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Wikipedia Won't Bow to Chinese Censors
truthsearch writes "Jimmy Wales has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive Wikipedia entries. He challenges other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing. Wikipedia has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia. 'We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information.'"
I never expected to live in a world where librarians and encyclopedists are the guardians of civil liberties.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I remember reading an article where google decided to stop bowing down to the censorship. Was that in a dream? I thought they already stopped working with the chinese government.
I wonder if a bit of encyclopedia competition in the Chinese market would make Jimmy agree with Google's compromise... If Google ducked out of China completely, and M$ and Yahoo! did not, then billions of Chinese people would be lost by Google to their less-idealistic (or moral) competitors.
Lets see how much he'd like a Chinapedia...
What if I'm invested in Google and I hear that they decided not to expand into cultivating opium poppies in Afghanistan? How much money am I losing by their decision not to produce heroin? Can I sue?
There is no requirement that a public corporation must do anything it can to maximize its profit. I cringe every time I see this argument used here.
I was in China 2 months ago and was able to search for Tianamen Square and access google.com (US Version) without any problems. Anyone in China that can attest that the censorship policies actually work?
On the contrary, if I see that a company with my investments is aiding government censorship, I'll withdraw those investments.
"for-profit companies have to justify this to their shareholders"
I think what you're really saying is that for-profit companies, in order to gain the maximum potential investment from the most sociopathic investors (who may very well be those with the most money to invest on average), must engage in sociopathic acts to increase stock value. This may be true, but it's far from a justification -- if anything, it's a Machiavellian rationalization.
The root of the problem is the entire concept of what the purpose of a publicly held corporations is. I don't know a whole lot about what the principles behind the "official" purpose of incorporation are, but I thought that the trade off was that in exchange for certain benefits to the corporation, somehow there was a benefit to society beyond the shareholders. But today, a corporation having good returns and staying in the green, developing worthwhile products or services, it's not enough. Wall Street demands that corporations achieve obscene profits at all costs, over all other objectives. This is simply wrong. Profits are certainly important, but part of the equation should include the perpetuation of a quality product that people want, and the health and welfare of the employees, who should be rewarded with a comfortable living for their dedication and loyalty. Maybe this has never really been true.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
RE: Business vs. ??? --
Let's stop this rather useless split -- in the end we're talking about some address on the Web. Although the sources of funding can be different, they are ultimately irrelevant; each site will make their own decision about what policies they will take with regard to censorship. The bottom line is that Wikipedia has chosen not to provide a "Chinese government compatible" version of their encyclopedia. That is their (the Wikipedia Foundation) prerogative. I personally support this position as well. Why? simple really: fighting the common denominator forces that would have Wikipedia stripped of all useful content (or nearly all). Chinese say "make this stuff appease us" Country X says: "while you are at it put that stuff back in about the flat Earth" Religious group Y says: "re-edit Wikipedia to denounce Evolution as part of the devil's conspiracy", and so on. Wikipedia has made a decision to fight the forces of non-education. If this is part of some "American policy of forcing their way of life into other parts of the world", stop thinking that way: 1) you DON'T have to use Wikipedia. 2) If you don't like what Wikipedia says about X or Y then contribute edits. Don't be surprised if there are those in the world who don't agree with you. Such is life.
RE: Some vs. No information:
I can understand those who would like to see a more "compromising" position on in the China vs. Wikipedia issue, but there really is no practical way this would work. Since anyone could edit (and they [Wikipedia] are NOT about to change that policy, thank goodness) eventually even "approved" content would "slip" into disapproval status. It would be a nightmare to manage this. Not to mention the likely moral dilemma of having to lie to millions of Chinese citizens (there may be a billion plus Chinese, but only a few million have Internet access). Some may say that editing article in Wikipedia to conform to Chinese censorship rules is not "lying" to the Chinese people, simply creative editing. You are all free to think that way, I don't and I will call you on it. In the end there is no truly happy middle here: the pressures are always going to be on expanding the information presented to the Chinese people. Wikipedia would simply be cut off again.
RE: Country X's views trampling on the "needs"/"wants"/"desires"/"morals"/"ethics" of country or group Y via Wikipedia:
To those who take this position: speak for yourself, only please. Let those around you decide for themselves if they find Wikipedia useful or not or an "encroachment" of some form or not. If you don't like Wikipedia, don't use it. For those of use who use Wikipedia we have no obligation to see things "your way". If you don't like an entry in Wikipedia, make an edit. If it gets reversed, sorry, others may disagree, leave a comment on the page discussion, be vocal. But the ludicrous idea the Wikipedia should be stripped down into version that please the senses of N different groups is unthinkable. In the end there will be entries you won't like, but there will be many entries that you DO like. The important thing is that Wikipedia is there collecting this information in the first place.
While I'm happy to see such a stance taken by Wikipedia -- it's better than Google's "do no evil, unless it's the lesser of two of them" stance, and Cisco's "anything for a buck" stance, for sure -- I'm a little conflicted on a couple of points:
First, that their stance of "freedom of information," rather than of individual liberty. Accept the latter, and the former can only follow. Accept the former without the latter, you live in a paradox where an individual can be expected/obligated/forced to make disclosures of information about something or another; he has no freedom to keep that information (or its benefits) to himself if he so wishes, (This is also my problem with "Free Software," Richard Stallmin [misspelling intentional. Think "Stalin."] and the GPL, but that's another discussion for another time) or a person is forced to keep his mouth shut if what he wishes to share (or not) doesn't fit the political agenda or dogma of the day.
Second, given the tug-of-war that most articles of a political nature on Wikipedia face, that is, with leftists and rightists engaged in a constant back-and-forth to spin them to suit their agendas, most articles are effectively controlled by a tyranny of the majority, or at the very least, a tyranny of the last person to change it -- rather than articles having a basis in fact. On such articles, I would argue that Wikipedia is only playing lip service to "freedom of information", much less to "freedom."
If Wikipedia has a stance to take, it _should_ be a belief in individual liberty and freedom to do whatever he chooses to better himself (without placing any obligation on others, of course) -- including learning the accurate, honest, objective truth as it's known about any subject available to him so that he can make his own best decisions about them.
It makes no difference if the information's free, but people aren't.
ERZ
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Firstly, that appears not be true. Many companies blatantly ignore what their shareholders want, but continue to stay in business.
Also, there are other options. They could quite their jobs when the company is headed towards questionable ethics. Or, the owners of Google could have kept it a private company. I don't see where there is a law that companies have to be traded on the stock market. I don't think the board of directors and management of Google are excused from their choices because of this "it's a public company" justification. Somebody chose to make Google a public company, so certainly they can be blamed for this.
Being a public company also does not compel a company to open for business in China. The bottom line is that greed causes people to abandon ethics. There aren't any excuses for that.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I challenge you to provide an example where a corporation made an ethical choice that wasn't required
Just thought of another one -- how about the millions that Dell and others spend on computer recycling programs that are not required.
You're just grumpy or lazy. You could come up with your own list if you bothered to try.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Yep. Worked real well for Pedro Obregon in Houston.
What?
Good for Wikipedia! Now could you make the mass murders of Mao and Stalin more "in-your-face" so people really known what communism and the "American left" are all about.