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Why Google in China Makes Sense
ctd writes "The BBC is carrying an interesting article about the positive outcomes from Google's censorship of its China site." From the article: "Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust, but I've just reinstated them as the default search for my Firefox toolbar, because I think it should be supported for its brave decision. Even if the primary motivation for going into China is that it makes commercial sense for the company - as indeed it must do, since US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value - it also makes political sense. "
since US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value - it also makes political sense.
Shareholder's wealth is more important than human rights? I hope the author feels the same way when China is rounding up "bad thinkers" who search for the wrong things from within China. It's just a matter of time... but at least the shareholders will be happy.
Trolling is a art,
There are reasons to justify Google's involvement in China, but nothing would make it a "brave" one.
What they did is to cave in to the Chinese govt.'s pressure and although that has positive aspects, like still being accessible for chinese people, the censorship still exist and that cannot be called as a brave decision.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why'd you remove Google as your default search function? And then again why were you swayed by something that is only speculation to put it back, if you feel strongly enough about it to have removed it in the first place?
-JesseNothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
arent we hitting the threshold of Google-in-China stories? Even Eric, Sergey and Brin might not have discussed so much.. If anyone from China wants to get uncensored results from google, please call me at 444-444-4444 (Intl rates apply, $2.99/min +taxes)
They made a big thing about the filtering, but when I went on google's china site and seached for tianamen square the first result i got was about the masacre and the second was from amnesty's web page... it doesn't look like they are actually filtering anything
Also, they mentioned that google would say when it actually filtered something out, which lets people know they are doing it, witholding rights is like growing mushrooms, they both grow best in the dark
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
That's not acceptable. People there know they are being kept in the dark. Simply telling them that they are is adding insult to injury. What a joke! On the flip side, Google and others need to be there and push the boundries. Eventually China will open up. It's just a matter of time because you can't keep a good thing like freedom down.
http://religiousfreaks.com/From the article: Even in the United States, where the First Amendment protects speech from government interference, service providers impose terms and conditions of use that limit what can be posted online and search engines routinely take content from their indexes if it infringes copyright or is deemed inappropriate.
But Americans are free to change ISPs, and more importantly, Americans are free to read other people's compliants about those ISPs on the internet. Americans are also free to use another search engine. I really can't believe how anyone could sympathize with government sponsored censorship.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Even though they are blocking out a lot of porn and anti chinese govt. sites, the Chinese people will get to see all the articles on democracy and many other things that will educate the citizens. Thus the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. In time, the Chinese citizens will demand more freedoms, but this is a big step in the right direction in my opinion.
No Sigs!
...just not be there. As with any corporation it's all about money. It's what you do with that money that makes a difference.
Of course, all that money that comes from China goes to an American company which keeps American's working. I suppose you might not care about that, but I sure do. Besides, if everyone is so against China, then stop buying electronics, stop going to walmart...only buy American. Most products are not made in America anymore and most people don't care, they get their cheap crappy stuff.
as indeed it must do, since US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value - it also makes political sense I belive google's board is somewhat protected from this, based on their bylaws.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Example: A search for falun gong on google brings up pro-government propaganda. Dissenting views are blocked.
.. not "give us a list of sites you want censored". Users who serach for a keyword should get no results and a notice saying "sorry your govt. blocked it etc."
_ falun_gong_in_china/index.album?i=0&s=1
Google should at least block all sites for a given keyword, not present propaganda only. Have some ethics, tell them "give us a list of keywords to block"
source:
http://googlecensorship.tripod.com/google_censors
This article is an utter and complete joke, what is so brave about doing what the government says and making millions of dollars in the process, I mean give me a break...
The article implies that libel laws and laws againt computer-generated child-porn are synonymous with censorship. That's crap, of course. I expect that kind of argument from a high school student, not a paid BBC commentator.
See, what the BBC doesn't understand is Google's "Evil Alert" system. There's a lot of evil in the world, you know, and since Google has so much money - which as a rule of thumb, you see, has evil attached to it- and all this evil on money, well, it has this way of rubbing off. So Google made an 'evil alert system'...
China's "Evil" rating is currently somewhere around yellow, verging on orange- their growing economy is overall good for their people, but the ways they're growing are a little scary to our point of view. So while censorship, see, some people call censorship bad, well, Google can still do business in China because of the good things the Chinese government is doing.
And that's why wiretapping is okay.
My little site.
I think not. Most people (at least Americans) don't care what Google does in China, even if they know anything at all about it. All they care about is the search results and products Google makes FOR THEM.
Not to mention habits are hard to break, so "Googling it" is something that now comes as second nature to many people and isn't likely to change over China.
All of you "OH NOES! GOOGLE IS TEH EVIL!!!11!eleventyone" people need to re-evaluate their lives. Do you all consider yourselves evil? No? How many of you are working on systems whose parts were manufactured in China? How many of your clothes and shoes were made there? How many objects can you find within ten feet of you right this second that were made in China? You are doing business in China, by buying their goods, but you are not evil. Why are you applying a double standard to Google?
Here come the Google apologists, there is always a way to justify Google's action no matter how wrong it is. I have no problem with Google censoring stuff in china just don't go around pretending they're doing it for any other reason than financial.
...is one that forsakes wealth in favor of principle.
But then, unconditional Google apologists aren't exactly a rare breed.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Okay, now my initial knee jerk reaction is that Google shouldn't be censoring. But then I read that Google WILL NOTIFY USERS THAT THE DOCUMENT IS CENSORED.
Its one thing where censorship is hidden, but its quite another when millions of Chinese will begin to realize how much information is being hidden from them.
This is a good thing, and certainly not evil.
This bit of stupidity is a staple of posters here already -- it's not like you need to link to another continent for it.
US law requires boards to operate in shareholders' interest in a broad sense, i.e. that they're not supposed to pillage the company to enrich themselves. It doesn't mean that they're required to take every short-term opportunity to grab another dollar. (How do you think they make charitable donations or provide sponsorships?)
There is zero possibility that an any legal case could be made against the Google board if they had declined to operate in China under these restrictions.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Like how Google is fighting the "world's most dangerous terrorist" George Bush and the Justice Dept for access to search records.
Yeah... real noble. Cave to the communists - stand-up to the Justice Dept. Sheesh...
Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust....
Who are they turning to? Haven't ALL the major search engines "caved in" (e.g. MSN, Yahoo) to the Chinese Government's pressures? The open source answer should be something like: "You don't like it? Build your own search engine, then!"
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I don't see why this has become such a publicized event. MSN and Yahoo have been in China already -- with the same censorship rules. In fact, to enforce the giant firewall, many other North American firms provide the required technology, including Nortel.
