wonder why anyone would think this wasn't OK, mistake me for a socialist, maybe write a lame flame, and go on about his business.
The people here who support Cisco's right to do business in a way that targets people for state-sponsored murder, torture, and imprisonment aren't like the rest of us. It's a religious thing normal people just don't understand.
The good news is that this will keep the Libertarians from ever becoming a major political force in America.
Tech Public Policy stuff
To be technical, true morality is not "placed" on anyone, it is adopted and internalized.
Regardless, you're right that a corporation is an artificial person like Data -- the law does anthropomorphize them for many purposes, for example a corporation may sue or be sued, is taxed as an entity, and can be found guilty of a crime (if not jailed). It enjoys privileges and assume burdens, but is fundamentally amoral. But that doesn't mean that it can't choose to concern itself with corporate responsibility; nor that we can't lobby it to do so; nor that as a bare minimum of good business sense most public companies will at least attempt to comport their activities with public opinion, for fear of damaging share price or customer good will.
So we do place moral obligations on them. They don't have to worry about whether they're going to heaven or hell, but they do need to respond to the world around them, if for no other reason than good business. They don't live in a business school beaker.
The level of responsiveness varies widely. The pressure on companies not to do business in apartheid South Africa, and on univerities and trusts to divest themselves of stock in these companies, was particularly bitter.
When you're reading slashdot, you should look out for links from makeashorterlink.com
The reason is that some people might use this to disguise links to websites that you may otherwise not want to go to.
Personally, I like the motorola HC11.
Evil is in the eye of the beholder. Where do you draw the line?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
We who create technology are not responsible for what politicians do with it. Read Steven Levy's "Hackers" for this same damn issue from 25 years ago, or Richard Rhode's "Making of the Atomic Bomb" if you want to go back 50 years.
"There is a time for scientists and movie stars and people who have flown
the Atlantic to restrain their opinions lest they be taken more seriously
than they should be." - Edward Teller 1954
The latest Slashdot meme.
All users and manufactors of technolgy can easily be said to have a moral obligation to ensure that it is used in a manner that does not violate moral/ethical standards.
:)
It can also be said that what is invented, can not be uninvented.
If companies like MS, Cisco, Nortel and Sun didn't go along with the Chinese govt, then they would have simply gone elseware, the technology is largly open and as such they could have invented their own version. Instead they went with the pre packaged version.
bottom line: don't blame the tech, its how you use it...
...for what happened to IG Farben, considering that its successor entities are prosperous multinational giants to this day.
See The intro to the crimes and punishmant of I.G.Farben.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
how come china, while being probably the oldest civilizaton extant, is also one of the lousiest places to live in the whole world?
C/Net has the story here.
Slashdot also has a story here
Oh wait...
I saw an interview with the author of this book called IBM and the Holocaust. It strongly ties the capability of systematically killing the Jews to the abilities of the Hollerith machine (run on punch cards) which IBM specifically customized for the purpose of organizing and sorting people.
WWII, I feel, had a lot to do with the very fast development of production, and technology in general at the time. The author, Edwin Black, says the scale at which the holocaust took place would not have been possible without the help of IBM's machines, and their engineers.
This is really not much different, in my opinion. Cisco is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, which is a US based stock market. The shareholders (mostly US citizens) should be ultimately responsible, not only for ensuring profits, but also be held responsible for any misdeeds the company commits...
As another poster puts it; its one thing if they are buying the equipment off the shelf and using it for censorship. It is quite another if the companies are tailoring their products to these requirements in anticipation or in response to demand...
if it's pretty clear what the technology is going to be used for, it is morally wrong. And don't even try to justify it.
But I suppose censorship isn't the worst form of manupulating populace, since it is quite up front. The state admits that it doesn't allow you to look at various information. The more subtle way is in fact more effective. Don't censor the information, just be in a position to manipulate it; I'm sure many of us are quite familiar with this concept (yet many aren't).
no one ever seems to care when we sell bombs and other tools of mass murder to israel so why not.
I mean it only censors poor people.
Who cares if people get censored, blown up, shot, poisoned, i mean peasants and workers are barely people anyways.
Why let the workers and peasants get in the way of profits?
until that day, these monster companies sell those tweaked equipment/program to your_government/your_ISP/your_boss, and you got arrested and tortured to death just because you say "DOD sucks, they use our taxes in some way without our permission!" on slashdot.
i hope some of the above posters can still say: "hey, business is business, what's wrong with MS/SUN/CISCO anyway?!"
just put yourself in other's shoes for a moment before you post non-sense. you insensitive clod!
The argument is similar. If cisco, MS had actually developed a software tailor made for censorship and human right violations, for example lets say it made a software and an eye reader which identifies the ethnicity of the subject and gave it rights according to that.. then it would be a violatio, however if they have an off the shelf tool I doubt that AI has a substantiative argument.
Prosecuting technology is not an option. This will set a bad precedent too. But I dont really expect much from amnesty international, they have a very weird sense of rights.My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It's not like anybody's actively providing Open Source tools to China's regime. They just happen to be there for the taking. The real issue here is with companies that are "part of the problem," giving tools to aid China's censorship and making an assload of money in the process.
If China converts to Linux we're supposed to cheer?
/. makes me want to puke some days.
But when China uses technology from MS, Sun and Cisco we're supposed to be all outraged?
What if their proxy servers are really nothing more than a Linux box running a modified version of Squid? How do I cheer and be outraged at the same time?
Bleah...
...if you look at their track record, it's almost always about something bigger than the human-rights shit they pimp. They always have a hidden agenda. So what if a country chooses to filter certain sites from the net? What's so morally wrong with that?
