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The Great Firewall of China, Continued
rcs1000 writes "Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...) has a terrific article on The Filtered Future and how China's censorship is changing - for the worse - the Internet. The piece makes a few points: firstly, China is really trying (largely succefully) to seperate its Internet from the rest of the World; secondly, it may be possible to use technology to circumvent restrictions, but that makes them no less onoreous; thirdly, the sheer invisibility of the restrictions makes them worse (when Google doesn't even show up articles about democracy, that's no good thing); and finally, some Western companies are actively co-operating with the Chinese government in their censorship. Is this the beginning of the end for the global, unregulated, uncensored, Internet?"
yay i finally got the first po--This transmission has been CENSORED.
Companies are there to make money not for moral or social values. I'm not saying that's a good thing but that's how the system works. If there is money to be made in China, they will play by their rules to get it.
If you think they should act otherwise, then you should get your government to make rules about that banning the companies from bending to Chinese will.
How long until they put up their own root servers? (ChinaNet, as someone mentioned in the earlier /. story.)
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Welcome to slashdot, where you have to insert a microsoft bash to get submitted article posted ;)
Internet stopped being unregulated and uncensored long, long ago, when Police and Censorship noticed its growing potential... So they are trying to pointedly suppress it...
Despite all this, you really have to hand it to the Chinese government. Consider that:
* There is a legitimate concern that people reading articles critical of the government will cause enough upset to collapse the government.
* The number of people involved that you are trying to black out information to number in the billions.
* You can successfully convince a majority of these billions of people that it is in their own best interest to give up their own ability to decide what to read or say.
I mean, yes, it's distasteful and all that, but beautifully executed. I don't think *I* could sucker 1.3 billion people, no matter how hard I tried.
Actually, I was pretty impressed that they managed to push through their one-child policy as well -- that had to be a hell of a tough sell.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
"The Great Firewall of China"
That the IP tables syntax will change from geek jibberish to simplified-Chinese?
Damn, I will never learn how this CLI stuff.
Unfortunately, civil liberties and a "free" market are at odds.
Even more unfortunate is a mostly non-free Chinese market and a country that denies its citizen freedom to information, while a mostly free USA aids them in closing off information access.
It's a companies perogative to decide what it wants to do. But it's also a duty of a government to protect while not oppressing its people.
Limiting circulation of governmental data to strengthen security is one thing. To prevent a people from accessing information so they can't learn about other forms of government is unforgivable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In Soviet Russia ... ... there was no Internet :-)
Bonjour !
For a while, we all thought he was too busy to respond to our random email conversations. Turns out that he never received a lot of those emails. We all decided that it was because censorship but could never figure out what keywords brought it on. There didn't seem to be any rule-based system. It was almost as if millions of Chinese were censoring the emails of the other millions by hand.
Well, except the sentence "Hey, is this getting censored?" That email always got censored.
China isn't the first country to "filter" the internet. Other countries, such as Singapore and even "enlightened democracies" such as Australia, Norway and Sweden also filter the Internet.
Every country has the sovereign right to make its own laws. And since I don't believe that unfettered Internet access (however nice it is) falls in the category of a "Basic Human Right", I don't think that the companies that help China with the Great Firewall are committing any great sin.
An objection could be made, I suppose, that blocking Child Porn is completely different from blocking information about Democracy, but I propose that it is merely a difference of degree. Every country has different morals, beliefs, and laws, and I think it's completely appropriate for companies to respect the local requirements. Once again, I don't think Internet access is a Basic Human Right, so I don't see any ethical issues here.
A 2.3 million strong army trained almost entirly towards home defense? Nukes? Cheap electronics? I dunno.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I see a new google poisoning action comming... this time misspelled democracy words for the crawler, like -> dmeocracy.
Can they filter it all out?
i dont know how it works, but i believe my cousin who has another internet provider than me cant reach any of the non-chinese websites. he tried downloading opera or msn from the original websites but without success. it was me who hat to forward it to him. i myself am living in beijing right now but have still access to all websites on the net. except lycos, tripod and geocities...
As much as I hate to accept it, that's very true. Being educated is a divide and as any economist will tell you, divides = demand = supply = profit
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Lenin once said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." This is the sentiment that the Chinese government is taking. This is the theoretical justification for what the government is doing now, and their control over the internet is merely a part of it. They are using the capitalist tools which were sold/given to them for their own uses, which will eventually not be what the capitalists want. So yes, I agree, the socialists wish to use the capitalists against themselves.
