Why You & Yahoo Should Like This Human Rights Law

Regular contributor Bennett Haselton has written in to say that "The Global Online Freedom Act, introduced last year during a firestorm of controversy over American companies cooperating with totalitarian governments in China and elsewhere, was introduced this month as the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007. When Chris Smith (R-NJ) first introduced the law in 2006, Yahoo was under fire for recently turning over information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of a political dissident, Microsoft was attacked for removing pages from MSN Spaces China at the behest of the government, Google was being criticized for removing political sites from search results displayed to China, and Cisco was accused of helping to enable Chinese filtering of the Web. All four corporations testified at a February 2006 House hearing during which Representative Tom Lantos summed up the mood of many of his colleagues by telling the companies, "I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." The companies protested that they had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were troubled by their own actions, and -- in a rarity for individual tech companies, much less for a chorus -- they all invited the U.S. government to play a bigger role, while being vague about what the role should be."

GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries" and would in most cases prohibit U.S.-based companies from censoring content or turning over users' information to the governments of those countries. Do these companies want GOFA to pass? And is GOFA a good law? I think, yes and yes, but the answers are more complicated than they seem.

With American "collaboration" less in the news, GOFA made less of a splash when it was re-introduced this year, but it is still the subject of spirited debate. Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, and other human rights groups have already signed a statement supporting the July 2006 version of the bill (nearly identical the 2007 version). But blogger-journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that by creating a government-maintained list of "Internet censoring countries", the law falls short of calling for support of free speech in all countries (the initial list, for example, includes Iran and China, but leaves out notorious human rights violator and net-censor Saudi Arabia). Danny O'Brien of the EFF backs this position as well, and also argues the organization's long-standing position that "code is speech" and that filtering software should not be subject to export regulations that are proposed in the law.

I agree with MacKinnon that instead of using a list of "Internet restricting countries", we should require the same standards of U.S. companies wherever they do business, or at least, stop playing silly games like leaving Saudi Arabia off of a list of human rights violators because Bush is friends with the ruling family. I agree with the EFF that filtering software should be considered First-Amendment-protected speech like encryption software, and not be included on an export-prohibited "munitions" list. And for reasons listed below, I think that the law won't stop censoring countries from blocking any speech they want. But even with all of these qualifications, I think the law would be a step in the right direction, if only for the rules prohibiting companies from turning over users' personal information to the governments of countries like China and Iran. It's painful to give a pass to countries like Germany that also censor political speech, but I think that the situation is so much worse in places like China that we should do what we can in the short term. And for reasons I'll get into, I think that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco are secretly hoping that a law like GOFA does get passed -- even if they can't come out and say so.

First, what the law does not do: There is still nothing to stop a U.S. company from blocking or removing legal, political content at the request of a foreign government. Section 204 says only that American content-hosting companies and content-filtering companies have to provide the U.S. government with a list of sites that have been removed or blocked at the behest of a censoring country.

Section 205 does say that U.S. companies may not block or remove sites that are operated by the U.S. government, or by any entity that receives grants from the International Broadcasting Bureau to help defeat foreign censorship. Presumably that would include Peacefire, at least during the periods when we're under contract to the IBB to develop the Circumventor software (but before you start calling me Hallibennett, I'm not working for the IBB right now, and it was my own idea to write this). So the American government, while requiring schools to block us in the U.S., would actually be helping to get us un-blocked in China and Iran! But Section 205 only says that a U.S. business may not block or shut down such sites. As far as I can tell, that means if the Cisco engineer on site in China sets up their routers for them, the Cisco engineer can't put VOANews.com on the block list. But then the Chinese official can walk across the room and add it to the list himself, can't he? Which is almost certainly what they'll do, since the routers are in their country.

