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Beijing's New Enforcer - Microsoft
QuatermassX writes "The New York Times editorial page comments on the responsibilities of American technology companies doing business in China. From the article: 'Such obvious disregard for users' privacy and ethical standards may make it easier to do business in China, but it also aids a repressive regime. Some in the American Congress are talking about holding hearings. Microsoft has responded to criticism by saying, 'We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there.' This is a false choice. China needs Internet companies as much as they need China.'"
Goo-do-no-evil-gle also has a stake in Baidu, which conveniently offers painless search for MP3 downloads.
I guess it's better to be there (do a bit of evil) than not be there (no evil).
From the article: "Western technology companies could have a powerful case if they acted as a group in telling China that they are under tremendous consumer and political pressure to stick up for free expression."
You mean like countless protests, threats of sanction on China's poor treatment to basic human rights, which result in nothing? Or do you mean North-Korea or Iran's nucular plan despite pressures from western countries?
I guess it's time for parents to wake up and realize that their children have grown up and are strong and indenpendant enough to ignore or repel parental guidance. These parents can either act nice in order to live peacefully with their children, or get kicked out of the house.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
" From the article: 'Such obvious disregard for users' privacy and ethical standards may make it easier to do business in China, but it also aids a repressive regime. "
So what do you think outsourcing does then?
There often is a difference between what's legal and what's right in a moral sense - in other words, the "right" in "a right" is not the same as in "morally right".
China may have the legal right to do whatever it wants with its citizens, no matter what that is, but it doesn't mean that it's morally OK for them to do it. Furthermore, China *did* sign and ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - in fact, there even was a Chinese professor (Zhang Pengjun) on the commission that drafted the declaration.
That being said - as has been reported, there *is* not even a law in China that would require censorship of words such as "democracy". Microsoft is simply sucking up here, in one of the worst ways imaginable.
Fed up with slashdot? I am too.
China needs Internet companies as much as they need China.
No it doesn't.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
A country that jails people for expressing opposing political viewpoints is in material violation of the spirit of the free software movement. IMO, there should be an anti-totalitarian variant of the GPL that denies repressive states and their institutions any license under which they can legally run the software or use the source. And the FSF should be suing these states at the Hague daily.
Why should the burden of trying to use software as a lever to lift state oppression fall on the shoulders of Microsoft? If any group has a philosophical goal that is in line with lifting oppression, it is the Free Software movement. So why is Microsoft lambasted in the NYT while the OSDL gets cheered for admitting Red Flag Linux?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
... the citizens of a country carry their morals with them when they go abroad, no? It isn't so much China's behaviour, it's the behavious of my fellow Americans that disturbs me.
Microsoft has silenced a well-known blogger in China for committing journalism. At the Chinese government's request, the company closed the blog of Zhao Jing on Dec. 30 after he criticized the government's firing of editors at a progressive newspaper. Microsoft, which also acknowledges that its MSN Internet portal in China censors searches and blogs, is far from alone. Recently Yahoo admitted that it had helped China sentence a dissident to 10 years in prison by identifying him as the sender of a banned e-mail message.
Even as Internet use explodes in China, Beijing is cracking down on free expression, and Western technology firms are leaping to help. The companies block access to political Web sites, censor content, provide filtering equipment to the government and snitch on users. Companies argue that they must follow local laws, but they are also eager to ingratiate themselves with a government that controls access to the Chinese market.
Such obvious disregard for users' privacy and ethical standards may make it easier to do business in China, but it also aids a repressive regime. Some in the American Congress are talking about holding hearings. Microsoft has responded to criticism by saying, "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there." This is a false choice. China needs Internet companies as much as they need China.
A decade ago, consumers began to rebel against the sweatshop practices of Western manufacturers that made clothes and toys in China and elsewhere. The smart businesses cleaned up. They formed associations to adopt codes of good labor practices and set up independent monitoring.
Reporters Without Borders, a group advocating press freedom, recommends that Internet companies also adopt a good conduct code, pledging not to filter out words like "democracy" and "human rights" from search engines and maintaining their e-mail and Internet servers outside China.
Western businesses have always overestimated the price of defending human rights in China. Some have done it effectively - privately and respectfully - and paid no cost. But the beauty of such an industrywide code of conduct for Internet companies is that it would put no company at a disadvantage.
Western technology companies could have a powerful case if they acted as a group in telling China that they are under tremendous consumer and political pressure to stick up for free expression.
+1 fashionably cynical
Picture another scenario.
Companies such as Microsoft refuse to help China. China's government still sees the need for the technology, so they create a government branch to build the technology they need. Obviously, this branch would gravitate towards the use of free Open Source software, since the vendors won't support them. This new branch builds China's own IT infrastructure, and in doing so, has a much deeper knowledge of the technology. Now the Chinese government has full control, and the knowledge to go with it.