And why is it that if non-western countries chooses to implement democracy in their own way, Amnesty will almost surely have to criticize them for not being more democratic.
What a crock of shit.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Can I invoke Godwin's Rule if the post is on topic and "+5 Insightful"?
Instead, the company was split and the head-office disbanded. The constituent companies continued (they had their own identities as they started as independent entities) and most people kept their jobs.
Yes, there is still a small office in Frankfurt administering the IG Farben mark, but the consitutent companies are now competitors. The IG Farben building has now passed to Frankfurt University after the US military draw down.
Actually the mere existence of people that believe the First Amendment is valid inside the US is amazing.
The poor ranking of US was explained:
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
If China went to MS/Sun/Cisco and asked them to create a 'Great Firewall of China' that could catch people trying to go to 'illegal' sites, I'd say it would be more than fair to call those companies out for sharing in what many people consider to be the crimes of the Chinese government.
If, on the other hand, China is purchasing off-the-shelf or commercially available software and hardware and building their instrument of oppression themselves, I think it's unfair to blame those companies. The choice would be either to sell ANY generally-available software to China, or embargo them completely.
I'm really quite surprised to see Amnesty International tilting at windmills like this considering there are so many much obviously legit causes out there to fight against.
It's not as though they're selling guns or missile guidance systems, fer chrissakes! They're selling technology, and not particularly dangerous technology, at that!
If Amnesty International wants to make a fuss, there are immeasurably many more significant targets to choose from.
Yes, I laud their mission, but let's see about getting those priorities straight, okay?
Go after the meaningful targets first! Then waste time on the trivial stuff.
Karma
This story was posted yesterday!
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Perhaps we shouldn't be selling anything to China? Perhaps this whole strategy of constructive engagement is a bad idea?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
It's interesting that the Open Source Definition says specifically you can't refuse to sell software to a country or government because you don't like their policies. Quoting from a chapter in a book by Bruce Perens:
I wonder how people's reactions might be different if Amnesty were trying to put pressure on RedHat, the Free Software Foundation, authors of kernel IP filtering tools, or authoring of Web filtering tools. All of these can be used for censorship; in fact, Web filtering tools are designed for this specifically!
My Web Page
In the US and elswhere were content filtering are in place. But oh, I forgot, its not to censor but to protect the innocent children..
Talk about hypocritical(SP?)..
A business's only motivation is, and should be, to make a profit. [emphasis added]
This is utter bullshit.
The only reason we allow businesses and corporations to run is to better society as a whole. Even the Founders had some grave doubts about corporations, but they were seen as a neccessary evil in order to encourage a good economy and a better standard of living for all.
The key words there are "for all", not for the shareholders, not for the employees, not even for the customers, but for everybody.
When a corporation starts going against that, when it actually starts doing harm to some people, that corporation is not fulfilling the reasons it is allowed to exist for.
What is a shame is how few people remember this.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
As much as I admire Amnesty, this sounds like nonsense to me. Are they also going to sue foreign manufacturers of pens or paper that is used by Chinese authorities?
I don't think that this is funny at all. If anything, OSS is *more* to blame. OSS groups not only provide software for countries like China to use, but they do it at no cost. I think that OSS developers *should* be responsible for illegal and immoral uses of their software, also.
Yes, I know why the matter was handled as it was (at least the official version.) But the fact remains that the "dismantling" of IG Farben didn't really amount to much in real-world terms.
Interesting tidbit: Last I heard, IG Farben stock was still trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange - allbeit for a few cents. It seems the terms of the breakup are still the subject of litigation more than half a century later.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Now as I understand it, to have a free market transparency of information is needed, i.e. you cannot have a free market if access to market information is selectively denied to people. If the buggy whip makers can prevent the spread of information about Mr. Ford's new toy, that is not a free market. So the one law that must be enforced to protect market economies is the law of freedom of information, and it is this one that the Chinese are breaking.
Amnesty is peeved because the Chinese are preventing the rest of the world from learning that they have a scumbag government, scumbag bureaucracy, and scumbag rural life. A good capitalist might be equally peeved that the Chinese are trying to prevent the rest of the world learning things that might downgrade China's investment worthiness, putting on a face about supporting capitalism while in private allowing corrupt officials to steal from corporations. (You can see Chinese censorship as being equivalent to Enron's trying to keep secret the true nature of its operations and accounting.) One way of doing this is preventing the Chinese from learning about ways of disseminating that information.
To put it another way, the right of one corporation to make a profit by selling censorware has to be balanced against the greater interest of the market economy in not allowing people to use such censorship.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
It was documentary about what is going on in Afghanistan post US invasion. They talk to a man with links to Bin Laden and Al Queda, he goes on to say that Al Queda is now under ground and communicating over the internet, he shows the news caster his laptop and the supposed communications, you can tell what they are using, its Windows and MSN messenger.
Further more...
US companies sell to China because the US government dons have a problem with China. Clinton made it policy to be friendly with China. So why shouldn't companies?
Anthropomorphasizing information is as incorrect as anthropomorphasizing companies. Information will never have the desire to be free. People will *try* to free it for their own ends. But information will never thank you for it's freedom, nor scold you if you fail.
Hate speech is abuse of free speech. And note that the laws are usually applied afterwards. This is not censorship, you just have to take responsibility of your actions. Think before you start suggesting someone should be shot. Otherwise some other hothead listens to you and actually shoots someone. And this happens in Europe. This is reality: It's ugly, and it stinks, but you have to live with it. Some idiots are abusing the freedom of speech to restrict other peoples right to life. The governments of EU then restrict the right to free speech and gives preference to the right to life. It is a compromise.