So, I think the regulations against Internet blocking will be easy for foreign governments to ignore. But where the law could make a difference is in the prohibition against turning over users' personal data to law enforcement in censoring countries. Section 201 says that servers located in a censoring country cannot contain personally identifiable user information (so that the local police cannot simply storm in and seize the data). Section 202 says that American companies can only turn information over to law enforcement of a censoring country if the information is needed "for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes as determined by the Department of Justice". MacKinnon has criticized this aspect of the law as well -- "If Americans don't want the DOJ to have access to their user information, why should anybody else?" Very true. But, even at the lowest point of public confidence in the Department of Justice, I think most people living outside of fortified compounds stocked with beef jerky and gold bullion, can agree that the U.S. DoJ has more integrity and legitimacy than the government of China, and that such a rule would mean fewer Chinese dissidents going to jail.

What do the affected U.S. companies think of the law? Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco did not respond to requests for comment. A Google PR person replied to say, "We welcome intiatives that expand access to information and protect the rights of users across the globe. At the same time, we remain concerned that legislation in this area can have unintended consequences, so we intend to study any such proposals closely, and work with proponents and others to reach the right outcome." When I replied that the Global Online Freedom Act had been proposed more than a year ago and had been online in its current form since June 2006, presumably enough time to "study such a proposal closely" and take a position on it, he said they would stick with that statement for now. (In his e-mail, he actually put quote marks around the company's statement, which I thought was a nice dry touch.)

But past statements from the respective companies have indicated they would be amenable to such a law. Bill Gates, never one to be shy about criticizing government regulation that he disagreed with, was asked in a February 2006 interview with the London Times, "Should the US government establish guidelines to regulate how internet companies deal with censorship in countries like China?" and answered, "I think something like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a resounding success in terms of very clearly outlining what companies can't do and other rich countries largely went along with that." At the February 2006 house hearings to discuss American companies' cooperation with overseas censors, representatives from all companies indicated that they actually wanted the government to play a bigger role -- they were vague about what such a role would be, but this was only a month after the first draft of the Global Online Freedom Act had been proposed, the only such law on the table at the time.

At first this might seem paradoxical -- why would companies seem amenable to, even supportive of, laws that would restrict what they can do? But it actually makes sense if you consider their negotiating position with the Chinese government. Currently, the Chinese censors can tell Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google that they either have to either play by the Chinese rules or get out, and the censors know that the companies will comply (without even necessarily feeling guilty about it -- the companies can always say that the Chinese people are better off with a censored version of their services than no access at all).

But if the companies' hands are tied by U.S. law, then they can basically present the Chinese government with a take-it-or-leave-it deal: You can use our e-mail and messenger and blog services, just know that our government won't let us turn over users' personal information if you ever want it. The Chinese censors are presumably coming from the point of view that they'd rather have a controlled Internet, but that it's more important to reap the economic benefits of having the Internet in their country, even if some control is lost (after all, if they didn't believe that, they wouldn't have connected to the Internet in the first place). Hence it's not likely that they'd throw out Yahoo Mail and Google search and MSN Messenger when so many users depend on these and use them for business as well as personal use. (Even if there are Chinese-made alternatives, there would be the huge cost of switching everyone over, and no longer being able to use the old tools to communicate with American companies.) So a law controlling the actions of U.S. companies would very probably allow them to keep doing business in censored countries, while giving them an excuse not to turn over users' data.

But, that might not work if it looks like the companies pushed too hard for the law themselves. If the Chinese see Yahoo fighting tooth and nail to pass a law that restricts what information Yahoo can hand over to China, the Chinese censors could take that as a slap in the face, and punish Yahoo for defying them even after the law is passed that prohibits Yahoo from cooperating. "Oh, you can't give us that information because of the law? This law right here that you lobbied for?"

So, when the general counsel of Yahoo says, "Ultimately, the greatest leverage lies with the U.S. government"; when the Vice President of Google tells Congress, "And certainly also, finally, there is a role for government. We do need your help, and you can help us"; when the associate general counsel of Microsoft testifies, "It is, therefore, the responsibility of governments, with the active leadership of the United States, to seek to reduce or reconcile these differences", I think what we're hearing are subtly encoded messages saying, "Pass this law, or something like it; we just can't look like we wanted it to pass." So, Congress should give them what they want, even if they can't ask for it directly. And at the same time they would be helping users in censored countries all around the world, before the next one gets sent to jail because an American company turned over their information.