IBM Germany was happy to make punch card systems to help the Nazis run their concentration camps. Companies are run by human beings. Decisions are made by human beings. We can blame the human beings who make immoral choices. Nuremberg established the principle that "I was just followong orders" does not absolve you of personal responsibility. Even less does it mean they cannot be criticised.
And moving slowly goes 2 steps forward and 1 step back. The chinese goverment is the best communistic goverment around, since they manage not to break to much human rights, and really manage to distribute the wealth better as communistic herritage prescribes.
A switch in China, which was to be expected after the fall of the Soviet Union, would probably solve these freedom problems, but replace it with utter poverty for more people, and will most likely break more civil and human rights.
The chinese people know about democracy, they know what is wrong, and they have their own underground movements to push the right buttons to improve the situation. The attitude of chinese people is luckily a more mellow attitude than that of the US or western world, giving them the time to get those changes without a lot of blood shed.
So for the mean time there will be a chinese firewall. Since we can not stop the chinese goverment from doing this, the chinese themselves will show them one day that it needs to stop. Lets try to stop our own goverments from imposing blocks on the internet, for example the US goverment forbids international gambling and pr0n sites. US companies (VISA/MASTER) help the goverment in this by preventing people who want to visit those sites from being able to pay using their creditcard. There are probably other blocks which are less visible (conspiracy theory?), and enough examples to fight in the US and other countries, where we live ourselves.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Blame the confusion between free enterprise and democracy for the sorry spectacle of companies from supposedly "democratic" countries going out of their way to cater to the whims of a supposedly "communist" country.
For a long time free enterprise did equal democracy. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was held up as the prime example of a non-capitalist and non-democratic state. Here was proof for the peoples of the developing world that democracy went hand-in-hand with capitalism. China's success proved that this need not be the case.
Some free enterprise appears to be necessary to promote democracy: the right to be as rich as the corrupt bureaucrat next door. But China proved that it's possible to get rich in a supposedly socialist setting even if you're not a card-carrying member of the party. You can make money if you know when to shut up.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
that YOUR internet isn't already being filtered in some way?
Maybe the US gov't is doing the same thing, just on a more subtle and un-obvious way.
Just because we think we live in an open and free society doesn't mean that we're not fed as much propaganda as the rest of the world - it just means it's not so blatant.
My favorite example is CNN.com - if you visit the page often enough, you'll occasionally see a major headline story show up, and two minutes later it's gone... with NO word about that story ever again (anywhere on CNN.com). Searching overseas news sources will often bring up the whole story, but not always.
Obviously, someone censors these things after they appear - in a country where freedom of the press is supposedly paramount, this is a very scary thing.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Well there's this joke about someone sending a letter to his friend in Soviet, in the bad old days. He ended the letter with a note "I hope this letter gets through, in spite of the censorship". The letter was returned a few weeks later with a note attached: "This letter is returned as it contains false accusations against our country."
Telenor may be the major, but not the only ISP in Norway. I am surfing from Norway using NextGenTel as my ISP, and they are at least not telling their users that they have any kind of filtering. They have a policy close to this: "We supply the bandwidth and don't care what you use it for (as long as you don't break any laws)." The only complaints I have got is when they think your macheene is used as a zombie.
Once again, I don't think Internet access is a Basic Human Right, so I don't see any ethical issues here.
No, neither is access to paper to print on, or printing presses, but we still take for granted that the government should not seize printing presses based on what ideas they were used to disseminate, and that that is a natural continuation of a basic human right, the freedom of expression (UN Declaration of the Human Rights, article 19, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html).
So, if you regulate the Internet to weed out uncomfortable ideas, you are indeed violating the UN declaration of the Human Rights, to which I believe China is a party.
Also:
Every country has the sovereign right to make its own laws.
Indeed, but by signing said convention, you are giving up a part of the sovereignity of the country (article 2).
An objection could be made, I suppose, that blocking Child Porn is completely different from blocking information about Democracy, but I propose that it is merely a difference of degree.