The US gives people the right to carry firearms. Some idiots abuse that right and shoot people. After this, they (at least some of them) are executed by the government. So, the US gives preference for the right to carrying firearms, and restricts the right to life. It is a compromise.
Living with idiots means you must make compromises. They can not be given the rights you would not abuse. Therefore, your rights are restricted.
I assume libel is illegal also in US. In Europe, this is also applied to groups and not only individuals. You get in trouble by shouting 'kill the bloody jews/arabs/commies/nazis', even when there are no jews/arabs/commies/nazis in sight, so that you are not insulting a particular individual. And we Europeans have our history. Hate speech proved politically extremely succesful in 1930:s, and was the basic cause of the holocaust and World War II in Europe (maybe not in Pacific, but you Americans would have beaten the Japanese much faster if you had not been so busy helping us.)
There are also several older examples of hate speech resulting in crimes against the humanity. The civil wars of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the four Empires (Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and Osman) in World War I ended often with mass executions of prisoners and other atrocities. Main cause: propaganda fed to the troops. The murders of the Armenians in Turkey, and countless pogromes in Ukraine and Russia during 19th century were caused by governments using hate speech. 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' and what that caused in the early US. And so on and so forth, back to the time before the Pyramids.
Banning hate speech is still needed. Dozens of people get killed in Europe just beacuse their skin is not that pale. I know a Turkish man who owns a kebab place. The skinheads served Molotov cocktails there every month last year. Not to mention smashing the windows of his restaurant and car every week, burning his car two times and beating him quite badly once. Finally, they got caught. With no hate speech, we would have much less political violence.
The attempted murder of the French president this year and the murder of Pim Fortuyn (a prominent right-wing politician) in Netherlands are also examples of what hate speech causes.
Call me the big american corp. paranoid freak, but think all these companies denying this will lead to Linux being "found" as the software they used and somehow being used as "evedence" to "regulate" and "outlaw" open source?
Possible sinester plot at work?
That's a long shot though. I hope.
(P.S. No trolling intended, just food for thought.)
© International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 2001.
go.openflows.org
Nortel Technology Threatens Human Rights in China
MONTREAL, 18 OCTOBER, 2001 -- A new report released today by Rights & Democracy reveals that the Canadian telecommunications giant Nortel Networks may be contributing to human rights violations in the People's Republic of China. The report points specifically to Nortel's OPTera technology to be launched in China this week at the APEC Leaders Meeting in Shanghai.
China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China describes how technology developed for commercial purposes by transnational corporations, including Nortel, is being used by Chinese police and security forces to refine the targetting and repression of political dissidents. It also provides an overview of Nortel's long-standing involvement in the development of surveillance technology both at home and abroad.
Journalists covering the APEC meeting of 21 leaders, including US President George Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, will file their stories using Shanghai's new state-of-the-art citywide broadband network, purchased from Nortel.
"Although the network will provide western journalists with an efficient communication system, it will also provide Chinese authorities with an unprecedented ability to conduct surveillance and monitor the activities of human rights and democracy advocates," Warren Allmand, President of Rights & Democracy, today told a news conference in Montreal.
"Nortel is fundamentally changing the way content will be delivered across tomorrow's broadband Internet. Its Personal Internet strategy is all based on developing an intimate knowledge of an individual user's identity: their physical location and their content interests - not merely IP addressing," said the author of the report Greg Walton. "We are seeing the focus shift to censorship and surveillance of homes and offices; in effect, redistributing China's "Great Firewall" from the international gateways to millions of PCs. "
China still equates political dissent with criminal activity. On September 28, four Chinese citizens were tried for subversion for participating in an on-line pro-democracy forum. The four are but the most recent of several arrests in recent years for Internet-related crimes. APEC leaders are expected to announce an "anti-terrorism" pact at the APEC summit which many human rights advocates fear could be used to excuse increased crackdowns on Internet privacy, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression and the right of association, particulary in authoritarian states such as China.
"Civil liberties form the cornerstone of democracy and underpin the promotion and protection of other human rights", Mr. Allmand said. "They are protected by a number of agreements and treaties, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which both Canada and China have ratified."
He urged the Government of Canada to incorporate human rights safeguards within its domestic trade and investment promotion activities in relation to the Peoples Republic of China. Pointing to the myriad of processes and resources devoted towards the promotion of trade with China, Mr. Allmand said, "Chinese activists are risking lengthy imprisonment or worse for simply advocating political reform in their country. They need our support, not our complicity in the violation of their rights."
China's Golden Shield is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing the report in English, French and Chinese. The CD-ROM is a user-friendly package which includes additional information on China's Internet and domestic legislations, related Web links and several different privacy software programmes. The software on the CD-ROM can be downloaded from the Internet without problem if you live in Canada, the US, Europe or mot other other countries but access to it is blocked from China.
China's Golden Shield is a also a living document. Readers can contribute comments and suggestions to the online version by visiting go.openflows.org The go.openflows Web site also features news stories and commentary on technology, privacy and human rights in China.
For information:
Patricia Poirier or Mary Durran : (514) 283-6073
Greg Walton: jamyang@openflows.org
To order copies of the report or the CD-ROM: publications@ichrdd.ca
Rights & Democracy is a Canadian institution with an international mandate. It works with civil society and governments in Canada and abroad to promote human rights and democratic development through dialogue, advocacy, capacity building and public education. It focuses on four themes: democratic development, women's rights, rights of indigenous peoples, and globalization and human rights and has two special operations: International Human Rights Advocacy and Urgent Action and Important Opportunities.