Comments

Grow a pair

[udderly]

I think what we're hearing are subtly encoded messages saying, "Pass this law, or something like it; we just can't look like we wanted it to pass." So, Congress should give them what they want, even if they can't ask for it directly.

Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.

Re:Grow a pair

[TheWoozle]

What country do you live in? When was the last time you heard of Wall Street being bullish on a stock because the company was a champion of human rights?

In the USA, officers of a company have a legal obligation to not intentionally harm the company's stock value through policy decisions. It's entirely possible that if the company leadership "grew a pair" and the result was being kicked out of China, the stockholders would file suit.

Capitalism doesn't work the way you suggest. Unless you want to re-write the ground rules to introduce factors other than "what will make us the most money" into the equation, then you're stuck with the current greedy, take-no-prisoners, CYA corporate status quo.

Re:Grow a pair

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, at some level, this isn't a "human rights" thing, it's a "sovereignty" thing -- companies are bound to obey the laws of the countries they do business in. This ridiculous proposed law giving Google the "freedom" to disobey Chinese censorship laws is a complete non-starter, for the obvious reason that a Chinese court isn't going to care what the relevant US law is... nor should they. All this will do is prevent Google, Yahoo, et al., from doing business in China, and I suspect guys like Baidu.com will be more than happy about it.

Indeed, this will likely have a detrimental effect on Chinese freedom, since US-owned companies are more free to bend Chinese laws without fear of physical reprisal or of nationalization.

Re:Grow a pair

[udderly]

I couldn't agree more; when one does the right thing it often has very negative consequences.

Re:Grow a pair

[Acy James Stapp]

IANAL

The board of directors has a fiduciary duty to look after the interests of the corporation. These interests are typically financial but if the corporate charter has goals other than profit, such as "do no evil", the directors can be liable for failing to uphold them.

Re:Grow a pair

[TheRaven64]

Perhaps, rather than continually applying legal hacks like this, something should be done to address the root problem. If shareholders are the cause of corporate decisions, make them responsible for them as well.

Re:Grow a pair

[iiioxx]

Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.

More accurate translation: Make it so that all U.S. companies are forced to play by the same rules, so that the companies that opt to support human rights don't lose revenue to the companies that opt not to.

Re:Grow a pair

[ajs]

In the USA, officers of a company have a legal obligation to not intentionally harm the company's stock value through policy decisions. It's entirely possible that if the company leadership "grew a pair" and the result was being kicked out of China, the stockholders would file suit.

Show me the law.

There is, to my knowledge, no such law. What officers of a company have is a fiduciary duty to increase stockholder value according to the terms of the stockholder's purchase of stock. This includes, and is almost entirely circumscribed by the details of the S1 or "red herring" filing with the SEC. If your S1 says, "we will lose money, year after year, until everyone allows freedom of the press in their countries," then that's what your stockholders can hold you to. They understood the terms under which they were getting in bed with you (or should have... that's their duty), and can't complain when you do what you said you would.

This is one of the reasons that Google's S1 is important. It doesn't guarantee that they'll do the right thing, but if they do, and stockholders complain, they can always point to their S1 and say, "what part of 'Don't be evil' did you not understand?" It's not a marketing thing, it's a legal disclaimer.

In this case, it's not clear to me if Google did the right or the wrong thing, and I don't think we can answer that objectively ... yet. Yahoo! and Cisco, on the other hand, have clearly hurt the Chineese people in tangible ways (Cisco is probably responsible for far more arrests than Yahoo!, but they don't get the same bad press because you can't point to specific instances where their monitoring tools have identified activists). For them, there's no other alternative, since their actions would have to be outright illegal for them to not pursue any profit that they can.

I have to say that, post-Google's IPO, I would never issue an S1 that didn't contain at least a vague morality clause like Google's. It's actually good business practice.

Re:Grow a pair

[NDPTAL85]

So in other words lets completely dismantle our financial system so that we can maintain the moral high ground......while we're all reduced to living in shacks and eating ramen noodles for dinner.

Re:Grow a pair

[drinkypoo]

Perhaps, rather than continually applying legal hacks like this, something should be done to address the root problem. If shareholders are the cause of corporate decisions, make them responsible for them as well.

