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?"

Comments

fp?

[boingyzain]

yay i finally got the first po--This transmission has been CENSORED.

Stop blaming companies

[R.D.Olivaw]

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.

Re:Stop blaming companies

[Taladar]

Or even better: get your government to abandon the crazy rule that exempts companies from blame as long as they make enough money (and don't forget to include a share of blame for the shareholders as well).

Re:Stop blaming companies

[FidelCatsro]

Corporations love totalitarian requiems , Cheap labour , captive market and benefits galore.
These companies are not bending to Chinese will , They are simply doing what they do best.

I was watching a rather interesting documentary a few weeks back called "the corporation" which went over a few things in this area (along with describing the way that in America since corporations are described as legal people , they could be classified as psychopathic).
http://www.thecorporation.com/

Re:Stop blaming companies

[inmate]

No, that's crap!
Here in Europe, as I believe it is in the US too, Companies are given rights akin to people. They want to be treated like people. They create brands which reflect their 'personalities'.
So, were I to say that people are only there to make money, and need no 'moral or social values', would you agree?
Would it be alright if I used slave labour?
Would it be alright if I killed for a more take-home every month?
Lie and cheat?
Bully my neighbours to score me a better deal?
Were I such a person, I would be lynched real quick!

Corporates are Sociopaths!

Re:Stop blaming companies

[notany]

Companies don't live apart from moral or ethical dimensions of life.

Thinking that it's governments responsibility to make moral rules is so stupid. Moral and law are not the same thing. There is laws that are immoral and you are not supposed to make rules for all moral behavior. Law and moral may overlap but they are not the same thing. Moral behavior means that you behave morally even if there is no punishment. Only immoral people (and immoral companies) act morally because they fear punishment.

Moral values are to be expressed in all human behavior. Personal lives, work and politics. It's absurd to think that if enough people join together to run organization to make money (company), moral values do not apply.

Re:Stop blaming companies

[Wyatt Earp]

I see alot of Corporation and Capitalism bashing, but where is the finger pointing at the real problem here?

Communism. Thats the problem causing the Great Firewall of China, not Google or Microsoft or Cisco, but the underlying Totalitarianism of China.

This is a system that's killed far more people than Hitler in the 20th Century. This is a Government bent on far more demanding and bloody Imperalism than the United States would ever think of and to get it's "lost" Taiwan back might very well embark on a war that would destablize not only the Pacific Rim but the entire World's Economy.

Yet, on Slashdot, most of the time from what I've seen when theres a story about the Chinese Space Program or Linux, it's "Go China! Those good and resourceful folks!" And when it's about censorship, "Booo Capitalist Corporations who as enabling China!".

China wants the Internet censored, if all the Corps in the Free World banned togeather and said no, China would roll thier own solution. If it wasn't Google and Cisco doing this, but IT companies in Germany would /. post on it?

Re:Stop blaming companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont make the mistake of placing china=communism.
China is not a communist state.
Its got a capitalistic system running. No communist would want to be a good capitalist.
China is a country run by a dictatorship which calls itself communist just out of tradition.

Re:Stop blaming companies

[dalutong]

so what are you suggesting? People working at google should quit their jobs and walk out? What's the name of the little world you live in?
We have laws because we cannot trust people to make up their own moral code.

We can not trust people to make up their own moral code, maybe. But we can expect them do.

I think that's one of the major problems. With comments like "they're a company, don't expect them to care about anything except profit" we demonstrate how we have stopped expecting people to act ethically. If we did, we'd have considerably more ethical people. And if we specifically said that those ethics applied to what you did at work, and what you contributed to, then I think we'd have more ethical companies and offices.

But we don't. We have been taught to think that whatever the market does it right. Or, if it's not right, that it's inevitable.

But people are made by their environment as much as they make it. It is a two way street. If we would start expecting people to have some humanity, they will start to. It might be disheartening because you feel like you're the one moral person who is getting beat up by the people who don't. (If you do, feel better knowing there are others out there who still feel that there is such thing as right and wrong and that trying to live ethically makes life fuller.)

But the alternative is no better -- we will continue to have to do more and more reprehensible things just to get by. Our kids have to take ritalin to compete in school now. To make it up the corperate ladder you have to stab people in the back. These kinds of awful realities are only going to increase unless we fight against it and insist that our business, cultural, and political leaders have some decency.