So when upper management behaves with no moral or ethical code other than to enhance their personal wealth, why should we expect the corporation they run to behave any differently? Most of them will get a simple slap on the wrist anyway, so why even care about laws or ethics?
Personally I think that laws need to be put in place which hold corporations and their upper management to higher standards. A corporate CEO should be required by law to follow an ethical code of conduct far stricter than the average citizen and he should be required by law to make damn sure his company follows the same code. Should he fail in his duties, he personally should be sent to jail to work on a chain gang for the rest of his natural life. That is the only way this shit will ever stop.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, they just have to divert all the money they spent for licenses to the motivation of a team of good programmers, who were spending time trying to figure out how much spyware was embedded in foreign software...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Appeal Cases
This is the same tactic little dot-coms were using during the bubble. They'd issue a press release that could say something like "our product is unrelated to Microsoft or Cisco", and the automated finance news sites would link to it as news involving Microsoft/Cisco (dumb keyword matching), giving the company a bunch of cheap attention.
Move along, no scandals to see here...
A company's primary objective is still to make money. The nuance lies in the fact that everybody involved makes money, even the employees.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
They don't claim what the companies are doing is illegal. What they do point out is that, in their view, it is incumbent on all organisations to promote human rights and they are concerned that these foriegn companies are actively working with the Chinese government to deny their citizens human rights.
I don't know about you, but I find that concern entirely reasonable.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What's with all this bullshit about the "Holocaust"?
Those laws can only work if the person comes back to his (her) original country (or any other that has a similar law). If the person stays there, then it's useless.
Of course, you can have diplomatic agreements for extraditions. But in the case of the companies, the only law that would prevent this would be a Software Embargo law.
Now that raises a full different sets of issues. Who's to say that the population will not suffer in the long run because of the embargo?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Strange that so many posts so far are talking about whether it's legal to sell the stuff to China, and whether it should be illegal.
Who cares about the law? Why don't we just hold these companies up to an ethical standard, and consider them accountable for their actions? Why don't we shine the harsh light of publicity on them for the things that they do? Why don't we let them know that, regardless of the law, they should choose not to do things that contribute to the repression that the Chinese people suffer from their government? And if they don't stop, why don't we tell them that we will continue to expose their behavior to the public, encourage boycotts of their products, and lobby governments not to buy their products & services with taxpayer money?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
> Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies?
In other news, ZurichPrague said: "Making weapons of mass destruction is fine, but if we know that they could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies? Nothing wrong with Iraq building nukes, as long as they don't sell them to the U.S. (the only country ever to nuke civilian population)."
--
Facts are stupid things -- President Ronald Reagan (a blooper from his speeach at the '88 GOP convention)
That this is not about free speech. It's about freedom of access to information. The difference lies in the fact that if the media of communication is owned or regulated by the government, then speech through it is not a right, but a privilege granted by the government.
It's this way even in the US. Try setting up a powerful radio transmitter at a random frequency and see how much time passes before the FCC is slamming your door open.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Americans like to flap their lips about how great their 1st amendment is, how free their speech is and how bold other countries (including the EU according to some of you) are for censoring.
/ 23/173323 6&mode=thread&tid=153
That's bullshit, many EU states defend freedom of speech much more vehemently than America. Have a look at this recent slashdot article
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10
What was the recent American law that made it illegal to reference or link to terrorist material? How about the DMCA and DECSS (among other things)?
I still think America is a liberal and free country, but don't be so naive as to think that it is the most liberal country in the world, or that America does not censor
Neither the USA nor Amnesty International have the right to dictate to a country what level of censorship they are allowed, most countries censor to some level or other. Just because a country censors more than the USA does not make them wrong or what they do illegal (different country, different laws)
was there nothing wrong with foreign companies supplying Adolf Hitler (at least in part) with the necessary technology to industrialise murder? Would it have been ok, if there had been a bidding on contracts to build concentration camps (then or more recently in Serbia)?
so business is really void of morality and ethics?
mod the parent up.
Is our western world so close to its ideals that we can criticise China?
(emphasis mine). Not exactly what's discussed here, but same direction. GNU could also choose to include something similar in the GPL if they (we?) wanted to (that would at least make the scenario you described illegal, for what it's worth), but they don't. IMHO that's the relevant choice.
These blocks can be implemented on Linux, and China has access to both free software and coders of their own. Would that be better?
So don't go blame these american companies for the acts of the Chinese goverment. It is one thing to sell a nuclear sub with nuclear arms to a country, then there is no question what it should be used for. But selling general purpuse products should not be stopped, and the companies selling them should not be punished.
I wish that the censorship would go away, but it won't until the Chinese goverment starts to realise that they are part of the world, and that the Chinese people are realising it before them. So if Amnesty wants to improve the situation, go to China and help.
I may be having a Senior Moment, but wasn't the Bible also blocked? That would be state-mandated censorship of religion, and I'm thinking that's a big NO-NO in this country.
I'm sure M$ and others selled their shit to the US also.. And the US is famous for murdering prisoners on the electric chair.. Why does AI not dare to bother with them? I mean it is better if a state kills prisoners in public than murdering them in dark rooms on electric chairs..
Software distributed under an "enhanced source" licence released this week will be legally prohibited from censoring or spying on users. Crafted by Hacktivismo, a hacking group organised by the Cult of the Dead Cow, the Hacktivismo enhanced-source software licence agreement (HESSLA) says that anyone using code released under it must respect privacy, free expression, due process and other human rights.