So in other words lets completely dismantle our financial system so that we can maintain the moral high ground......while we're all reduced to living in shacks and eating ramen noodles for dinner.

So what you're saying is that instituting a policy of responsibility would destroy civilization?

I think it's the only thing that can save it.

Just think, if shareholders didn't just share in dividends, but were required to pay money (probably in the form of loss of shares) as part of any financial punishment levied against a corporation for its wrongdoing, they might actually employ some kind of responsibility in their investments! And then, corporations would be forced to be good citizens if they didn't want to scare off every investor!

Gee, wouldn't that be terrible?

Nice FUD, twink.

Re:Grow a pair

[WhiplashII]

I have a rule: "Doing something that you know won't work is never the right thing." That is my primary beef with liberals, in fact. If the stuff they proposed had a result that even maintained the status quo, it would be wonderful. The problem is that they "do the right thing," and make things far worse because "doing the right thing" was not realistic.

If you know that giving your starving brother money will result in him buying drugs instead of food, it is immoral to give him money. Come up with a different plan.

Re:Grow a pair

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, capitalism is entirely neutral.

The officers of a company are not obligated to worry about stock values. They are obligated to act in the interest of the stockholders. If the stockholders value stock value above all else, then the officers of the company must act in a way which maximizes stock value. However, stockholders may hold core ethical values (e.g. environmentalism) above profit, in which case the officers of the company must act accordingly.

Yes, on the surface, it looks like capitalism favors efficiency above all else. A company which inefficiently uses environmentally sound manufacturing practices has a competitive disadvantage against a polluting, but more efficient competitor. However, the reality is that this simply reflects the values of consumers. As long as consumers value a lower price over environmentally sound manufacturing processes (for instance), corporations will act accordingly or die. It is survival of the fittest - and the consumers create the environment.

So, who is really to blame? Well, the officers are not directly to blame. But their only defense is that they were "just following orders". So there is absolutely nothing wrong with denigrating them. (They could, after all, go find work elsewhere.) Likewise, the stockholders are not responsible for the environment they find their business in, but they are responsible for its actions. So it is perfectly acceptable to denigrate them as well.

However, only consumers who refuse to use such products have any right to denigrate the companies which provide them! Consumers who use these products and do not demand companies meet their own core values are the ultimate cause here. They've created the environment in which these corporations must survive. To denigrate the corporation for trying to survive in this environment while simultaneous actively creating such an environment is hypocrisy.

Re:Grow a pair

[KlomDark]

No, simply make them liable for investing in immoral companies. If the immoral company gets shut down, they lose their money. That should be good enough, rather than having to make their liability something like fines or jail time. Just enough of a nudge to make them consider investing in companies that are not into nefarious activity.

Just a minor change to the law that makes it so companies cannot be sued by shareholders for merely upholding good moral standards: Company gets kicked out of China for refusing to submit to an immoral request? Not a reason to sue (or at least win the case) for negligence.

Wouldn't that be a nice long term effect on things? I think it would be. Sure, people could still try to sue, but if a court found that the company was acting in the best interest of mankind or freedom, then the case gets thrown out.

Re:Grow a pair

[gfxguy]

Actually, at a shareholder meeting, someone could (or should) introduce a new or amended charter that forbids the company from negotiating with entities known to have violated human rights.

That section would be a small paragraph out of a larger document that defined the goals of the company. I wouldn't be surprised if the stock holders voted for it.

Re:Grow a pair

[Irish_Samurai]

Finally, another voice who recognizes what a board really is legally bound to do. There is no law stating that officers of a public company have to maximize profits. They have a legal responsibility to act in the manner directed to them by the majority of voting shareholders. As you stated, this is most often a directive of "maximize profits", but not always.

Every time someone states that Milton Friedman quote as a law, the trader loses his license.

Re:Grow a pair

[alan_dershowitz]

Companies are also bound by the laws of the country they are INCORPORATED in. This has always been the case. A company doesn't have the right to incorporate in the USA if it can't follow US laws, and it doesn't have the right to operate in China if it can't obey Chinese laws. This necessarily excludes some types of business ventures with some types of foreign governments.