Laws aren't the basis of morality in the society, they're (hopefully) the product. But once we deffer too much to law and too little to our own ability to konw what is right and wrong, the more we have to depend on those laws just to maintain our society.

A cultural insistance on personal morality and responsibility would provide us a means to resisting the world we're heading towards (and are already wading in.)

This isn't some kind of "we need religion in our government" dogmatic position. We need a balance. But just withdrawing and saying, "to each his own" leaves us with a soceity that only hasn't collapsed because we have a reasonably well rooted judicial system.

Re:Stop blaming companies

[maxpublic]

Companies are there to make money not for moral or social values.

Corporations are fictitious entities. They don't exist in any real form. The people who constitute the organized group activity we apply the label to, however, are quite real.

And it's incumbant upon those people to act in an ethical fashion. Simply being part of the organization called 'a corporation' doesn't excuse immoral behavior. It's unfortunate that the courts allow the fiction of 'corporation' to shield evil-doers from prosecution in many cases and, I think, a rather clear perversion of any rational definition of the word 'person'.

Sadly, there is no penalty for dealing with brutal dictatorships, or for betraying every ideal America supposedly holds dear by assisting that dictatorship in retaining power. But it's rather hard to press home the case for blame when the government does the very same thing (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

Even so, I personally think that anyone willing to betray the ideals embodied in the Constitution are traitors and vermin. That includes both the swine at Google who assist the Chinese in building their great firewall and the swine in the federal government who actively prop up the Saudi royal family. And at the end of the day it isn't a 'corporation' or a 'government' that's to blame, but the people hiding behind these labels who're actually doing the dirty work that assists these dictatorships in maintaining their power.

Max

Re:Stop blaming companies

[zootm]

Communism. Thats the problem causing the Great Firewall of China, not Google or Microsoft or Cisco, but the underlying Totalitarianism of China.

Be consistent which is it? Totalitarianism or communism? One does not necessarily imply the other.

Additionally, to call China "communist" has been laughable for more than a decade now. Don't be confused, the reason for this is totalitarianism, not communism. Whether their previous status as a communist state is the reason for their current totalitarianism is a debate for another day, but it's clearly neither what they are now, nor what is (or even would be) causing this problem.

Well...

[mtrisk]

How long until they put up their own root servers? (ChinaNet, as someone mentioned in the earlier /. story.)

Re:average /. reader sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot, where you have to insert a microsoft bash to get submitted article posted ;)

Irony rears its head

[msormune]

"Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...)

So an article in Slashdot about rights online with a message that Microsoft-owned news sources are sensored here? How appropriate.

Still, you have to hand it to them

[typical]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

DO blame companies

[1u3hr]

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.

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.

expression of ideas is key

[sita]

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).

Re:Not the "end", a continuation

[varjag]

It isn't in the declaration of human rights, but Internet is a natural part of what we consider free speech rights. Places that censor the Internet usually do the same with newspapers, TV broadcasts, books, they imprison and execute dissidents.

I live in Belarus, a place gradually moving from moderate dictatorship to totalitarism. We have all the censorship in traditional media, and now there are moves to control the net access as well: forums impose self-censorship in fear of being shut down, gay sites get blocked, and opposition resources abroad suppressed during large political events.

So I beg to disagree. Unless you don't give a damn about Human Rights in general, Internet censorhip is ammoral and harmful.

From an American expat in China

[LS]

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

A picture is worth a 1000 words

[usurper_ii]

A picture is worth a 1000 words

...and a few chuckles

Re:Okay, blame companies - but do it intelligently

[mrogers]

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.

Re:Okay, blame companies - but do it intelligently

[Bimo_Dude]

Taking this another step further... IIRC, companies actually have more rights than people, especially given their lobbying power and financial influence over politicians.

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.

Don't complain just because you don't agree.

[Foobar of Borg]

Actually, the companies that are in dominance want to make sure that you have to buy everything from them. If you can shop around, they necessarily lose customers.

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.

Re:Companies in prison.

[mrchaotica]

...most companies would effectively be forced to close by a long term suspension of their activities.

Uh, that's kind of the point. Moreover, it's congruent with how we treat (human) criminals. Do you think some criminal (who had a good legal job before he got convicted) is going to be able to regain that level of income after he served a 20 year sentence? And if that's acceptable for people, why isn't the same acceptable for companies?

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."

Re:Companies in prison.

[dual_boot_brain]

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.