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Censured for Censorship in China
Dwarg writes "On Aug. 10, [Human Rights Watch], headquartered in New York, came out with a report criticizing the three companies for their role helping to censor the Internet in China. The report is particularly damning of Yahoo, which Human Rights Watch says censors its Chinese site far more vigorously than either Google or Microsoft."
Of course, nevermind the rights of the companies to censor what they want. Free speech, anyone?
i guess the fundamental element in a business is that they want to make money. if the customers want some kind of ideology (whether you agree with it or not), then you'd better sell it to them. here in the US that means that they promote freedom (well, usually) of information but else where, those ideals are different.
you can't always decouple the symbiotic relationship between what's good for business and what's good for ideals. i think corporations might want to subscribe to Doing the Right Thing (DRT), but they'll only do it when they feel that they don't lose profits (taking into account that DRT might make them popular in some markets). for example, how is the US government going to tap phone wires w/o att's cooperation? how is att going to operate at all if the government doesn't give it the foundation it requires?
the problem that yahoo et al face is that because they are american based companies, they need to understand that american ideals relating to freedom of information are different than the ideals of the chinese government. the only way that western ideas about information will play a role in chinese (and other similar) markets, as far as profit margins are concerned, is if people who hold "western" ideals boycott these companies and thereby add some kind of "cost" to yahoo et al for them to want to censor information in china. hence reports like these.
the other solution would be for corporations to try to up hold some kind of motto like "do no evil" and try to convince themselves and others that somehow they are in the business for *more* than just profit. however, what do you do when these goals conflict? which criteria trumps the other? history has shown time and time again that for businesses when DRT is not profitable (and it rarely is)... profits (and usually the short term variety) dictate all decision making. DRT might be profitable in the short run if it wins you publicity, but given the short attention spans of people, DRT is probably never profitable in the long run.
and then, the nature of competition is that if you are willing to pay the monetary costs of DRT, your competitor might not be...
Why should we decide for another country that they should have 'free speech'?
For that matter, what makes you think the US has free speech?
"But, but I can say anything!!!"
Oh, really? Try reading classified information outloud.
"But, but that's classified!"
OK, how about reading aloud your homemade recipe for liquid explosives? Or reading the DeCSS code to a judge?
And how is that any different than what China is doing, really?
Their limits may be more restrictive than ours, but we *do* have restrictions.
We have "free'er Speech" but there could be countries even more lax than we!
What if some small European country put out a scathing report on how limiting
American speech is?
We should not assume the American system is best and that we should force our political
systems on others, that's how things like Iraq happen. These businesses are in other countries and we should not expect them to act differently than other companies on the region.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
As far as Cisco is concerned, a lot of the technology that went into monitoring and filtering came about because of the US CALEA law passed in '96 which mandated that network equipment manufacturers build those kind of capabilities into their products. In addititon, there was a similar EU standard which also called for the same thing. Western governments called for this type of technology before China did.
Disinformation is just as bad as censorship.
Yes although many people believe in "free speech", even in the West free speech is controlled through sedition laws etc.
I remember one particular case where yahoo was criticised for providing information about a customer which led to his arrest - this particular person had been planning to try and overthrow the Chinese government. Don't for one second think that if the US suspected a citizen to have similar intentions, they would do the exact same as the Chinese.
Even though the media is state owned in China, in the West, it may as well be state owned. After all, the media giants are large corporations at battle with each other and they of course bow to the government which controls ownership laws, tv licensing and regulation.
Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and any other related groups should do more to discourage journalists from spreading lies or pushing their own agenda or publishing information without first investigating it. Until then all I can say is no news is good news.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
Yahoo! especially went beyond censorship. And that's disturbing because Google, MSN, etc. didn't.
The "Yahoo! was just playing by someone else's rules" argument fails. Unlike Yahoo!, Google managed to build a Chinese version of its search engine without handing data to the Chinese government that led to arrests.
I guess if 1.3 billion Chinese really got fed up with the system, they would make a revolution and strip their leaders into pieces. That's how these things work, my friend.
But since they don't, we must draw the conclusion that the Chinese are in fact not fed up with the system. Even more shocking to an American is to hear that the Chinese actually support the current system and the current leaders, and that their view of America is not as golden as you would have hoped for.
Those who really are fed up with the system will end up in the US, where they start web sites propagating hate speech against the Chinese government. They will be like veritable political pandas in the West, used as a tool to smash the "communist" regime in the head on occasion, just like the fool Dalai Lama has been the cute boy and political bat in the past.
China is an evil regime. The people in China have very little rights and most of them do not fight that because they don't know any better. They have been taught to be patriotic to the point of not allowing free speech. People in America are patriotic all the time but the difference is that we still let the opposition gather and protest. You cannot do that in China. What is worse is that companies have no standard of pay to live up to. They can treat workers as good or bad as they like. This is not good.
BTW, I am a conservative Christian and a Republican. Thanks for the Straw Man.
No individual has the right to limit the speech of a whole country, consider the single executive responsible for that decision, their bonus, over the rights of more than a billion people to share their thoughts on freedom and democracy.
If you don't think that is digusting or that those are the acts of a quisling companies, then you really don't understand the principles of freedom and democracy being universal and not just restricted to a portion of the population of this planet (once you do that you start to steal freedom and democracy from us all).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Your entire argument is based on the false assumption that labor policy has made Americans fat and lazy and is the reason China is such a cheap country to produce in. Labor has nothing to do with it China is cheap because China is a poor country. People will work for a couple bucks a day in China because that is the most they have ever made not because they don't have unions. And in fact Americans are not lazy productivity in the good old USA is hitting new highs every year. And companies that were just looking for the cheapest place to produce are moving to India now because the Chinese economy has been growing at 10% a year. So get off you high horse you communist bastard workers have rights too.
Yeah that worked great at Tianneman Square, didn't it? You guys saying "just let the Chinese overthrow their oppressors" are forgetting that the Chinese government controls the military, which means they are far better armed than the citizenry. It would be a like large group with clubs trying to kill a smaller group with fully automatic weapons and a large supply of ammo. Since nerds have a reputation for playing RTS games, I'll leave you to figure out their chance of success.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.