No one is asking anyone to violate any nation's sovereignty and no one is taking away the right to run a business as one sees fit. American companies just want to have their cake and eat it too, make profit outside the USA doing while doing things not legal within our borders. I personally think that if an American company runs manufacturing facilities outside the USA they should still be bound by USA pollution standards, because it's all the same air and water.

This would only apply to Google if the law PASSED, I realize this.

Re:Grow a pair

[jellomizer]

So where should we draw the line?

If these companies didn't do what they did China would just block all of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo.... From their country so the people will be left with Less Information then they would now, Also many of these American Companies wouldn't have the extra buisness.

What about in other countries that say the companies need to block "Bad Things", in which many I do personally find distaistful, Such as Racism, Sexuality, Violance,... Companies are woring on the Gray Line of what is Profitable, Legal, and Moral (I Guess with 3 DataPoints it is more of a plane). Unfortunatly they don't always match.

Re:Grow a pair

[Original Replica]

"A company doesn't have the right to incorporate in the USA if it can't follow US laws, and it doesn't have the right to operate in China if it can't obey Chinese laws."

I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but reframing something we currently take for granted. Should U.S. incorporated companies have to pay minimium wage to overseas employees?

Re:Grow a pair

[cdrguru]

Who appointed you (or someone you believe in) as the moral authority?

Who says that it is not the firm belief of a majority of Chinese citizens that arresting people that speak out openly about revolution, social disorder and collapse of the current system is moral? Maybe they don't like things they way they are but they see proposed alternatives as much, much worse.

Again, who the heck is going to decide "moral"? Would you like it to be an imam that believes women should be uneducated and hidden away? How about the Catholic pope? I'm sure there are many that believe that one of these two is "moral" and should judge others.

Re:Grow a pair

[Emperor Cezar]

Don't blame it on "Capitalism". The stock exchange and it's rules are set by the SEC, not by the free market.

Re:Grow a pair

[jstomel]

Except that if you tried to do that, all corporations would simply up and reincorporate somewhere with less restrictive rules. And no one would want to invest in those American companies which do remain because good citizens simply can't compete with ruthless bastards. It would work only you had one set of rules for the entire world. It's not like we actually manufacture much here anymore, all those companies only stay because we have some of the most non-restrictive and capital friendly laws in the world, and a history of putting American business interests above, well, pretty much everything.

Re:Grow a pair

[MightyYar]

This already happens - the shares lose value if the fine is steep enough.

The problem is that there is no law requiring "good corporate behavior" of this type, so there is no way to fine them. I don't think that many shareholders would advocate violations of US law, but there needs to be a law to violate.

Re:Grow a pair

[angst_ridden_hipster]

If you know that giving your starving brother money will result in him buying drugs instead of food, it is immoral to give him money.

Or, perhaps, it will solve the problem of having a starving brother. I mean, if he's so far gone that he'll forgo needed nourishment for his drugs, giving him that last dose may push him over the edge. Problem solved.

Re:Grow a pair

[Anonymous Coward]

An officer which acts against the direction of the share holders will not be employed by the share holders for long. While the law may protect the officer for the length of their contract, I cannot imagine any law which would require the share holders to extend the contract once it expires. No share holders in their right mind would hire the officer after such an event. If the officer is not supported by the courts, their career will be over even faster. So, no corporate officer in their right mind is going to uphold those "good moral standards" unless so directed by the shareholders anyway.

Instead, the share holders should be held directly responsible for the actions of the corporation. As the sibling post suggested, they should be required to pay the fines incurred by the corporation. Individual investors could have the option of paying or of liquidating enough of their stock to cover the fines.

There are some dangerous scenarios with this, of course. Small investors might not be able to cover their share of the fines, putting them into debt. Or, the controlling interest may do this intentionally to force smaller investors to liquidate their stocks to cover the fines. To protect against these dangers the shareholders with controlling interest could be required to pay the majority of the fines. If fines are large enough to place minority share holders into debt, they should have the option of simply liquidating their shares (with the proceeds applying to the fines and the rest to be covered by the controlling interest). This provides those with a controlling interest a huge incentive to 'do the right thing', since they'll not only be personally liable for fines, but may also have to cover the fines for the minority share holders.

Re:Grow a pair

[SeaFox]

In the USA, officers of a company have a legal obligation to not intentionally harm the company's stock value through policy decisions. It's entirely possible that if the company leadership "grew a pair" and the result was being kicked out of China, the stockholders would file suit.

The executive's responsibility to keep the company profitable does not supersede human ethics. I love how this argument gets dragged out every time a company gets in hot water over aiding the Chinese, ect. Making money is not the end-all, be-all of life, and that includes for corporations. Using this logic, why didn't Nike's shareholders file suit when the company worked to get rid of sweatshop labor? The cost of production went up and undoubtedly and caused the company to be less profitable.

There's no law that says companies get to destructively exploit everyone in the name of capitalism. They are trying to make money, but not at any cost.

Re:Grow a pair

[KDR_11k]

I bet you these same politicians would have lauded these companies as model citizens if they blocked/turned over Al Qaida sympathizers.

Re:Grow a pair

[hachete]

We got rid of slavery and companies still made obscene amounts of money.

Re:Grow a pair

[KDR_11k]

Step two is embargos on any publicly traded company that is not subject to a similar system.

Re:Grow a pair

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a law as you propose would drive most investors to other countries to invest. The SOX law(and a few other government regs) passed to "fix" the types of things that led to Enron is already sending investors to other countries. BTW the easiest fix to what caused Enron is lowering the tax on dividends...you can't play the accounting games that Enron did and give out dividends. Many companies stopped giving dividends because capital gains tax was lower than the tax on dividends. Among the Bush tax cuts was a dividend tax cut which has led some companies to resume dividends.

Re:Grow a pair

[newt0311]

Day D, Hour H, minutes M, seconds s.

D:H:M:S: Step one carried out.
D:H:M:S+1: Massive loss in the stock market.
D:H+1:M:S: Half of the companies in the US have incorporated somewhere else. Liechtenstein and friends are reporting a boom in number of corporations incorporated.
D+1:H:M:S: Congress enacts step 2.
D+1:H:M:S+1: Most of the remaining corporations have left.
D+30:H:M:S: Most of the smart people have as well.
D+100:H:M:S: The US either falls apart or goes socialist and then falls apart in a year.

Lesson: Governments are not good at legalizing morality. Its usually a bad idea to make them do so. Society is the only way to do that. Boycotts are a prime example.

Re:Grow a pair

[newt0311]

Mod parent up for making an excellent point.

Re:Grow a pair

[Wateshay]

So when Joe Sixpack's pension becomes insolvent because the money-market fund it had invested in is forced to liquidate all of its stock in Yahoo, Google, Nike, and Coca Cola, that would just be a good lesson?

The fact is, our financial system depends on an amoral corporate structure (which is different from an immoral structure). Yes, we could create a new system that tries to be built on moral responsibility on the part of investors, but history has shown that such a system is less stable and less likely to lead to an overall increase in wealth because it severely reduces the incentives for people to take risks with their money. For example, I might be more than willing to invest $10,000 in a startup company because I can afford to lose that much money and think the risk is worth the potential reward. However, I'm not going to invest $10,000 if it would expose all of my assets to potential loss. Similarly, I'm even less likely to invest that $10,000 in a more established corporation where I may be exposing myself to massive loss for an expected return of much less.

It is much better to have an amoral structure on the money supply end of things, and then impose an appropriate level of ethics and morality on the corporation through laws that restrict what the company is allowed to do (thereby freeing the corporate officers from worry that they'll be punished by the shareholders for "doing the right thing", which is what the majority of them would like to do anyway).

Re:Grow a pair

[Wateshay]

Additionally, corporate officers only open themselves up to personal liability from a shareholder suit in cases of gross negligence of their fiduciary duty. Really, unless the officer personally profited from an action that had a negative impact on the company he was charged with running (and he had reasonable reason to know that would be the outcome), it's highly unlikely that the shareholders would bring suit against him and even less likely that they would win if they did. Of course, the shareholders could always fire him, which is really what most of these guys are worried about.