Don't forget about the thousands of companies that use factories in China to produce, what seems like 90% of the everything in the average house. Don't kid yourselves, the people working in factories making goods for HP, Apple, Nike, Nokia, et al. don't have the same freedoms of speech or demonstration that we do in North America.
Outside of a distinct minority of North American consumers, we've clearly decided that it's best to do business with China and hope that our living standards and freedoms and other policies will eventually get integrated into future Chinese policy.
Every person badmouthing Google is a hypocrit. Every single one of you support the Chinese government. Your keyboard, your monitor, your desk. That chair, your clothes, your TV, all those toys you bought for your nephew. Every time you buy an item that has a Made in China label is you are supporting the oppression of the people. Google is one upping all of us.
Not only are they providing the Chinese people will a powerful tool for finding most of the worlds information but they are also letting the Chinese people know what is being blocked. Get off your high horse and realize while google is doing this primarily to get a foothold in a huge market, there is also a very real benefit to the people of China.
China is only going to become more free and google wants to be there for it. You lazy hypocrits just want cheap, crappy products that some foreigner who will be making more than you in 20 years.
Just for kicks, I just did a search on www.google.cn for "Falun Gong Chinese Revolution Tianamen Square Freedom of China Anti-Communism"
and the first result was a pdf (html here) called Internet Filtering in China 2004-2005: A Country Study
Similar searches just directed me to Wikipedia.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I think that Google is leaving the door ajar for political dissenters this way. Google will say HOW and WHERE they're censored, in other words: "I didn't censor OTHER ways of communication, wink wink, nudge nudge".
:)
Double speech and steganography cannot be censored by Google, so the dissenters will have the option to communicate thru this. After all, why should google have to censor "Our trip to the lake" photo album?
This story has been spinned in so many directions that I'm getting dizzy.
But, whatever colored glasses you choose to wear, a few facts remain undisputable...
1) Chinese government actively censors certain information from its people
2) Google wants to do business in China
3) At China's demand, Google censors certain information from it's google.cn search replies
4) Once, on Google's FAQ page, a few statements existed regarding the company's belief in a democratic and uncensored distribution of information... those statements have been removed recently.
Whether someone is wrong or right in all this depends (partly) on how you rate the importance/goodness of some of these facts in relation to each other.
However, I have a problem with a statement like this.
But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors.
China boasts 111 million Internet users http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?typ e=internetNews&storyid=2006-01-18T030843Z_01_SHA66 703_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-INTERNET.xml and 393 cell phone users http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/200 6/1/24/business/13197510&sec=business. That's a lot of information flowing around. Chinese know what Western cultures bring, good and bad, probably more than Western people do. To think China as a big dark corner of the world which The West must shine its democratic and liberal lights on, is quite romantic, but is naive.
Honestly the chinese censorship is totally overrated by Americans.
Everyone in China knows there is censorship, everyone in China knows about the rest of the world. It's more of an annoyance than anything.
Finding "banned" information in China is like trying to get "warez" in the united states. It's not legal and every so often the sites get shutdown but it's not like it's a big secret or people with a little effort can't find it.
Finding some "banned" info in china is about as hard as an American finding photoshop on the internet. Basically a pain in the ass with a slight chance of legal repurcussion but really not much a big deal.
Would it be nice if the Chinese government would just throw in the towel and give up the half-assed attempt to censor the internet? Hell ya! Waste of everyone's time and money, but really it's not as big a deal as some of these Chinaphobes make it out to be...
This gives Google some interesting opportunities.
First, Google gets to remind the Chinese millions of times per day that their government is censoring them.
Second, Google is a symbol of Western ideas and freedoms -- again, visible millions of times per day.
Third, this allows China to eventually become addicted to Google's services. In the long term, Google could end up in the driver's seat of China's information flow.
Fourth, Google can now play the role of "secretly subversive insider". No filter can be perfect. Google will always claim they're doing "the best filtering job technically possible", but we'll always wonder if they're REALLY committed to it -- just like we always wondered about the original Napster's commitment to excellence in filtering. If 99% of the Google workforce secretly hopes that the Chinese filters will be ineffective, what do you think is going to happen?
What a bunch of hypocracy.
When Microsoft did the same, they were EVIL.
The next logical step is this (based on the US government request): the Chinese government would demand Google China to hand over all the search records, for keywords they are interested in.
Since Google operates in China probably as a business entity registered in China, the Chinese government could try to legally force that.
It's an ancient dilemma: can you do business with the devil, without becoming evil.
Look up the history books: the answer is hardly ever.
Ah, but how do we know this is in fact the actual text of the article and not some Chinese-Google modified version of the story being served from a top secret server farm in Beijing. Hmmm?!?! Who is this Bill Thompson? We don't know. I've never met him. Maybe he should come to my house and prove he's a loyal American... or Britain... or Englishman... He might be a robot or Chinese, or worse... a Chinese World of Warcraft robot gold farmer. Well he won't fool me!!
I think I'll be spending the rest of the century in my tin-foil lined saferoom playing WOW and asking people to type several pages of flawless grammar before they join my group.
Take that China. Take that Sergey Brin. Take that robots.
I've forgotten my point.
What do you guys think of this idea? I had the idea yesterday, but I wanted to know what some of you think about it.
I really wanted to suggest something in hopes that some decision maker at Google, MSN, or Yahoo may consider it if they have not already. Google and the other search engines have the infrastructure and capability to create, setup, and maintain massive amounts of proxy servers. If they really wanted to make a significant contribution to the goal of providing free and uncensored information to Chinese citizens, they could do it. Simply create proxy servers accessible by those in China that could then relay http traffic anonymously. Shit, throw a couple million at it and make it a freakin huge proxy network that rotates through different IP ranges every couple weeks so that Chinese government agencies can't keep up with them.
That is, if they really wanted to not be evil.
If they wanted to be creative with it, they could take one of their services, Google Talk for example, and provide a feature in the client that would allow one to browse to a site via their proxy servers. One idea would be to place an input field in a panel used to enter in a friends user name that you would like to connect to, but if you inputted a url, it would still relay the request to their proxy servers. Of course that would be in violation of the clients EULA, but then they could just leave the capability their and never get around to "patching" it.
Its just an idea, but I wish that they used their incredibly gifted employees to do something really great.
Mod parent -1 Redundant.
It's generally agreed that free information flow and communication are two of the best tools a population can have to use against a totalitarian or dictatorial government. Okay, so google.cn is limiting the flow of information, but that flow is still greater than it would be if google.cn didn't exist.
Think of it this way - the first couple of cracks in a dam don't look too threatening when they are small and just forming. Think of google's presence in China as the harbinger of greater information flow to come. Intelligent and quick-witted people will use this limited tool to find ways to ultimately have a tool which is less limited, less restricted.