I think it's better to have vendors holding the government's hand and selling them their insecure software. The experts in the country will be the individuals who use free software to find holes and workarounds to get the information and services they need.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Wow
We're going to censure MS for abiding by Chinese law, while simultaneously maintaining MFN status with them?
And what do you suppose we'd say if some company from another country set up shop here, and refused to abide by OSHA regs or US child labor laws?
This is just...asinine. I can even see an argument that MS should voluntarily choose to not do business in China for ethical reasons, but I just can't see our government mandating it.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Nope, nothing here giving Congress any authority to regulate business in the U.S., let alone China.
Wrong on both counts. The Interstate Commerce Clause gives Congress broad authority to regulate business within the borders of the US, and various trade treaties approved by the Senate give the government strong powers at regulating the activities of American companies in other countries. In addition, the Federal government explicitly has the authority to level taxes and tariffs on all commerce coming in, or going out, of its territories. So, yes, the federales can tell Microsoft where they can and can't sell their products.
Even leaving all that aside, it can be argued that the US has a strong strategic interest in seeing democracy flourish around the globe. Companies which empower countries to keep a chain around their citizens' necks shouldn't be able to plead "We have no choice, we have to do as they say!" Because they do have a choice, and that choice is not to do business in those countries. There's nothing immoral in, effectively, blockading China's ability to buy software from American companies. Whether it would be effective is a different argument which I am avoiding.
FWIW, China isn't the worst government. I know of one that warmongers in 100 countries as we speak, forcing oil-buying countries to use this Empire's currency, all the while stomping on its own citizens' rights and freedoms while pretending to defend liberty.
Oh, please, now you're just trolling. We're not actively at war with any other country currently, we don't force anyone to use our currency (in fact, the Congress was about to levy sanctions on China if they didn't stop pegging their currency to ours exclusively), and if our rights and liberties were as jeopardized as you seem to be claiming you'd be in jail right now, or worse.
I usually agree whole-heartedly with what you write, dada, but you seem to have some wild hair up your butt that's making you spout nonsense today. What gives?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
That Would kill our economy. Turn over some of the things you have in your house and see were they are made. As much as it pains to say, we are depended on China. Need more proof? America's (and the world's) largest comapny, Wal-Mart, needs China's cheap labor to 'Roll back those prices' in the United States.
Article II Section 8 grants the Legislative Branch (Congress) the power to " To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;" This is what is known as the Commerce Clause
Also in that same section: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." This allows them to actually do the above.
That would grant them say the ability to prohibit U.S. Businesses from engaging in commerce of proscribed types with select foriegn nations. This has been done with Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, the USSR...
First, the last Constitutional war was declared in the 1930s or so -- WW2. Since then we've sent troops all over the world and currently quarter troops in over 100 countries.
Secondly I've resided in HK and China for business. In China I can open a business in under 4 hours, I can travel without ID and I can smoke, drink and rent prostitutes if any of those were my thing.
The market doesn't cure all ills. We should censure MS / Yahoo! for not maintaining American ethical standards while operating abroad. Sure a corporation exists to maximise shareholder value, but we should ALL operate with our ethics intact. To do otherwise implies what's good for Americans is ... flexible for others. While this may fly with our "guests" in Cuba and those nice people we fly around Europe and the Middle East for "talks" in non-US jails ... well ... this is all plainly wrong.
This goes back to a fundamental mistake made by many people... a company's purpose should not be to make money at any cost, legal or otherwise. Companies are not mindless entities that must suck as much money as possible from people to add value to its stock price. Companies wouldn't exist without the people that run and own them. Those people have basic moral obligations to society. And I believe those should translate into the corporations they own and run.
In fact, corporations that follow basic morals can make as much or more than companies that do not, in the long run. And that's one of the problems... they often don't care about long term costs of acting unethically. Take Microsoft as an example. If they acted better they'd have more community and corporate support long term. They'd have a much better image and not have to be so reactive to every threat to their bottom line.
Ethics in corporations matter. And more people need to realize that.
Developers: We can use your help.
Microsoft very honestly see a market that they can provide with service. A smart CEO will notice that if Microsoft does not take that market, another business can. The morality of the service is not coming into play, only the profit. This could be a case where the Ethics Committee was not consulted. And yes, I'm being generous in assuming that Microsoft has one of those.
I wonder if IBM said the same thing about working with Nazi Germany. Despite China's oppressive human rights record, you'd have to be a moron to equate the two countries. But there are clearly special ethical perils to supplying information technology solutions to repressive regimes.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
FWIW, China isn't the worst government.