The great-grandparent is right that they need to grow a pair, though. It's unlikely that a CEO running a profitable company would get fired because he failed to pursue even more profits at the expense of Chinese human rights. The truth of the matter is that most people in the U.S. support human rights and would not punish someone for standing up for them. Of course, the nature of people in big-company CEO positions being what they are (they're generally not risk-takers) laws like this one that help give CEOs the balls to do the right thing are indeed a positive step. And the CEOs are supporting the laws because for the most part they're decent freedom-loving people just like you and me and would like to do the right thing---they're just not willing to risk their country-club memberships and vacations in the south of France to do it.

Re:Grow a pair

[KDR_11k]

The US represents 50% or more of the market most corporations deal with in addition to containing large parts of the corporate struicture on its soil, withdrawing from there is not an option. Stop pretending companies hold the country hostage.

Re:Grow a pair

[Anonymous Coward]

So when Joe Sixpack's pension becomes insolvent because the money-market fund it had invested in is forced to liquidate all of its stock in Yahoo, Google, Nike, and Coca Cola, that would just be a good lesson?

Not only does Joe Sixpack necessarily accept this risk, but his risk is not significantly increased from the way things work now. In order for his money-market fund to become insolvent, Yahoo, Google, Nike, and Coca Cola would have to be fined the value of every public stock simultaneously. This laughably unlikely now, but it would be even less likely to happen since every single share holder faces a similar risk and the controlling interest might face an even larger risk. These investors are going to make damn sure their corporation does not find itself in such a position.

It is much better to have an amoral structure on the money supply end of things, and then impose an appropriate level of ethics and morality on the corporation through laws that restrict what the company is allowed to do (thereby freeing the corporate officers from worry that they'll be punished by the shareholders for "doing the right thing", which is what the majority of them would like to do anyway).

Absolutely, the ethics and morality of a corporation should be prescribed in law. Corporations should not be bound by unwritten rules of ethics and morality. However, it is a fantasy to believe such laws can protect the corporate officers from the share holders. Yes, you can legally prevent them from terminating a contract, but you cannot force them to renew or enter into a second contract. Nor can you force the share holders of other corporations to hire these same officers. 'Doing the right thing' in this context is a career limiting move for any corporate officer, period. (Shareholders focusing on stock price only will require the corporate officer to way the cost/risk of the fine against the potential profit.) The only way to enforce these laws is to place the responsibility on the share holders where it belongs.

Re:Grow a pair

[Striver]

such ethics are so expensive only because they are so rare.

Re:Grow a pair

[newt0311]

uh... last time I checked, over 70% of the US was a service economy. The most valuable thing these companies own is their customers, employees, and then brand. Most of the corporate structure within these companies is in computers. If you seriously think that a corporate building is worth much to these corporations, you need to take a look at the real world. When companies are worth several billion $, a building of a few million is a rounding error. If these companies ever want to re-incorporate outside the US and then take their business with them, all they would have to do was to incorporate offshore, transfer most if not all the assets, and then move the software. No single company can do this and cripple the US but if they ever decide to move collectively for some reason, the US is screwed. There's a reason that the first thing (smart) govs. do when they are trying to boost the economy is to invite foreign business in.

Re:Grow a pair

[StikyPad]

(Cisco is probably responsible for far more arrests than Yahoo!, but they don't get the same bad press because you can't point to specific instances where their monitoring tools have identified activists).

That's ridiculous. Creating a tool does not make the manufacturer liable for its misuse. But even if it did, it's a bit of a double standard to condemn them for providing tools used by a non-ally government to do the same things our own government is allegedly doing. Congress should be reinforcing protections at home before worrying about what happens abroad. Our own government reportedly uses internet dragnets such as Eschelon, and surveillance reciprocity (we'll spy on your citizens if you spy on ours). We have "free speech zones" where anyone who protests is a suspect and anyone who fails to comply is arrested.