I'm not saying that (GOOGLE.CN)==(FREEDOM FOR CHINA), only that IMHO this is a step in the right direction. If that step is hobbled, it is nonetheless progress toward a desirable end. Also, let's not upbraid Google too harshly for functioning to the best of their abilities despite obstacles imposed by a sovereign state in which they wish to do business; rather we should applaud their effort to expand their business model and all that goes with it into an undeniably hostile environment. That their motives are not so lofty as the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom is irrelevant: that their actions might lead to the furtherance of human rights and personal freedom seems more important to me here.
The best thing is for Google to comply with the censorship, get everyone used to using it (like the rest of the world), then stop complying. The government would be forced to either give up on censorship or tell all their citizens that the Google which they have all grown accustomed to (which they surely will) is no longer allowed. What better way to make the Chinese people painfully aware of what their government is doing? I think if the US government were to suddenly decide to censor Google it would have a lot of seriously, seriously pissed off people to answer to. Getting and then losing Google could be a catalyst for change over there...
How can they possibly say that? Stopped reading after that.
The sky is falling the sky is falling....
The "Business Judgment Rule" protects any decision that a corporation's board makes as long as they [1] deliberate with knowledge about the decision (i.e., they must be informed); and [2] don't have any conflicts of interest (i.e., sign a contract with the Board's president's son-in-law).
[Furthermore, the Board didn't necessary approve or disapprove of this decision. It might have just been management. They can pretty much do anything they want. When "concerned shareholders" such their own corporation, they usually sue the Board rather than only management.]
just wondering....
The shoe also falls on the other foot. If Google so egregiously violates human rights that their company is damaged, they would be forced to not do so. All we must do is punish those businesses that trample human rights, and companies who are chasing the bottom line would cease doing so, simply because it would not be profitable. The problem with the twerps like you and me is that we do not punish these companies; we continue to buy millions of dollars of sweat-shop produced clothing and shoes, we buy billions of dollars of oil from countries whose governments openly treat women and religious minorities as chattel.
MORTAR COMBAT!
If people saw a huge lump sum bill at the end of the year from the IRS and saw how much money the government is costing them, they might actually do something about that too.
Read your W-2 form, the amount withheld is right there!
Add what you owe or subtract your refund and you get the amount the government takes (or gives in the case of those with "negative" taxes).
Divide that into your gross salary (also on that nifty W-2) and find out what percentage is taken.
It is sickening. It is really sickening when 25% or more of one's wages are taken and the government demands more.
Back to the topic, our government may have a hand in this. I believe it may be illegal (I don't know if it is criminal/felony, criminal/misdemeanor and/or civil) to harm the shareholder's interests. Google isn't being evil if its just obeying the law. Losing China's business would likely be considered to be a violation.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I don't see why anyone would be upset with Google for censoring results for China. If they didn't, then the Chinese government would probably block Google entirely. So you people would rather the Chinese not be able to use google at all? Use your heads. Google did the right thing.
big difference between people thinking "it doesnt exist" and "the govt. is blocking it"
good pick up
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
"Getting and then losing Google could be a catalyst for change over there..."
You do realize we're talking about a single search engine company, right?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
For Tiannamen Square
Lost my Baby there
my yellow rose
her blood stained clothes
Something tells me, no.
So few here are even qualifed to speak on this subject, pathetic.
The best thing is for Google to comply with the censorship, get everyone used to using it (like the rest of the world), then stop complying.
If that turns out to be their plan, then I will of course forgive them for what they're doing. From where I sit today however, it sure looks to me like they're an accessory to genocide.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The article isn't relevant at all. It should be named, "I don't care if they block China" or "Others do it so Google can do it too.".
Yes, a single search engine which people seem to favor over all the others and quickly grow accustomed to using on a daily basis. We've made a friggin' verb out of it, fer chrissakes. Do you think Google's arrival in China will have any less of an impact on their culture than it did on ours? Something whose existence makes such a heavy impact will be missed greatly if suddenly banned.
Chill, people. There is no censorship in China. That was a nasty urban legend that has already been debunked by Snopes China .
Read your W-2 form, the amount withheld is right there!
I'm well aware of that. When it's taken from you before you even get it, it doesn't seem as much as if you had a huge $12,000 bill for it at the end of the year. Most people wouldn't put the money away for it, and there would be massive protests about the government. That would be a good thing, and would open a lot of people's eyes.
Back to the topic, our government may have a hand in this. I believe it may be illegal (I don't know if it is criminal/felony, criminal/misdemeanor and/or civil) to harm the shareholder's interests. Google isn't being evil if its just obeying the law. Losing China's business would likely be considered to be a violation.
Even if it fell under the law, I highly doubt they'd be prosecuted for refusing to censor search engine queries, and subsequently being banned from doing business in China. It would greatly annoy investors, sure, but I just can't see them being prosecuted for it. Would make for a pretty landmark case if they were though, but obviously, not happening now.
Summary of TFA:
-US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value, and Google was brave enough to do what made money, was good for shareholders, and safe for themselves.
-Google's competitors censor in China too: See everybody does it. It's no big deal.
-It's okay to screw people over as long as you tell them they're being screwed, and that it's not your fault.
-Even the west practices censorship - sure the Chinese practices are a teeny-weeny bit more draconian and all that, but still no need to worry.
-Google could now use its influence to make the political climate better in China. How? Um... By being the... WEATHER OF THE INTERNET! Yeah! That's it!
-"If we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors." (Yeah, cause bending over backwards has always so well worked in the past...) :-P
...to come up with justifications for a course of action that would vastly enrich you. All you have to mutter are the magic words, "maximize shareholder profit". IBM made the similar arguments working for Nazi Germany, and pointed out they made plenty of contributions to the Allies as well. Scientists throughout both world wars on all sides justified their work on war weaponry (poison gas, atomic weapons, incendiary bombs, etc.) in terms of, "if it shortens the war, less people will die, so this is good."
Of course, these justifications usually have a nugget of truth in them, or they wouldn't salve the consciences of the people coming up with them.
I don't know if Google is doing evil, but they sure aren't doing good here.
I agree the Chinese are getting more information with Google (and Yahoo and MSN) operating in the country. But what that really means is they are getting more false information. False by ommission. It means more bias and propaganda and less truth - because it is deliberately censored.
.nevermind.
How is more lies better? Can someone explain that to me?
Luckily, I do see that some of the truth is slipping through. The internet is very hard to control and the chinese government is not 100% successful. I love how quickly Slashdot is willing to be an apologist for Google and China, the same Slashdot where the mere mention of . . . starts with an M . .
The Xooglers Blog has interesting commentary by an ex-google employee on the idea of Google in China, as well as insight into the process behind deciding whether or not to go in. It can be found in the second part of the currently most recent post titled "Come And Get Me Coppers"
95% of google... or 0% of google. which is better?
eric http://www.ericdfields.com/
The authoritarian regime of China or Google?