Right, there is still North Korea, and arguably Cuba.
know of one that warmongers in 100 countries as we speak
Which one? As we have around 192 countries in the world, give or take, the country you are talking about would have to be in a state of war with more than half of the world. As it stands, the only one who loudly declares an intent to do so doesn't even have nukes yet.
Oh, wait... you meant the US, just because they are waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is clearly less than "100". And I personally wouldn't blame the US for these wars -- they deserve blame for waging them in an ineffective way. They at least had the balls to step up while many others just blabbed around. And yeah, there is the question of hypocrisy of being on friendly terms with China, North Korea and Russia while not having official diplomatic relations with places like Taiwan or Tibet.
How many countries that are more free than the US can you name? Certainly no more than a handful. In fact, it's basically only a few Scandinavian ones that can even try.
UK? Mass surveilance. Poland? Rampant corruption. Russia? At the level of Germany in the 30s. 90% of Africa? Muslim countries? Venesuela and the like?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If you are talking about the US constitution, it's here:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
US Corporate Law is what ensures vile and reprehensible behavior as standard practice... It's known as "Profit Maximization" and it's part of the corporate charter in most western capitalist societies.
In my opinion this is the one of the most significant flaws in capitalism and in modern societies in general.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
And the FSF should be suing these states at the Hague daily.
Precisely how would they go about that? As a non-state entity, the US Federal courts or the courts of the offending country are your only options. Unless you can get a state to bring the case to the ICJ/ICC, you're not going to get past the gate.
You mean December 7th of 1941? Heh. Open a business in four hours. You must be from a different China than me, or you have a rolodex of bribable officials you could sell for half a million.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Here's a really good index of economic freedom:
o untries.cfm
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/c
I realize that economic freedom is just one of the "types" of freedoms, but it's still a very interesting read. We tie for 9th in the world.
An example of an apparent (though maybe not actual, I'm no expert) flaw in using this as an index of freedom as a whole would be the UK out ranking the US considerably, since the massive surveilance that you mentioned would seem to preclude that.
In a competitive market, morality is defined by law. Companies will (and are supposed to) do whatever it takes to succeed. If one company decides not to do something on based personal morals, not determined by law, they'll be simply be pushed aside by a company that will, so that their restraint will have had no positive effect. Same goes for pollution. If the profitable choice is the polluting one, the companies that choose not to pollute will have no success in reducing pollution, but instead will simply be pushed out of the market by those that are willing to pollute for profit, unless the law steps in to make pollution an unprofitable choice.
It's beyond time to question "free trade" when America can't sell it's #1 product: the freedom to say what you want.
Actually, I think that is pretty profound. What is "Western Culture" except science on one hand and the "rights of man" on the other hand. The rest of the world has science now. All we have left to give is Enlightment humanism. Failing that, our culture has no reason to exist beyond Hollywood and Las Vegas.
> You don't believe, despite their own claims to be doing so, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
Care to back that statement up, neocon? As far as I know, they've claimed to develop a peaceful, civil nuclear program to generate power.
Of course, nobody believes them, but then nobody believes you either.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Older geeks on /. will remember that it used to be a mantra in the West that if we only showed how good it could be to have our consumer goods and other material things to the citizens of repressive regimes, they would ultimately overthrow their Evil Overlords. It was due to this pattern of that the we actually wanted companies such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's to do business in totalitarian countries like the USSR.
Flash forward to now, and suddenly it's a bad thing? I'm sure US companies in the Soviet republics had to do their fair share of blinking previously, and it's still the price to pay when dealing with a repressive oligarchy like the current Chinese regime.
I guess the big difference now is that I don't think having Microsoft or Google in China is advancing American interests much. Quite the opposite, in fact.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Giving sh-t to Microsoft for supporting China - an oppressive regime - is a cheap shot that only alleviates our guilt. Did any one of you refuse to purchase the componets from the computers you are using right now that were made in china? Fuelling money into this opressive regime? Did anyone complain about how cheap their latest gadget was because it was manufactured in China? Did you opt out of buying clothing that was made there? Are Microsoft's actions more politically vulnerable to attack? Yes. But lets not forget all the other companies that operate in China that we are all too happy to support. In my opinion, Microsoft getting their software in the door with restrictions is much better than an insulated China-made alternative. Anyone who thinks that it's the microsoft software that's keeping people from free expression, and not the people that are going to come knocking at your door, is crazy. Free expression in China will require people who can avoid detection and get around restrictions anyways - a word filter from Microsoft isn't going to stop them.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance8.html
I was wrong, it isn't 100 countries it's ~130-something.
Out of nearly 200.
Why do people cite partisan think tank reports as authoritative? I suppose it's not as bad as newspapers presenting them as fact, but really...
Well, in this case because the methodology is sound. I'm an economics student (as well as CS) and after careful study I felt that this was a pretty good summarization.