Do that. However, not that the freedom of expression protects the exchange of ideas and information. It can be argued that child porn is not an opinion. In all western democracies that prohibit child porn, it is still legal to have opinions about child porn (that it should be legal, for instance).
The comparison had been more accurate if you had compared with how some companies cooperate with the French government to stop foreign nazi sites and goods to be served to the French public. The quite common European prohibition against racist incitement and other hate crimes are indeed an limitation of the freedom of expression (well-founded as it may be).
What, are you @#!%ing nuts? China does not "redistribute wealth". Since Deng Xiaoping's reforms after Mao died, China has pursued economic development. The CCP redifined several Marxist terms, and came up with the idea that socialism is not incompatible with economic policies such as private ownership of the means of production and free markets. China is absolutely stuffed to the gills with free markets nowadays. It's like the Marco Polo days...buy stuff, transport it elsewhere, and sell it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You are right but it's difficult to abandon a rule that isn't officially a rule, merely a side effect of circumstances.
Companies are driven by the desire for personal gain of their shareholders. Shareholders are quite often only interested in making money, not in exercising responsible control of their company shares. This is especially true for mutual funds.
What government can do when personal greed dictates the rules is limited, because personal greed can also sway an election.
In my opinion you need to force companies to publish ethics and adhere to these ethics. That demand has to come from as many people as possible, including but not limited to shareholders. To do this a navigable system of ethical policies seems helpful. I'm currently trying to design a recommendation for such a system: Ethics Search Protocol (ESP) for Internet Search Engines.
Why does all journalism on China assume that Chinese youths using the internet yearn to overthrow the government? FTFA: They point out that when chat rooms are closely monitored, people start talking about "cabbages" when they mean "democracy. If you replace "democracy" with "porn" then you may have something. But the belief that all Chinese want democracy and want it now, is just ethnocentric. The economy is steadily improving, so people are happy. That is, the middle-class folk who use the internet are happy, because get a large benefit from the stability of the government and the economy. The only kind of people who would be interested in overthrowing the governemnt in China are the peasants. I hear every other day (not through the official news here in China) about peasant riots over something; usually development companies making land grabs on peasant communities. So these kinds of peasants obviously have nothing to lose, and maybe even have something to be gained in a change of the system. So yea, they might be intersted in reform. But they are to poor to be on the internet. So review: people who use the internet, have a vested intersted in the stability of the system, don't want revolution. Please get this through your heads jouranlists of the world.
This must be where pies go when they die.
That's all I have to say.
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." - Justice Potter Stewart, US Supreme Court
Well, I just read this article from an Internet connection in Shanghai. It will be interesting to see if it posts.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
You see, when Microsoft dumped Slate, they took their spellchecking software with them.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
I can tell you right now that there isn't much difference between the United States and China at a certain level. Yes, China has a huge amount of poor, they censor the media, and the government doesn't have any pretense of public input into policy decisions.
But when you make a comparison, you find that the United states has these same problems, but only to a different degree. The US has poverty and financial hardship - you can easily find statistics through a google search. The US indirectly censors the media, if you consider that the vast majority of the public only receives it's information from mainstream corportate sources that are deeply tied with members of the US government and will only present a certain view point. And the people really don't have a real say in the political process, considering that the US isn't really a true democracy - it's a pseudo-republic, one with two entrenched millionaire clubs that are highly exclusive and aristocratic.
You only have to look at the last thousand Slashdot stories to find hundreds of examples of abuse of power in the US. I'm living in China and find everything just as comfortable here, and I am actually able to access almost all the information that those in the US are.
Ideologically the US and China are different, but in reality they are not much different.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
We like to think that free societies are happy and successful because they are free and open, and in fact the example of their success will encourage others.
China is now trying to prove the opposite. They are trying to control their own people, and motivate them through a shared sense of national purpose and recovery of past greatness.
The last government that tried this was the Nazis. And it took millions of lives to suppress that threat.
The government of China is replaying the experiment. But they have time, numbers, capital, and unlimited reserves of patience on their side.
We are now engaged in the last great test of freedom, people. Wake up, we live in interesting times.
What is needed here (but would of course be difficult to do - both politically and technically) is to make laws at the EU or US level that ban their companies from participating in censorship - probably impossible to get through though
Look at it this way. Technology always finds a way. You just can't stop the avalanche of information. We may not be giving the Chinese access to the highest quality information, but at least we're still peppering them with little bits here and there. It may not be overt, but it still seeps into the unconscious. That's much better than nothing.