Google gets its foot in the door and access to a lot of the information they want to crawl and index. Mao called it "sugar coated bullets", but was referring to Disney, Coca Cola and the rest of the Western "influences" and not necessarily Google.
Can China survive under the current repressive regime, or will the eventually change to something more open? When they do change, who is going to be there to give them a hand (or more accurately, a connection to the outside world)?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
But the law isn't Israel-specific. It prohibits US persons or entities from complying with "unsanctioned foreign boycotts". It also prohibits any US person or entity from discriminating "against any corporation or other organization which is a United States person on the basis of the race, religion, sex, or national origin of any owner, officer, director, or employee of such corporation or organization".
So for Google's China unit to exclude the US branches of Falun Gong (a religious organization) or US branches of Taiwanese political groups (national origin discrimination) from their index seems to be a violation of US export regulations under 15 CFR 160.1.
Working through a foreign subsidiary doesn't get around these rules. That loophole has been plugged very thoroughly.
This could be a real problem for Google.
I'd rather Google.cn censor its results than pretend that such results do not exist. Rather than suppress results, it should present them in redacted form, with black rescaled 1x1 GIFs in place of the text, so that it becomes very clear to those using it that their search is being censored, that there are other results but that your government has decided you don't need to know them. Making it clear the results are censored like this reduces the evil quotient.
No, I'm not talking about covering the results with such GIFs (like some redacted US government PDFs) where the results are easily discovered underneath them, but rather serving the CSS-scaled black 1x1 GIFs instead of the censored words. Probably some Javascript too to reduce the impact of page bloat.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
it's just the game that the TLP was about.
"if [google] does not sort out its approach to privacy and stop assuming that it is the only arbiter of what can be stored on its servers then it deserves to suffer"
WTF
"But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies..."
WTF
This article is stupid.
It makes sense for Google to be in China bc it's one of the world's largest economies and there's alot of money to be made there.
End of File.
The way I see it... either google censors and china allows the site to go through the great firewall or the site is blocked entirely by the "People's" Republic.
Their are only two possibilities the goverment of china will allow. A censored google or no google. I agree that googles actions are neither brave nor righteous. But they aren't evil or wrong in any case.
Hmmm... Pie...
The best way to help the Chinese people to liberate themselves from the repressive censorship they face is by helping the government do it better. Reverse psychology! The old switcheroo! Brilliant!!
And anyhow, in the US I'm not free to poop in the street. In China they're not free to criticise the government. So who's to say who's really free and who's not.
In Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, between April 15 and June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square was a site of student protests. The students were protesting communist party/government corruption and economic instability. It was violently suppressed by the government.
I think the difference between an image search google.com and google.cn speak for itself:
So wait, Google behaving in exactly the manner requested by the Chinese government in order to do business in their country is going to cause CHANGE in the Chinese government over time, even though the relationship as it exists is already mutually beneficial for both parties?
Really?
Google's motto is "Do no evil". I would interpret this much as promising that they will do no harm, not that they will right all wrongs. Much as a medical doctor under the Hippocratic Oath promises not to harm patients, rather than promising to cure all their ills.
Given a choice between a (legally constrained) presence in China and no presence whatsoever, it is less than clear to me that they are "doing evil" by remaining. Perhaps you think that they are doing harm by doing business under a repressive regime, but I would have to respectfully disagree there.
Since they are acting only to censor themselves (a distinction beyond the wit of one BBC Radio 4 listener who called an afternoon news programme to ask why they couldn't censor sexually oriented websites while they're at it) I fail to see the hypocrisy in their actions.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
So how can Google explain the different ordering of results for Google China? Hasn't it "sold" the placement of results to the Chinese Government??
Did the BBC come out in favor of companies doing business in apartheid South Africa? The arguments there were exactly the same.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If Google did this, they'd probably lose the right to do business in China. China would file some sort of formal complaint with the US government. Not sure of the terminology here but it would be the diplomatic equivalent of a nastygram. The US government cannot afford to piss off China while China holds most of the US debt, so it would first request, then require that Google shut down the proxy project. In the meantime, China would be imprisoning and/or executing those who used the proxy servers, all the while vocally blaming Google and the US for the civil ruckus being stirred up. Shareholders would be dumping Google stock like crazy.
In other words, it would probably turn into a real shitstorm. Google would go down in flames, and really have accomplished nothing except the needless imprisonment of Chinese citizens, the destruction of a great company, and the further souring of diplomatic relations between the US and China.
And then Ross Perot would invade Canada.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Sure, Google has decided to accept Chinese censorship laws/rules so they can work there. It's a foreign country. International dealings can be a sticky situation. When in another country very unlike your own, you have to act as a citizen of that country in many respects, or you probably won't get very far. That's all Google is doing. Google wants business with a quarter of the worlds population. They are doing it for money like any other business. Accepting laws or accepting to do something considered a given from another country that seem "evil" or "strange" to us is how things work internationally. We (the US in my case) don't sell uncensored porno in Japan. Countries that still use slaves don't sell slaves to us (legally). Our DVD players made in China are usually "censored" so they can't play other region movies (due to US Copyright law). We may not like it, a country that only uses region free DVD players might consider it evil to sell region-restricted DVD players to us, but this is how international business is. And a person can't blame Google for accepting this type of logic with a quarter of the worlds population would not be able to click Google ads otherwise.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
so why don't they band together and do something about it?
oh wait, they did.... and this is the result.
Granting China Most Favored Nation trading status certainly hasn't seemed to help open up their government. Maybe now they're more capitalist than socialist, but they're still a totalitarian, repressive state.
The only people who can change that live there.
There are *four* Google-related stories on the main Slashdot page alone. Isn't that ENOUGH?
It's interesting to see this follow up to the previous Google censorship article. It reminds me of blind, zealous relgion where if the object of the religion does something wrong the followers will downplay it or find some way to write it off. "It's ok that we do it, but not ok if everyone else does it", and it's for exactly the same reasons, too. Oh well, time to look for another hero, I guess.
ConsultingFair.com
a way past censorship of individual domains, urls, or page content is to encode content using non-censored internet material. this would work like private public key encryption. client browser has a plug-in that acts as a public key to decode content. for example, google uncensored search results could be used as variables in encoding. the client would then use reassemble the encoded material using the public key. thus random, innocuous, uncensored internet content that would contain the encoded message. this could never be censored unless the entire intenet were blocked.
There are search engines besides Google. It's not like Google's presence in China is "essential" to getting any information.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Is it me or are we ignoring the people of China? China was #1 on the list of highest amount of executions last year (or so I have been told) so maybe it is in Google's best interests to protect Chinese users from accidently going on a potentially unacceptable website and getting their head chopped off. If Chinese users want to browse an unrestricted web I am sure they can find a way of doing it illegally, just like Western users can find ways of watching potentially offensive entertainment.
