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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."
What's better, censored information or no information? If you want to do business in China, or any other country, you do so at the whim of the government. It's not like you can have an uncensored site. You either have a censored site, or no site at all.
I'm sure the billions they rake in will more than soothe whatever conscience they have left.
I feel that free speech should be an absolute, even when it's harmful. To use the old saw I think that the damage of yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theatre is far less than the damage of allowing any kind of restrictions on free speech.
That being said, why berate Google, who's voluntarily filtering their own information, and not berate Cisco, who's designed and built a great deal of the routing equipment used by the PDRC government to filter and monitor internet traffic... the so called 'Great Firewall of China'?
I certainly don't care for Google's actions, but I think that Cisco's are just as heinous, if not worse than Yahoo's dissident incrimination.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Same deal with the Cambodians under Pol Pot. I mean, if they didn't like having their skulls stacked in neat piles, they should have left! Same deal with the Burmese. Am I right here or what? If they don't feel like overthrowing their yoke of oppression, I don't see why we should go out of our way to help them.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Sorry, but it's hard to take an article seriously if the editors come up with titles like this:
Search Engines Censured for Censorship.
Read it aloud and try not to giggle.
That would only work in a completely free world. In actuality, many Chinese cannot freely leave China even if they wanted to. Only the top percentile of society is truly mobile and can leave if they so choose. Everyone else would be hard pressed to be granted a visa, much less residency, to countries which human rights groups give positive feedback A+++++ would visit again.
Of course, nevermind the rights of the companies to censor what they want. Free speech, anyone?
I dunno man, I don't see how there could be any problem handling Chinese political refugees. I mean, how many Chinese people can there be?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Don't you people get it? You looney libbies don't know when to stop biting the hand that feeds you, do you?
The only reason China is able to provide us with cheap goods and cheap labor is because of their ARM policies - analog rights management.
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?
[free trade parody off]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Everything except the following (in decreasing severity):
1. Some separatist propaganda and information (Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan). You will have to work hard to read epochtimes (an FLG propaganda site) in China.
2. Some FLG information.
3. Human rights organizations' web sites, which are concerned about points 1 and 2.
4. Tian'anmen incident.
5. Google is not censored, but using it triggers the cut-off mechanism all too easily (for no valid reason). I would recommend banning spiders from competing baidu.com on your own site until this unfair practice is mended.
6. A few select porn sites.
7. BBC World News (they are pissed at the BBC for some reason).
8. Occasionally Wikipedia, Blogspot (accessible as of today again) and other blog sites.
Normal surfers hardly ever note the presence of the great firewall, except when Blogspot is affected. Also note that there is no blocking of P2P and other services, and that you can get any information you want if you are determined to. The firewall is aimed at preventing the masses to get hold of sensitive information regarding Chinese politics. Which in itself is stupid, since those with access to the internet already know all about it, being the educated elite.
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"
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.
Don't diss corporations.
It's OK to do bad things as long as you promise to give most of your money to charity when you die, so that you go to heaven. The more money they obtain, the more they can give back and therefore the more good they are. Good-hearted corporationists (of which there are many) keep just a mere $5 or 10 million of their loot after their death, so that their kids who are less well of than them can feed their kids and get a roof over their heads. Very thoughtful of them.
The problem is poor people. If each poor person would give as much to charity as rich people usually do, this world would be a nicer place to live.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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.
Yahoo has not only censored information on its China-based web site but has also, actively, helped Beijing to arrest, imprison, and torture people who commit "thought crimes".
Yahoo's actions are understandable even if they cannot be condoned. Half of the team that established Yahoo is a Chinese from Taiwan. His name is Jerry Yang.
In Chinese society, people are mostly indifferent to human rights.
Yang simply steered his company along similar lines. He enthusiastically set up a joint venture with Alibaba, a Chinese company, long before Yahoo's competitors entered China.
The working atmosphere inside Yahoo reflects, to a certain extent, Chinese values. We Slashdotters may be concerned about human rights, but most employees within the walls of Yahoo just do not care. To them, Yahoo = 8 hours of daily work = paycheck. Whether a victim of Chinese brutality rots in a Beijing prison matters not a wit to the Yahoo employees.