Related Shareholder Resolutions
Not quite true.
Leaving aside a discussion as to the definition of evil, the broad lines of the "final solution" were well known from around 1941...
It was well known from before 1933 that anti-semitic groups were active in Germany, and were on the way to taking political control.
Read Address Unknown, first published in 1938, set in 1932 - 1934.
Perhaps many people did not grasp just how enormous the "implementation of the solution" was... Industrial-scale extermination of an entire ethnic group!
Getting back to the topic, why do you think governments legislate to limit which countries can buy certain technologies?
this is just like blaming Micro$oft when a scriptkiddy made a new virus... hang on... M$ CAN be blamed for security wholes... so I don't see how Amnesty is angry with Bill. If any stuff get's in/out China we WILL know what company is to blame.
42 + 1 = 42
Yes, the The first admendement of the US Constitution only applies to the US.
However, almost every country has signed the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html).
Totalitarian regimes like China igore it (but they have signed it).
Freedom of Religion is covered in UDHR Article 18.
Freedom of Speech is covered in UDHR Article 19.
Freedom of Press is cobered through UDHR Article 19.
Freedom of Assembly is covered in UDHR Article 20.
Freedom of Petition is covered in UDHR Article 21.
I have to post without my name, as do a lot of high-tech business in china. Here are some details:
;-)). They actually lost a major deal with Chinese government because they would NOT cooperate with them. In particular, the government wanted Windows source code, and MSFT refused. Thank goodness for closed source!
1) None of these companies broke any laws.
2) Cisco did indeed work closely with Chinese government officials to implement a custom firewall that is much more suited towards blocking and MONITORING than their standard firewall. They of course knew EXACTLY what it was going to be used for - all of it was in the design spec. Lots of work on TRACKING people.
3) China does some blocking, but they do MUCH MORE monitoring and tracking than blocking. Chinese people who think they are using some clever redirection scheme to view or publish external sites are almost certainly not getting away with it. The government is storing all that as evidence against you later, should they ever need it.
4) China has fairly clear laws about what you can and cannot view and publish on the internet. If you break the law in any country, even the US, you can be arrested, put in jail, and even executed. For instance, it is illegal in China to download porn. Most porn sites are blocked, but if you download porn anyway - either because the filter missed one or you circumvented the filter - you are breaking the law.
5) People who do illegal activities by and large know that these are illegal when they do them. If they get caught then they get caught.
6) Because of 4 and 5, this situation has NOTHING TO DO WITH NAZI GERMANY. You have a choice whether or not you want to upload banned anti-government FuLongGong documents to your server. People who do this are choosing to break the law and take their chances. You have NO CHOICE in being a Jew. Equating these two cases is idiotic.
7) Don't bash Microsoft (at least not for this
- dv
``Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies?''
Why would we be? If the technology is all evil, we shouldn't have developed it. However, there are few technologies that are all evil, and even some of these are sold. If the technology is not all evil, I don't see any objections against it being sold. Making an exception for sales to `known bad' people, corporations, or countries is, IMHO, a bad idea.
First off, who decides who is `known bad'? How can we know that it is the `known bad's who are evil and not the one who gives them the label? USAmericans may think that the People's Republic of China is evil, because they block websites, thus censoring free speech. Turning it around, the Chinese may think USAmericans are evil for spreading all kinds of FUD and pr0n over the web.
Secondly, how would you enforce a no-business policy? If it's a moral obligation, companies are free to ignore it, although doing so might harm their reputation. Making it a legal obligation sounds like a very bad idea to me; see previous paragraph. Any form of punishing the companies who viloate the principle will necessarily only harm those that are punished, potentially letting others get away, so that, consequently, some companies are allowed to do what others aren't. In the case discussed here, it could mean that companies based in the USA are not allowed to sell censorware to China, but companies based in France are (and China can use GNU software no matter what).
Finally, there are always ways to get what one wants. `Evil' organizations can have others make what they want. It won't be the same as what others are offering, but it can work just as well, and might well work better. If they don't want to go that way, they can always obtain illegal copies. Such is reality, and I don't see much of a point in trying to enforce a policy that cannot be enforced.
I have the feeling my argumentation is quite messy, but I hope to have gotten my point across.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
helping
IT's gooed practice for them anyway, for when they doo the same to US, prior to the next fixed election.
IEaaaggghhh.0fInfection
don't come crying to us, when there's only 5 websites (that YOU can see) left on the 'net.
So you mean these companies shouldn't be selling their stuff to the US government (known for their human rights violations e.g. in South America and in the US prison/justice system - just check any recent UN or Amnesty report on human right violations), among others?
______________
OTTERS RULE.
in my opinion amnesty and the submitter are completely correct.
however, this argument is no different to the arms trade. every so often in the uk there is a discussion on the UK selling arms to israel or some other country, who then turn around and use them to supress dissidents.
the response to that is just the same as the microsoft response in the article:
i don't see any difference here between arms and software. although if anything the arms trade is the more serious offender - taking away someone's freedom of speech is, if you ask me, not nearly as bad as taking away their right to be alive. if the arms industry can (apparently) get away with it, why on earth should the software industry not?
that said, i agree with the amnesty argument. people (and organisations) should be concerned and aware of what their products and technology will be used for. they should NOT be allowed to sell either arms or software to places where they know they will be used imorally or unethically.
Indeed, it is still trading.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
It is easy to forget about prominant business men when focusing on figures like Eichmann or Hoss, but the industrialists who were eager to create factories at Auschwitz were perpetrators of the horror too
All too easy...
POKE 36879,8
Microsoft sells most of their software through partners. MS only tends to get involved in the larger projects, via Microsoft consulting services. Of course MS has in most cases no idea what their partners are up to. And if a partner used MS software for the filtering without the involvement of MS, surely MS can't be held liable for that.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
namely the involving attempts by various governing bodies to outlaw "hacking tools" because they can be used for nefarious purposes. now whenever this argument comes up on /. you get all the "what about the security industry?" arguments which i am firmly in favor of, but what is the difference between writing a tool that could be used for malicious purposes, ie exploit code, proof-of-concept code etc, and posting it public forums, ie bugtraq, where they are available to anyone, including those with malicious intent, and this situation. ok some differences obviously, actively selling and all that but still, principally the same yes?
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
In a statement, Microsoft said that it is "focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world. However, Microsoft cannot control the way it may ultimately be used."
Wasn't this basic argument used by ISP's and whatnot do defend themselves from over zelous copyright holders? I guess the guy who made DeCSS should be able to hide under that same argument since he's in a different country like Microsoft isn't in China. So since MS says they arn't responsible then the DeCSS author(s) shouldn't be either. And neither should Dimetri Skarlov, academic researchers, etc.
Amazing how America fights so called evil on the one hand and on the other American businesses sell to the same said so called evil the tools to do it's dirty work.
I stopped at that point in the article cause I was so disgusted. I imagine Sun, Cisco, etc are all using the same arguments. I guess the only real devil in this world is the one we see each morning in the mirror when we take sides with whats in our minds the lesser of two evils and not choosing a third option.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Earlier than that. The broad lines of the Final Solution were printed in 1925 and 1927, in _Mein Kampf_.
Try thinking before posting next time. Or do you just regurgitate everything Chumbawamba tells you?
If Cisco, Yahoo, or any of the other corporations have received ONE PENNY of your tax dollars, you better fucking believe they better listen to you. They do not exist in a monetary vaccum, where they are perpetually solvent. No. It takes a hell of a lot of YOUR MONEY to keep Cisco et al. tax free. Once they take YOUR MONEY, you have the right to demand change.
I can say for sure that the letters are written with incomplete information from one side of the story. Maybe it was just my chapter, but I have heard the same from others. They are "usually" right, but they sketched me out heavily with their lack of knowledge of the issues behind each letter.
Clearly no one on this thread works for a manufacturer doing international business from the U.S. (or recalls the export restrictions on encryption a few years back--since relaxed). The U.S. government does quite a good job of imposing morality on business, through its export control classification number (ECCN) system, run by the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce.
This organization has its roots in the old Atomic Energy Commission rules on limiting the export of nuclear materials in the 1940s, but has been greatly expanded, starting in the 1980s, then explosively in the last few years. Every item exported, from software to plastic, must be classified prior to shipment, and there are quite lengthy and detailed descriptions involved. (The sections most relevant to the average /. reader are Category 3-electronics, Category 4-computers, Category 5 (Part 1)-telecommunications, Category 5 (Part 2)-information security, and Supplement No. 2, general technology and software notes, all in section 774.) The rules are in place ostensibly to keep the unwashed heathen overseas from access to U.S. technology that can be turned against the U.S., or technology that they can use to protect themselves against the U.S. Technologists should be aware that the rules were "clarified" a year or two back to include "technology" export, not just the export of physical objects, and that simply discussing a "controlled" technology with someone inside the U.S. that has citizenship from a "banned nation" list makes one subject to fines and/or imprisonment. (This policy works because, as everyone knows, the U.S. is the source of all useful technology ;).)
I bring this up to show that moral obligations (at least in the form of obligations that protect U.S. interests) are already placed on businesses, and that the mechanisms are already in place to control whatever export the federal government desires to control.
I think a lot of the posts agree that selling filtering products to China is wrong. But an opinion with action is worthless.
Contact MS, Sun, etc. and let them know that you find it irresponsible that they can contribute to the censorship happening in China!
its my understanding that we've been dealing with this question for ages. Scientists have been trying forever to weigh the balance between the benefits of their discoveries and the harm. Same goes for everything. There are pluses and minuses everywhere.
-
Perhaps in twenty years or so, the gray and elderly executives of these companies will be hauled before a tribunal in the Hague and convicted of crimes against humanity. Because what they have done by selling this technology to an oppressive regime is nothing less.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Only Americans think corporations are moral entities. Companies are expected to donate money to good causes and act honorably toward employees even in the absense of legislation.
We Scandinavians, on the other hand, expect no such thing. Thus 80% of us belong to unions and keep the companies in a very tight leash.
Corporations are good slaves but bad masters. That's the essence of modern Social Democracy.
I write some code and think other people might like it so I put it up for download. Just how the hell am I supposed to stop the Party Congress from downloading a copy to complete their Baby Threshing machine? After all, they're serious about this one child thing. If I fix it so the the Party Congress can't have it then pretty much no one else can either. Open Source grinds to a halt and MS and Cisco continue laughing all the way to the bank.
What's being objected to here is profit from oppressing others. Now when Red Hat removed the Taiwanese flag at Beijing's behest, THAT was something appropriate to get on their case about.
What if you decided to boycott, by yourself.
What effect does that have?
Now suppose that a group like Amnesty International goes out and tries to generate publicity to convince lots of people to boycott.
That boycott is likely to be more effective.
Therefore bitching publically, when done right, is a way to take action.
Cheers,
Ben
Ouch.
Did you know the V-2's flew up essentially into space, then returned at supersonic speeds? You literally couldn't hear them coming. An impressive technical achievement, and they owed it all to slave labor...
Are you saying this only is true for American corporations? Ever hear of Krupp? Ever hear of DeBeers? Ever hear of Mitsubishi, creator of the Zero fighter?
While I admit that it is easy, fun, and bound to bring mighty cheers and backslaps from other slashkids, this assumption that America is the source of all venality is stupid.
Corporations the world over have done some very, very Bad Things. I imagine it might be worth looking at the psychological effect of being able to hide behind the Faceless Corporation and how that somehow makes it easier for an individual to suppress his own honor or morals.
(Sigh)... But no, it's way easier to say Americans suck and are ignorant, everyone else is lily-pure, ethically aware, and much, much more sophisticated. You will now be returned to your normal slashdot programming.
Once one of my friends received a link
to child pornography. He said it was sad and
disgusting.
He also said this:
"The internet is really a wonderful
thing and opportunity but there are people
out there whose deeds will take it from us."
There is nothing unambiguously good about
total and unrestrained freedom. There must
bee rules: physical, ethical, political and
economical. And these rules must bee followed.
There is nothing unambiguously good about
instantaneous changes in the laws/culture
governing the society.
"They" say China is opening its gates...
slowly, but nevertheless...
Let's not rush or force things... Let for
once bee a place where changes are harmonic
and rational, not a consequence of war and
chaos, or followed by war and chaos...
Let us watch them and help when its needed.
Let us also watch and learn.
Abowe all, we should not force our values
and ways upon anyone only because we want to
feel important... There are other kindes of
wisdoms and ways then ours...
(our == capitalist)...
zugedneb the marxist
"I'm gonna pistol-whip the next person that says Shenannigans!"
"Hey Rod, what's that's restaurant you like that has those cheese sticks?"
"You mean Shenannigans?"
Lets face it a corporation would sell anything to anyone. IBM sold to Nazi germany, Hell chevron would have sold them the needed gas for the ovens if they could have. A corporation has NO MORALS, it is up to the citizens and the government to ensure that they toe the line. To expect anything else from an entity whose sole purpose is to make money is foolish is the extreme. The downfall here in the US is that the corp's now own a good part of the government in the way of venal, short-sighted politicians.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If M$ and others would not have supplied the technology it would have done more harm. The Chinese gov. may have blocked the whole internet if they found themselves failing to save their citizens from the matter they find unsuitable. Well just blocking some sites is not as grave situation as some other so called open and democratic countries are causing.
Anyway I think Amnesty is on the extreme side of saving humans from extremities.
I don't disagree with you, however you left out one important fact. America, at the time, was also anti-semitic to a different degree. Remember the Japanese concentration camps after Pearl Harbor? Blacks still had it pretty rough around that time too...hell, they could not be anything more than a mess attendant in the Navy DURING the war. My grandfather, born in Germany, moved to the US in 1933 when Hitler took power; however after the war started he was subsequently fired from his job as a machinist. I really didn't want to go down this path for this forum but I needed to respond to your comment.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
What they have in China is a capitalist dictatorship, if you have to stick a "ism" on it, its cloest name is Fascist. It is not in the "jew-killing" racial way. More in the way of m-w.com definition:
that exalts nation and often race (N/A here) above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Somewhere in there I see where US is turning into, I thought about posting anonymously for fear of being put on no fly list , but I can't do that.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
Who are you to tell China how to run its government? If the people there are too lazy to overthrow the commies then let them eat their own shit.
Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell [...]
While I certainly don't agree with censorship, seeing the above come out of a country where it is perfectly legal to buy many and varied firearms is so funny it brings tears to the eyes.
Boycott any company that uses the forementioned products until they stop supporting human rights violations. Your broadband provider using Cisco switches? Too bad. Give up your connection in the name of human rights.
Yeah right. Geeks (myself included) are will to spout of rhetoric all day, as long as it doesn't affect us. Reminds me of folks that discuss the homeless problem, but are unwilling to leave the safety of their SUV to hand out meals.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
These companies are doing business in China. Bitching about it on /. isn't going to do dick. If you refuse to buy their products because of the business they do in China, they will simply do more business with the Chinese Govt. and less business with you.
If you're serious about doing something about these companies business practices with the chinese, I suggest you start lobbying Congress and get some laws passed.
Well, seeing as how the US courts have given corporations the same status as human beings ...
Corporations are not "human beings". Corporations are "persons".
Among the many distinctions: You can't be tried for murder for deliberately driving one out of existence. They don't get "unemployment insurance" (though a particular company or sector may get "corporate welfare" in the form of special treatment. They also can't vote (though, if for-profit, they CAN contribute to candidates and have free speech on political issues).
Treating them as "persons" is not entirely unreasonable because, like (the sometimes overlapping categories) religions, clubs, governments, political movements, bureaucracies, chain letters, and computer viruses, they ARE lifeforms.
They meet essentially all the (non-carbon-chemistry-chauvanist) definitions of life, and have a continuity and behavior distinct from (though to some extent emerging from) that of the humans that may be their creators, cells, or even hosts, food, or end products.
As "legal persons" the corporations are, again separately from their component individuals, subject to punishment if their "system" engages in lawbreaking or illegally-harmful behavior (even if the people who operate it don't knowingly or deliberately break a law or improperly harm a human or other "person"). This brings the law, as a proxy for the will of the general population of humans, into the corporations' incentive structures.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Selling the Chinese goverment network filtering technology violate international law and suppresses human rights. You have got to be kidding !! We have them turn sections of their population into slave labour to build to stuff in the first place and there is no morale question about that. We send them our used computer equipment for "Recycling" and it gets turn into toxic waste that litters the landscape and there is no morale problem about that.