My problem with taking this view without following it is that it ignores the assumptions that western business needs to be conducted in a free market supported by a democratic society. A business that seeks a short term gain by supporting a local totalitarian may find that all of their profits are lost when their successful company is confiscated for "the good of the state."
Even in a smaller way, a company gets its workers and customers largely from the comunity where it exists - even outsourced products tend to have a "community" of customers. Doing not just what's best for the company, but what's best for the company and the community it serves makes good sense. It's the foundation of modern game theory. Hell, watch "A Beautiful Mind" for a pedestrian version of this idea.
If business, as a whole, works off of ancient economic theory that asserts maximum profit happens when everyone works for themselves, then we may all find outselves in a negitive sum game.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I have no doubt in my mind that if things like this start to happen, Google will be quick to prevent it.
There are three ways the government could find out what people search for:
Google supplies it
Chinese government watches packets
Chinese government uses spyware on computers
The first case, I don't think Google would succumb. Google is a US presence and they will retreat behind the US military before becoming part of a situation like that.
The second case, Google would probably withdraw, but could fall back on network encryption (which probably wouldn't go over too well).
Third case, Google is pretty much helpless. The only option is to withdraw.
In any of these cases, though, if the Chinese government starts killing people over this, I think the US would intervene rather than suffer a WWII Germany times 100,000.
The China that we know and love can only go so far before the rest of the world comes down on it.
Google making sense in China?, don't make me laugh, Google wasn't aimed to the chinese market from a begining, Alibaba did.
Seeems that google is buying everyone else opinion to get their bill clean. So sad if people buys this kind of crap, giving away human rights for money is very low, geez google must be hungry to pull this kind of charade.
Next time when you see some chinese getting shot in the head for a crime think about google, the red in one of their letters now means the blood of a person that might been innocent.
I went to google.cn and got plenty of hits on "Falun Gong". Am I missing something? Do I have to be in China to be properly censored?
Okay, so it's a small victory, not a big victory. Take 'em where you can get 'em.
I have heard the idea that embracing China with western values will eventually melt that totalitarian elements in their government.
Well, one question is, "how". How, if they don't get exposed to those values if they are censored out?
Freedom to do business leading to political freedom is a big assumption.
Somebody will tell me to give it time. Well, that is what the communists said. Give it time and give it the right conditions.
I'm open minded, but I would like to hear some details for how is it going to work and forecasts for how long( however inflated for safety margins ).
I'm like many people who think this is just about money and the "embrace em to convert em" rationale is just that.
This story is really getting hased out on the news portals.
Good idea or bad? Does it really matter?
Wasn't Jordon who was quoted as saying,
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
So go ahead and try I say.
Some interesting revelations should come out of all this if nothing else.
1) What topics China is sensative to will be open to world review.
2) What Google and China do with the information and how it affects human rights will be under the public microscope and help renew debate.
British libel laws do act as censorship. Truth is not even a defense. If you say something that hurts someone's reputation, even if what you say is true, you can be sued for libel. Same in Australia. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) One exception is public figures. You can say just about anything you like about elected officials.
You fail to realize that the chinese government will permanently block the IP blocks if this happens. The chinese government already effectively filters IM, IRC, email, ftp, http, and a few other protocols. They are able to do this because they are able to allocate billions of dollars to this project, and are able to get Sun and Cisco to sell them the hardware to do it with. Do not underestimate chinese system administrators. Chinese are generally scientifically savvy, hard-working, meticulous, and quite proud of their nation's accomplishments. I suspect the engineers that work for the chinese government are on par or nearly so with google's own engineers. I suspect that google had to strike the deal because the chinese government's sysadmins were quite effective at blocking google.
Note that they have successfully blocked wikipedia for more than a month now, and there has been zero response from them as to why. They just do it because they can and it's their country. And they have guns. Lots of them. And more soldiers than the combined armies of Europe and America.
You can't fight them and win easily.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Sereiously, not to impune anyone
I think you meant impugn not impune.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
Just wait until blue state search results vary from red state results, courtesy of the Bush neo-con regime. All due to 'terrorist' activities and 'national security' of course.
Hi All -
What is lost in all of this discussion about Google being in China or not, is any discussion about the what works in changing a society. Is it engagement which works? Or does disengagement work?
Well, we have two societies and governments which were essentially identically, but which were (have been) treated differently by the United States: the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Starting very early on - going back to the Pepsi debate with Nixon in the mid-50s - the US followed a policy of engagement with the old Soviet Union. Yes, we were restricted in what wecould do, but through a number of various channels we kept pushing the boundaries and things "leaked through". And the end result was - for this and a lot of other reasons - the collapse of Soviet Communism.
Now, compare that with Castro's Cuba. The policy of the US since the 1960s - due to the influence of the powerful Cuban community in Florida - has been: no contact. So, what change have we seen in Cuba? Nothing. Nada.
Both the Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba were communist states with collapsing economies. They were as similar as could be, with the difference in this little experiment being how the US engaged or failed to engage with them. Cuba has seen no book fairs, no trade fairs, no cultural exchanges, no Danforth or Fullbright scholarships. It has been as isolated as many would like to see China isolated.
In closing I would ask you what you would want: no access to Google in China, or a Google which is imperfectly blocked by the government? I know what I would chose, for I believe it has the greatest potential for changing China.
If you want change in China - and I say this as the Father of a Chinese daughter who wants the best for my daughter's native land - engage!
Also lost in the hue and the cry is Google's decision to not make available services in China which could be used to harm dissidents. Neither GMail nor Blogspot will be available. There will be no records for the Chinese government to seize and search. I think they have made an excellent decision. I fully support them.
Yours,
Jordan
Everyone is throwing around the idea of "embrace and convert", that is, by doing business with Americans the Chinese will become more like us and get political freedom.
Leaving aside the current state of American political freedom and the respect Americans have for true freedom, to my knowledge the only ex-totalitarian regimes that are "ex" are the result of those countries faulty economic systems eroding the totalitarian regimes from within.
I think that is a very noble proposition, and I would hope that google and likes would at least consider it. i don't know if it would work, but it sounds like it would be the net equivelent of a VOA.
blockquoth the poster:
...28, 29, 30. There you go; that's the precise amount left over based on the going rate for a soul these days.
The Chinese Government will recognize the economic importance of the power that google brings to the internet. This gives google leverage to exact change.
(sound of clinking silver coins)
Chinese gov't:
Google: Pleasure doing business with you.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I was curious so I did a search for "falun gong" on www.google.cn and did another search on www.google.com, the differences in the results really struck me, the results on .cn came back as very negative towards Falun Gong, and the results on .com were mixed. It could be argued that that a censored search engine is a Propaganda Tool.
How shall we define "socially responsible"? Do you mean:
A previous poster had it right: There are plenty of opportunities for corporations to both "do well" (see the last two bullets) and "do good" (same as it ever was). The concept of "sustainable enterprise" is gaining traction in some very interesting places, not the least of which are top-ranked B-schools.
Now, I should ignore the crack about the 401(k) reduction (straw man alert!), but you will note the previous occurrence of the word "do" in that last sentence. Nobody is claiming that a company must lose money for the greater good, nor that investors should lose their shirts as a matter of principle.
I find it ironic that many free-marketers like Milton Friedman despise the concept of social responsiblity, yet continue to insist that capitalism is the best antidote for social evils. I think the latter part is quite true, and social responsibility and sustainable enterprise directly test that hypothesis ("Is capitalism a positive force for increasing the wealth and well-being for all (the inevitable variance of that increase notwithstanding) ?").
Yet free-marketers seem afraid of the test. Blind faith is more reassuring than tested truths for some, I suppose.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Is it just me, or does it seem kind of ridiculous that all of Google's negative publicity lately has a postscript of "(MSN and Yahoo! already censor, gave s**t to the government, etc...)" I mean really, someone should point out that since their competitors already took these measures, but perhaps in a worse way, Google would be handing them a huge win if they weren't to follow suit.
It's amazing how hypocritical Americans are. On one hand, they look down on Chinese people, and Asian people in general, making jokes about them, holding negative stereotypes about them, discriminating against them in the media... ...and then they complain about human rights in China??!
In this instance, however, by preventing access to information
Uh, Google couldn't prevent anyone from accessing a website even if they wanted to, because Google do not control any of the intermediate Internet infrastructure between Chinese citizens and websites (i.e. Chinese telecomms and the 'great firewall'). If Google omits "slashdot.org" from my search results, tell me, in what way am I "prevented" from visiting slashdot.org? I can still type it into the address bar directly and it'll work, I can still tell my friends about it, or send it to people via e-mail, or publish the URL in newspapers, or spraypaint the URL on walls, or link to it from my blog, or hire a skywriter to write it in the air with smoke etc. Not to mention that I can still access slashdot.org from any of the tens of millions of OTHER websites on the Internet that link to it. Are you saying that Google will somehow make all of the hyperlinks on the entire Internet suddenly disappear?
The very fact that a site is in Google's index specifically means that it has already been linked to from somewhere *else* on the Internet ... so by definition Google can never be the only entry point to a piece of information, and can never be the only way to find a particular website.
If it's "contagious" information (i.e. the public wants it) it WILL spread anyway even if it isn't in Google's results, there are bazillions of ways to pass info/URLs around without Google. Only the Chinese government can actually decide to literally *block* a site or not. Or are you suggesting Google has also been given the passwords to the 'great firewall' system?
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=democracy&b tnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=
Seeing as the first hit is the wikipedia democracy article, I think you are right on the mark.
...the one they ran in the 1930s about how of course companies like IBM should do business with the Germans. Engagement, without question, is the only policy with any chance to positively influence an oppressive regime.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley
Not to play Devil's Advocate or to suggest that your points aren't valid, but to present some thoughts from the other side...
How many other coffee companies have a better record than Starbucks for Fair Trade coffee? One? Two? Your local, in town only coffee house? Do any of the big commercial sellers in US grocery stores (ie. Maxwell House, etc.) buy ANY Fair Trade coffee at all?
Starbucks has committed money to certain coffee growing regions, such as Mexico, and made it possible to grow coffee as an alternative to growing drugs.
When people say Starbuck's is socially responsible, it usually means that they pay their US employees a not too bad wage for the work (no offense, but Barista != Rocket Scientist) and they actually have benefits such as health insurance and stock plans that apply to their employees. Frankly, it seems to me that they put Wal Mart and other companies to shame in terms of benefits for low wage employees.
I'm definitely not a fan of the Chinese government, but I see trade deals that the U.S. gov't makes with China as far more harmful in terms social damage. Having google.cn only increases the chance that the growing number of urban Chinese will get a chance to see how crappy the web is. It also increases the chance that those inclined will explore things like tor, i2p, freenet, and more that I don't know about and implement them to circumvent the censorship.
Finally, getting back to the subject of the post, I would call it hypocritical of those of us represented by the U.S. and the DMCA to go on about how bad censorship is. Same with Germany. Google and everyone else in the search business conforms to those weird laws. Those governments don't specifically censor things that would lead to change in government, but they certainly censor things that would lead to a revolutionary change in government.
I do not want a revolution/civil war breaking out where I live (or anywhere, 'can't we all just get along'), but restricting access to information makes those who want to find such info feel persecuted and starts a cycle of self fulfillment.
Also, as an interesting side note, google.com.tw and google.com.hk are still up in classical chinese hardly a total kowtow. In fact one could just look at this as a default domain for simplified chinese, with extra censory perception.
For completely selfish reasons I'm glad Google has done this. When I envision a China where people are free to do and say what they want, I see a country that the US cannot compete against. Google's move will help keep Chinese workers at a lower level, to the benefit of everyone else.
China is always an issue on this board. I know most Westerners don't like China government as well as some Chinese. I'm from mainland China and work in US for about 5 years. Do I like the freedom here? Ya, that works well here for American but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work in China. Then China must be bad guy. That is the simple logic from America. See, the America cultural is to respect others and difference. That is good, however, it only apply domestic, not international or political issue. What the h*ll you think everybody else on the Earth has to have same ideology as yours? Simply because you're rich and powerful? Convince yourself first. China has continuous 5000 years history with 2500 years very well documented. If something is wrong, it wouldn't survive such long. We, Chinese, know very well surviving skill. We see all kinds of countries rise and fall. "We are still here!" Does this imply anything? Don't teach what we should do. IMO, Western should worry about their future and culture seriously, if now is not too late. Then what is key Chinese cultural and philosophy? Simple: follow the natural rule, don't push. Human and universe (see not only the Earth) are one unity. If you want to survive in this universe, be part of it. Western cultural is opposite: conquer the natural, let natural world service human being. Yes, you can conquer the natural and gain a better life. But you forget penalty sooner or later will come back. Why? The natural has its balance. If your destroy it, it will rebalance it by eliminate the culprit who destroys it. Chinese realized this about 3000 years ago. That's why China is still here. I really doubt human being can survive another 1000 years if we don't change our behavior and live style, including China who becomes more and more Westernized, which is very dangerous for Chinese. Wake up guys! Sorry for the diverted topic and not answering question directly. I always think in boarder prospective.
Caving to the Chinese authorities is not what I call "doing no evil". It also makes it quite transparent that there was no high principle whatever when Google stood up to the US Department of Justice. Readers will recall that Google declined to provide search result statistics on how many searches turned up porn as a result. Yahoo and some other search engines agreed to share the info.
The DOJ was acting in accord with what I would want, at least, as a citizen. I think that the laws against distributing pornography to minors should be enforced, and the DOJ is doing its homework to ask the initial questions. Where Google is concerned the "freedom" of pornography is an odd place to make a stand on principle.
So now we're asked to believe that refusing this type of request, from the US government, was a "principled" act, while playing ball with true totalitarians in China is OK? Tell me another one.
In any case it's a tale of money and shame.
But, dude, your government can shoot you in the head for refusing to do insane things. (Which is not so different from my government.)
Governments are corrupt, stupid things which take our money and abuse their power for personal benefit.
I don't support my government and I certainly don't think you should support yours.
But then I also don't think cowardice or believing in propaganda is cool. --And believing that we are not being exposed to propaganda all the time from our own governments is simply foolhardy.
-FL
I'm sorry, I RTFA, but I couldn't find a single argument in this BBC mouthpiece's screed which explains how doing as one is told by a dictator state is brave.
-FL
I am late for this discussion, so my post will probably be lost in the crowd...
Anyway, I remember Solidarity movement in Poland - one of its main successes was to have all censorship in newspapers marked with something like "removed in line with blahblah Act". In fact it became a kind of national sport to read newspapers and guess what was removed. Sometimes something like half of the article was cut - which was even more interesting. "Wow - there must be something really interesting about this subject" - that's what everybody thought seeing such censored removals.
It is the same here: it is a big difference if you put "Tiananmen" into a search box and get only results like "city guided tours" or pages of travel agencies or if you get these along with "some results to your query have been removed to comply with Chinese regulations".
An example: you hear a rumour, that something is going on in some city. You put the name of this city into google.cn and get this anouncement that some results were removed - bang! and you have confirmation that something important is going on.
As they say it "it is not true until they deny it". In this case: it is not important/dissident/interesting unless they censor it.
Cheers
Raf
You should have quoted the title of the post: "HAPPY SMILES VERSUS TANKS". Truly, a remarkable contrast. Thanks!
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Google, oh google...
This is a good time for a gut check, however; the real deciding factor for me will be future relationships, and how much push vs give. Sure, it’s bad timing for this right after such criticism over their video offering and AOL (speak of the devil.) And yes I am sure there is allot of financial pressure to bend here and there, especially after there extreme growth in the last few years. But overall, it is still to be seen how far they will go for the almighty dollar.
There will be those who have already had their last hopes of a virgin corporation rising to greatdom dashed away, and for fewer there never was a chance anyway. But there are still the masses of google users who know nothing of "Do no evil" and will search on blindly. And finally there are those like me, that realize that there is still a thread of hope, and are trusting that their newfound gumption will not lead up to disaster, and that we can really still trust them even though they grow and gather more and more personal data...
I think google has become an icon of more than the "American way" and grown into the way of the net. Young and old, geeks and newbs, hackers and slackers... We all depend on google to remain rock steady. Its almost an cult icon of all that is freedom. And if the United Internet of Google falls, millions will turn cynical and hard hearted.
If Google is up-front and honest with the Chinese people and alerts them that this-and-that link is blocked, then I see no harm done by Google as China would have blocked it anyway.
If Google clandestinely omits results, in effect covering-up for China's censorship and secretly helping them oppress 2 billion people, then Google can go to hell.
But, even if they go the first route and Do No Evil, with their expertise they may inadvertantly become better at censoring than the Chinese government is.
Nothing to see her, move along...
hi. as a chinese reader of ./, i notice an interesting thing about censorship of google.cn. it will allow you to search any keywords while other search engines (baidu, yahoo, etc.) will forbid you to search certain censored keywords. it just not show the already censored websites in your search result.
so before google.cn launched, you simply can't use google cache (censored by goverment because otherwise ppl can use it to see those censored sites) and for those censored sites, you can see in the search result but unable to open it (being censored). now those "not worked" sites are just cleaned in google.cn's search result.
so it really make sense in some way that however you can't open those censored sites.
Funny, all I've heard here are US citizens bitching about Google supplying their service in China. I wonder, what is the reaction of the Chinese population? Are they pissed off at Google for supplying (more) censored services? Or are they happy that they get Google now and are told when information is being censored?
I think their point of view is more important, rather than the standard "I'm American so my point of view is correct". Why don't you ask the Chinese people what they think about Google's decision? I think that would be a better indicator than most of the comments I've read here.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
The argument about Google just complying to local law in China the same way as it does in France is complete nonsense. Because law in a dictatorship denying human rights to its citizen has no value whatsoever, while law in a democracy respecting human rights is legitimate, even if sometimes different human rights (e.g. freedom of speech vs. right to privacy) must be weighed against each other.
Jobs and Gates are humanitarian only if they pay their workers decent wages; no amount of charity can make up for injustice
At one point, Mr Rockefeller was the most hated man in america; he hired one of hte first pr people, and for a few hundred million, became loved and admired..who says the american public is neither cheap nor easy ?
One of the popes was being shown around the vatican after his installation, and the pontiff asked a gardener how thing wer going
Not to well theman answered; my wages are so low, I can't afford to feed my family.
When the bishops protested that charity would suffer if the pope increased wages, he replied, Justice comes before charity.
Leez.
That is an incredibly weak non sequitir. Your argument is A can't be evil because B would not like to think of itself as evil. Yeah, that works.
Now, about your straw man argument, I am quite guilty of the crime every time I do purchase slave-made goods. I would like to think of myself as a good person, but that does not mean I am. Yes, that makes me a little evil, too.
As far as Google is concerned, they have the power to make an enormous impact by their decision. They chose to benefit themselves by contributing in a very large way, in a very influential way, to large scale abuse, and receiving an enormous amount of money in exchange. And on top of it, they would like the planet to grant them the status of 'Do No Evil' Benevolent Humanitarian.
Sorry, but my Chinese-made Fruit of the Looms don't change their hypocrisy one stinky brown bit.
Talk about killing your own argument.
So from being a communist state now they are a hybrid society, ergo, they are moving in the correct direction.
I never want to have you on my side during a debate pal.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is no such thing as a bang in history.
