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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.
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.''
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!
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
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.
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?
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...
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 really can't believe how anyone could sympathize with government sponsored censorship.
The author clearly felt bad enough about what Google has done to stop using it.
But then he felt bad about not being able to use Google.
So he has concocted a rationalization that allows him to use Google without feeling bad about it and even extended it to the point where he can feel proud of himself for it.
SOP.
KFG
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.
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.
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 "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.]
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.
The chinese CHOSE to be socialist, and CHOSE to be repressed,
Nope, the Chinese were conquered by the latest dynasty in a long line of totalitarian rulers that goes back thousands of years, and have never had a chance to choose a leader in their entire history.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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...
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:
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
You must not live in the US. If you did, you would know that most cities only have a broadband duopoly. You have a choice of getting screwed by the telco or the cable company. That's not a free choice.
Kind of like your political parties then.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
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.
People can rationalize anything, sadly.
In the 60s we had a phrase for this particular rationalization.
We called it, "Fucking for Chastity."
KFG
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.
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
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.