While I certainly share your scepticism regarding partisan think tanks, the source doesn't _always_ completely devalue the information. The fact that the source is a very partisan think tank means that the information deserves the highest of scrutiny.
Also, I'm not sure that any list of "freedom" can be authoritative. I didn't try to present it that way. I described it as "pretty good", not "the final say".
It is worse than war, actually - China is setting out to commit cultural genocide.
Ironically, I recently got in an argument with a Chinese guy about our treatment of Native Americans. Tibet is much worse, though - it would be like everything that westerners did to Native Americans except:
1: Performed long after the rest of the world realized such behavior was wrong 2: Followed the actual military conquest with a determined effort to whipe the culture from the survivors.
China has no moral high ground on this matter.
No one could care less about the people in China. "Human Rights" is an issue people bring up when they want an excuse to complain about Microsoft... or when they want some protectionist policy to save the local sock factory.
Here is an example of the totaly inconsistant views that many people have about "human rights":
1. Why did labor unions in the U.S. start worrying about human rights in China, only when China started winning jobs from the United States and kicking ass economicly? I don't remember labor unions upset about Maos Cultural Revolution back in the 60s the same way they railed on about the Tianemen Square massacre!
2. Why is it bad that U.S. companies are NOT doing buisness in Cuba? Every anti-corporate crusader who thinks U.S. corporations should stop doing buisness in China because China censors the Internet is in love with Internet censoring Cuba and thinks the trade embargo on Cuba is some big horrible plot by the corporations.
3. Why is it bad when the U.S. tries to stop advanced U.S. weapons from being sold to China? I think the Guardian newspaper called it "Imperialistic" that the U.S. didn't want advanced weapons sold to China via 3rd parties in Europe. I guess it is a human rights violation for Microsoft to help read people's emails, but not a human rights violation to blow people up?
4. Why is it so bad when the U.S. doesn't want to turn over control of the root internet name servers to an organization dominated by countries like China? Why is it reasonable when China demands the U.N. give it the ability to censor the Internet , but the epitome of evil when Microsoft inside China aids censorship strictly inside China?
5. Why are Europeans always carrying on about capital punishment in America being an affront to human rights not urging Mercedes, or LG, or Semens, or Shell Oil, or Nestle, or other European companies to stop doing buisness in the United States?
I don't care what your political beliefs are, or what country you are from, I bet I can point out a whole bunch of inconsistant and hipocritical positions on "human rights"!
Why are people's views on human rights so inconsistant? Because people don't care about human rights: People care about their own economic self interest or their own political agenda, and human rights is a rhetorical tool. If you look at people's views based on what benifits them economicly or politically, you will find their views are 100% rational and consistant.
So, come to me with human rights issues when "human rights" means something more than a political slogan or economic tool.
The scary thing about all this, is that it sets a precedent that this kind of thing is not really so bad. China is not at the apex of its power now, but likely it will soon eclipse the combined power of the US and EU.
In Australia, part of the justification for the recent erosion of workers' rights, is that we need to compete with Asia. How long will it be until there are similar erosions of civil rights and human rights to allow our contries to compete with Asia?
We are in a position of relative power now - we're relatively wealthy. Free trade is one thing, but it should be contingent on countries respecting worker/human rights. That way, we can force countries to make things better - while we still can. Once China is as wealthy as the West, there'll be bugger all we can do.
I'm not fearmongering, and I've got nothing against the Chinese, but their government is f*cked (tho Western govts could be a helluva lot better), and it could turn around in a few years and bite us all in the ass.
"EXACT SAME GARBAGE". :-) I'm glad to see there's at least some people who are awake.
When Craig Whitney on the Council on Foreign Relations admitted that the whole Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq deal was a scam and he, along with Charles Duelfer, announced that the USA would first attack Iran and then North Korea on May 24, 2005 in New York, he blurred out: "But we now know that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction to speak of in 2003, when we went to war. Does it matter to Americans that our country went to war on a false premise?"
Guess not, because in the very same briefing, minutes later, Charles Duelfer said:
"Secondly, and we describe this in some detail in the report, there was a greater concern than we could appreciate sitting here in Washington of the threat posed by Iran. And we just, you know, that our gut feeling for that was not the same as the gut feeling one would have sitting in Baghdad, where you had invaded and killed a lot of those people, and then every once in a while they were throwing rockets at you, so there was an ongoing conflict there. And Saddam was certainly aware of the WMD assessments of Iran and he created intentionally a certain ambiguity about what his capabilities were. So there were mixed motivations."
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=8157
(for those of you who haven't realized it, the Council on Foreign Relations is the primary political institution of the power elite in the USA and behind the facade controls both political parties)
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation