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Censured for Censorship in China

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

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."

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. business vs ideals by nitroamos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  2. It doesn't stop at censorship by jdbartlett · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:*sigh* by Bryansix · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Look at American labor. It has become too expensive for our economy to keep growing. Do you want the Chinese people to have more freedoms and then lose their jobs like you lazy Americans do?
    Wait, so are you American or not? Also why are you attacking America in general and calling us lazy? I never got to vote as to whether the minimum wage was raised for not. It just was irregardless of what I thought about it. Now I have a college degree so I am skilled labor. The freakin' law doesn't even affect me. However, it does affect manufacturing of goods for sure. While I agree that minimum wage laws have gone slightly overboard, China's lack of laws are unethical. China does not help us with it's cheap goods. They hurt us with a huge trade deficit. As consumers sure we can buy crappy furniture for $30 that should cost $300. Does that make me better off?

    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.
  4. Re:*sigh* by wwillia99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.