History is a slow beast, all the examples you cite took decades to come into fruition.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There you have it! The governments laws, our laws, are for money and not people. Until and unless this changes, it is only natural that China and the United States will take similar positions in as much as their respective governments are in ideological agreement. China seemingly abandoned its communism for the lure of materialism. It has gotten its wish. Foreign investors with blinded eyes from the lure of a market of over a billion people and deaf ears to the cries of any and all hurt by this process have flocked to China with the money of others not of China. But did China really abandon communism. Remember that they are perfectly capable of sacrificing whole generations of people as a means to an end. We all know they believe in democratic centralism, that means a decision will go unquestioned and followed no matter what its cost. We all know they believe in the ends justifying the means. So this scenario may just be the same war by other means. Assuming this, on a day certain when a critical mass of foreign industry or at least its machines and knowledge has been relocated to China, she will spring the trap she has laid so long and so well; and she will nationalize it all. The world has forgotten those workers left behind in Russia in the twenties and thirties in another forgotten age when another trap, a smaller but similar trap, was sprung. Only a few vehicle factories were in the swag that time, but the tanks they later manufactured mad all the difference in the world later when the great war came in 1941. To take over the world requires a bigger swag. A far bigger lure for fat cat fools like Google and stupid apologists that seem to grow in amazing numbers in what passes for England these days. For when this trap is sprung, the money supply of the whole world will approximate the 'giant sucking sound' that Ross Perot used to talk about; and in a sickenly swift decline, the so called west will become destitute. Maybe dispirited as well.
Will they become Lenin's 'ripe fruit' and fall into China's hands? Who knows.
This writer knows that what Google and Yahoo and company are doing is wrong!
And he also knows that apologists for these policies are even lower on the moral food chain. After all, how would they fight? All the shoes in the world are made in China now. Soon all the clothes. Are we to run naked over the winter Bering Strait ice bridge carrying rocks to attack China....surreal. Only one country dared to make public China's military buildup and that is Canada in their series: "The Great Wall of Iron!".
You must realize that most people did not shout on rooftops that they themselves are a Saint or an angel. So, if they all "do business" with China, nobody can really denounce them.
On the other hand, Google proudly publicizes that it does no evil. They are stupid, and perhaps arrogant, to make such claim, a claim that no public company can possibly honor forever. They just shot themselves in the foot. If they had not made that grandiose statement, I'm sure this censorship decision would not have become such a fiasco.
That was well said.
Maximizing stockholder value at all costs is the theme of laissez-faire policy.
It literally means that if you generate a ton of toxic garbage and you can dump it in someone else's yard without being caught, you have increased your shareholder value by not having to waste resources cleaning up your own mess.
That's called an externality and laissez-faire does not take into account the effects of dumping toxic garbage in someone else's yard. Oh wait, it does take it into account. It says "screw you" to the dumpEE as long as the dumpER has paid his/her due to the politicians and judges ahead of time.
Here's where laissez-faire leads to outright murder and hypocrisy: If someone in the dumpee camp dies and that death is proven to be the dumper's fault, it's called negligence and it leads to some petty fine at worst. If a loved one of the dead person comes back and retaliates, then it's punished as murder.
That is to say, you can intentionally poison the ground that some people live on, and if they die, you aren't criminally prosecuted (under laissez-faire). But if you put out a box of rat poison in someone else's yard and a dog eats it and dies...........
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I'm in China right now... and I can't get to the article to read it!
The greatest enemy of the Chinese Communist Government is prosperity ... starving people have enough trouble finding food for the next day, they don't rebel.
... imagine what would happen to the Microsoft departments if the company would be broken into pieces ... except those making and selling Office and Windows, all would go broke in an instant, and when the Office and Windows companies will begin working with other partners, they will also have a hard time maintaining the market they already have. This happened in E.Europe. Before 1989, the ecomonies of those countries were centrally planned and integrated. When central planning stopped, all the enterprises had to find contacts that previously were supplied by the central planning agencies and compete among themselves for contracts in an environment where the output of every unit was required to make the others work. In Romania it took at least 8 years for the economy to hit the bottom where, from the old enterprises, only those that could survive by themselves were left standing, and even then there were lots of survivors.
... I don't know what the local rates are) salaries to their Chinese employees, let those employees send gifts to their relatives in the poor areas and brag about their new cars, and you'll have your revolution.
... the only question is: would Communism be replaced by an open society, or by the dictatorship of the potentates, or, even worse (or better, depending what shares you bought), by another "Spring and Autumn" period ?
Do you really believe that the Eastern European Communism was defeated, from prison, by a handful of dissidents? Do you really imagine that the Communist regimes in the Eastern Europe fell because of poverty/economic collapse etc.? They fell because the government could not increase the prosperity at the rate people expected it to increase, and because the profiteers wanted to legalise their ill acquired wealth. The collapse of the economy came after Communism fell and the economy was no longer planned
The only ally the Chinese Communists have is poverty. Let Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. keep their shops in China, pay huge (i.e.: 300USD, or something like that
Is Google censoring the Web? Let them do it if they still help the Chinese find technical information, "window shop" and raise their expectations on what a "good life" is, and get rich. Then sit tight and wait for the Communists from the top of the food chain to start getting at each other's throats. I don't think you'll have to wait long before selling your shares in the companies that depend on revenue earned in China would look like a good idea to a lot of people.
In China, the clock is ticking fast
You are wrong. To have such a law would be madness; it would make it impossible to sue people, since accusing them would be slandering them, whatever the outcome of the case.
Regarding litigation, see number 6, "words spoken in the ordinary course of legal proceedings" have absolute privilege.
So, the only thing I got technically wrong was saying that even truth is not a defense. However, given point 8, I wouldn't be willing say something against a private individaul even it was true and in the public's interest to know.
I think the document you refer to backs me up. I've lived 1/4 of my life in Australia. I've followed defamation action. In fact, there was one Australian citizen who successfully ran for a state senate seat just so he could make comments without fear of being sued for libel. There is a fundamental difference between the British and American traditions regarding free speech and libel.
Australians are keenly aware of the fact that even though the law says that truth is a defense, in practice, it is not always successful.I think you must mean 'fair trade' not 'free trade' -- yes? Big difference.
"Free trade" means the invisible hand of the market is strangling Juan Valdez and holding him in wage slavery. Whereas in principle "fair trade" means that the coffee growers get a high enough price for their beans to, in fact, eat regularly, clothe themselves and their children, and probably even keep a roof over their heads. The price of a cuppa-joe must be somewhat higher, but one may enjoy the benefits of less conscience-smiting.
$META_SIG_JOKE
The Google arguments are clearly not principled ones, especially coming from a company that professes to be guided a policy of avoiding evil actions. When apartheid was being practised in South Africa, it was quite clear what the principled stand was, and human rights haven't gotten watered down in twenty years. It's time to start fighting back, folks.
Google and other companies aligning with the chinese government sends out a message:
Google and friends don't take all the free speech 'blah blah' to heart.
If they really cared, they would boycott in protest and in support of the chinese people. And the chinese people would know Western companies support them in they're beliefs of freedom (both the beliefs of the chinese and the companies'). The western world ends up looking like it's run by hypocrites, both to the chinese and to the rest of the world (although the chinese might not see that part).
Well, they just migh be right about the part of it being run by hypocrites...