It not that we have morale problems in our dealing with China. We have no morales in dealing with China at all. Stop kidding yourself. We want money from them, and what they do to themselves in the process of paying us, we could give a rats ass. Dont look for any scruples in our dealing with China because we have never shown any in the past.
The Guarantee of Freedom of Speech in US law may not apply, but AI is talking about The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Have a look at the AI report.
Don't believe the nonsense, unless you hear it from me directly.
Welcome to a new twist on DRM. Why when we buy their software can they dictate how we are to use it but when it comes to human rights abuse can they not take any responsibility? Darren
Jesus wept! Don't you folks read the newspapers? They're building software to put a firewall around YOU in the US of A. Naybe focus a little closer to home.
Pretty much any German, Italian, or Japanese company that's been around since WWII will have done something to support the war effort at the time. Is that a reason to boycott them now? I think not.
Microsoft and Cisco are supporting a murderous regime NOW. That's the point you seem to have missed.
Hey kids! How are some of you Open Source types going to feel when some Third World dictatorship whips up a Linux powered cluster and uses it for designing rockets, nukes, bugs and/or chemical weapons? Hmm?
I understand China is very interested in Linux, they even have an official Chicom version. Any bets as to how many Great Firewall of China boxes run Open Source? Or maybe they just use it to run their Ministry of Torture database?
So maybe don't be so damn quick to jump on big companies caught in the same cleft stick. There wouldn't even BE internet access in Red China without those companies, If you think the boys and girls at Mickeysoft and Cisco and etc. would deliberately and knowingly develop products to help Chicom government opression, you're cracked.
Europe. So shut the fuck up.
Once Microsoft are in control of implementing technological homeland security operations, run the lists and control what information mysteriously 'disappears' from 'the Internet' it will be too late to bitch.
Or, more accurately: bitch all you want. It's not like anybody will notice!
Might as well turn up the heat while they're still working on pilot programs in China...
so the good reply and the good reply reply are -1 meanwhile floods of crap are +5
A license like this would not meet the Open Source Definition. See my earlier post on this same subject.
My Web Page
The fines mechanism doesn't seem adequate when a company has been involved in major wrong-doing (i.e., causing deaths) as a matter of policy, rather than as individual action. At the same time, a major corporation likes to to wave the employment it provides in front of politicians to discourage actions against them. Here I'm thinking more about companies such as Union Carbide in Bhopal, India and the operator of the English channel ferry that sank because the policy was to leave the loading doors open until the ferry was underway.
IG Farben remains relevant and it would be a useful exercise to study what worked and what didn't. Some board members were imprisoned, all others in head office lost their jobs but the orinary workers could largely continue.
I don't regard IG Farben's 'punishment' as wildly successful either but it seems to be the best example that we have.
I see a lot of suspiciously high-minded moralizing on this topic, but I can't help but wonder if it's yet another attempt to paint Microsoft as the Enemy of All Mankind (I'm not a fan of MS, but sometimes the scent of anti-MS sentiment can really get a little overwhelming on Slashdot.) The only people I think are responsible for this situation are the Chinese (both the government and the citizens who let their government do this to them.)
It's hypothetical, but what would be your response (you being anyone posting here that MS and other coporations are liable) if China had used Linux and open source software to block Internet access to its citizenry? Would contributors to open source and Linux be morally responsible for how the Chinese government used this software? And don't hide behind discursive comments like "nobody intentionally gave them this to block access" or "Linux isn't a coporation" because that doesn't matter. The question is a moral one, not a matter of whether you make money off it or not. You made the tool that they use to do their "evil." Profit or not, you had a hand in it. Right?
So any of you OSS or Linux coders: would *you* accept blame?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
it is illegal to make 'wanted signs' about abortion doctors and list their personal info on a website that is all about killing them.
and canada lets people carry guns too. and there are laws about it. you have a 7 day waiting period to buy from many stores (altho there are ways around that.... flea markets, gun shows, etc) and you have to have a license for certain uses. the US restricts the 'freedom to have a gun' already.
Electro-shock equipment and leg irons may be the visible implements of torture but it is the use of global positioning devices and call interception equipment that enables a government to track the movements of its opponents. Sophisticated computers which track satellites and moniter the movemnets of troops on the battlefield are increasingly part of the modern arsenal.
Such sophisticated systems have been described as the "central nervous system of the repressive regieme that connects the brain to the boot." Amnesty Ireland
AI doesn't care about the censorship. They care about the torture, imprisonment and death of people caught looking at things they aren't allowed to.
IHBT. IWHAND.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
These companies need to do their business in the States or do not do it at all.
Thoughtcrime
When you mention the blacks, I think you mean just plain racist.
I don't know much about the internment of Japanese in the USA during WWII, but I imagine it was similar to internment of Germans, Austrians and other "aliens" in the UK at the time. This was justified as being a precaution against fifth columnists.
However, I don't think there is much similarity in the conditions suffered by the Jews in Belsen, and the Germans in the UK.
Unfortunate episodes like the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, carrying 800 inernees, by a erman U-Boat, led to the government abandoning the idea of deporting such prisoners to British Empire dominions.
Source:Public Records Office>And as far as China and censorship goes, how are they any different than France (except in severity), who don't allow any searches, auctions, etc on Nazi memorabilia?
They are killing and torturing people. French people aren't, expect with modern art.
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