You should still be pissed of at Google, et al. for rolling over, but be thankful that they've still got their foot in the door. The world is grey.
A picture is worth a 1000 words
...and a few chuckles
Ron Paul
I'd go further: companies that enjoy the same legal rights as individuals should bear the same legal responsibilities as individuals. The corporate equivalent of serving a prison sentence is suspending commercial activity. If a company commits a crime (ie if responsibility cannot be attributed to any single employee), the company should serve the same sentence as a person who commits the same crime.
Note: I'm not a liberal arts major -- I have two engineering degrees. Being a technologist does not excuse you from knowing your language. Cue arguments for why knowing your language matters ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Umm...Have you heard of the Korean War? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war Check the list of participants on the Allied side, if your country is listed, then your country has been at war with China.
Also, from what I understand, France has a law that holds executives personally responsible for the wrongdoings of their companies - this was enacted after the Elf scandal. We should do the same thing here, as well as suspend (or revoke in really egregious cases) the company's privilege to do business.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
If you actually bother to read the above posts, they are not being anti-capitalist. They are simply against corporate capitalism, which isn't really capitalism, but a form of mercantalism (anyone remember their US Revolutionary War history?).
People who talk about getting rid of government interference in business forget that the mere existence of corporations is a form of interference. In real capitalism, individuals would own companies and be held directly responsible for what the company does, both financially and criminally. In corporate capitalism, the absolute worst that can happen is that the corporation goes bankrupt. But even then, if you have good lobbyists and "honest" politicians (to use the Gilded Age euphemism), you can get the government to pass laws that are favorable to your business or even bail you out if you are in trouble.
Since you are complaining that the above was modded "insightful", keep in mind that even though it is something that you disagree with, it may still be insightful. Also, if you have mod points, many on /. would appreciate you and others not modding down something simply because you disagree with it. I never mod comments like yours down because I know that it is your opinion, even though I happen to disagree with it.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Just like California is the testing ground and vanguard of political movements here in the U.S. China is the testing ground for thought and people control for the world. Once they have ironed out all the dissidents, they'll "share" their findings with other majors *cough US* to help them control their populace.
IMHO, China is "Socialist" primarily in name and origin or the current regime.
It's really about power, the people who have it, and their desire to keep it. Socialism, Capitalism, Boontism, who cares, as long as the power stays where it is.
I agree with a later poster, that having a freewheeling, energetic, innovative economy, PLUS rigid control from the top with perpetuation of power is an inconsistent model.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'd say that if a company does something bad enough to be worth a long-term suspension, let it start from the bottom again (just like humans) when it "gets out."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hi, Well I've lived in China. And I have plenty of friends who did, or do live there. It is totally ridiculous for you to say that the "US and China are different but in reality they are no much different." In the US I don't have to worry that criticizing the US govt on my webpage will get me and my family arrested and harassed. Try that in China and see what happens. And it HAS HAPPENED. In the US I don't need to worry that working for a human rights NGO will lead to my parents losing their jobs. But that is a real concern for some Chinese people. Now is the US getting worse? Certainly, as the Joseph Wilson case shows us it is. But to claim that there is not "much difference" between China and the United States, is like saying there isn't much difference between getting a broken arm and a broken neck. There's a difference. Get out of your "expat" bubble and maybe you'll see that. Or not.
The idea will not work. Corporations are not people, they are vampires. You cannot really kill them becasue they are not really alive. When you suspend the corporations activities, the stock will plummet as investors get out. When the price gets low enough, the board will use their own personal funds to buy up enough of the discounted stock to get control of the corporation at which point they will sell the assets of the corporation to the highest bidder or sell them at a discount to the new corporation they have formed which will in turn rename itself to the old corporations name. Both the equity holders (shareholders) and the debt holders (banks and other creditors) are SOL unless they are secured debt holders. The board either makes out like bandits, because after they control all of the stock and sell all of the assets as long as they comply with the rules for declaring dividends, they decalre a one-time bagillion dollar dividend to themselves or the keep on doing what they have been doing under either a new name or the same name. It is difficult to properly punish a non-entity.
There is no reset button in life; however, there are bonus levels.