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Western Software Used to Support Censorship
just_another_sean writes "The NYT has an interesting summary of a study done by the OpenNet Initiative about Western software companies developing and profiting from censorship and Internet filtering tools used by repressive regimes. This particular study focuses on censorship in Myanmar, a country that is currently under American sanctions. Are these software companies simply selling a product and should not be concerned with how it is used or are they contributing to the problems of these repressive regimes?"
Selling a gun to a customer and selling a gun to a known murderer are not the same thing. If you sell software that can enforce censorship to countries that practice censorship, you know that they're going to use it for that. Does that make the seller an accomplice? I dunno, ask a cop about selling a gun to a known murderer and whether they could bring someone up on charges for that.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
... the profit motive rules all. What, you think our companies should worry about the lot of the ordinary citizen, the workers, the guy in the street? That's not American, that's not the Western way, that's communism! You're not a Communist, are you? Why do you hate America so much?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
What I don't understand is how a Western software salesman can be so blinded by profit that they can do this. What do they say to their family when they ask "What did you do today?". "Not much, I just sold a complete filtering solution to the Chinese government in order to help them supress dissent and hunt down pro-democracy campaigners".
We're not talking about a few off-the-shelf copies of Windows here - these are large scale installations.
The "two tier model" of which the article speaks is a pathetically small fig-leaf. There is nothing remotely difficult about imposing restrictions on resellers not to sell to repressive regimes or for any use to curtail freedom of speech.
...I still call them collaborators.
When it's your own country that's repressed by dictators, those who help them do it are called "collaborators" by the rest of the populace. When it's somebody else's country, well...
From country that exports death in a thousand forms - you are worried about a company selling software used for filtering internet traffic.
Is this the same ideology that blanks out Janet's tits, but allows 100 people to be shot in a half hour TV show ?
Get your priorities right.
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I am appalled that US software is being used to suppress individual rights overseas, when there's obviously so much more that needs to be done to suppress individual rights here at home.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.