In many EU countries it's illegal to deny the holocaust or sell Nazi artifacts, etc., but I don't see a public outcry about that (which, I might add, is the true measure of freedom of speech -- supporting the right for people to express things you disagree with, however vehemently).

Furthermore, we turn a blind eye to far more devastating (and much more easily defined) human rights violations of our allies, such as punative and/or preventative amuptations (cutting off a hand for theft; female circumcision), which makes this uproar over Cisco, Yahoo, and Google all the more ridiculous, superficial, and capricious.

Should we encourage countries to adopt the same standards that we (supposedly) hold for human rights? Absolutely. But we've only had things like women's suffrage for less than 90 years, and racial segregation was legal less than 50 years ago. It's not as if we have any sort of moral authority just because we recently changed our societial values. Especially when there's significant evidence that China is becoming more and more liberal about its citizenry, and when a free and open society is the logical consequence of the Internet, no matter how much the government may try to censor it. Basically it's no different than helping a boss with a decision you know will lead to his downfall -- you can try to tell him the consequences, but in the end it's his decision, and he's the boss. Censorship is a losing battle, because the harder you try to repress something, the more attention it gets. It's like yelling "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." -- it only piques people's suspicion/curiosity.

And, the alternative we haven't considered is the possibility that Chinese government really is more effective. While we are by far the wealthiest nation on earth (though not per capita by a long shot), we have significant problems of our own. Maybe keeping people in line gradeschool style really is beneficial to society as a whole. Asian culture abounds with the idea that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual, and China is simply an extreme example of that philosophy. Who the hell are we to tell them they're wrong? Because we have no crime, no hunger, no poverty? Our youth are content and optimistic, and our elderly are respected and comfortable? America is "the great experiment," and it's far from conclusive that our experiment will succeed. We've had civil war and great depression, concentration camps and foreign invasion, and on and on. We're really little more than very loud hypocrites.. do as we say, not as we do.

Re:Grow a pair

[Moridin42]

So.. would these amended charters cause these businesses to cease business arrangements with the federal government of the United States of America?

Re:Grow a pair

[Wateshay]

In order for his money-market fund to become insolvent, Yahoo, Google, Nike, and Coca Cola would have to be fined the value of every public stock simultaneously. This laughably unlikely now, but it would be even less likely to happen since every single share holder faces a similar risk and the controlling interest might face an even larger risk.

Just like it was laughably unlikely that Enron, Worldcom, and Arthur Anderson would simultaneously collapse?

The problem is that in reality the majority of shareholders have little or no control over the day-to-day operations of a company. Moreover, they almost never have any idea that wrongdoing is occurring until it's too late. With the exception of those companies that have majority control vested in just a couple of people, most shareholders have little to no access to the actual operations of the company, and let's face it, illegal or unethical practices don't get printed in the quarterly reports.

Anyway, most illegal actions by corporate officers are carried out to benefit the corporate officers, not the corporation. In fact, most of the incidents that I can think of were done to the direct detriment of the corporation and the stockholders. In the real world, most people aren't willing to risk jail for someone else, and certainly not for a bunch of someones they've never met. Profitable companies don't fire their CEOs because the profits could have been higher if the company had acted unethically, and if the CEO is illegally covering up or propping up an unprofitable company with illegal or unethical dealings it's to save himself from the shareholders, so it doesn't really make sense to punish the shareholders when his crime against the shareholders is discovered, does it?

Re:Grow a pair

[jafac]

No single company can do this and cripple the US but if they ever decide to move collectively for some reason, the US is screwed.

BS and FUD.

If any company left the US, then there's a nice crispy spot in the market just waiting to be filled by a new enterpreneur, who had previously been prevented from entering the market by the dominant hegemony.

I think it would be a great thing if all the current large multinationals pulled out. Good riddance to bad rubbish. There's plenty of other Americans with the knowhow and initiative to build a strong economy without the robber barons.

Re:Grow a pair

[s4m7]

Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.

This isn't that bad of a strategy. When dealing with the communist mindset, it's hard for a country's citizenry, let alone its lawmakers, to understand why a company should get to do as it pleases. Andrew Jackson once said of the corporation that it had "no soul to damn and no shins to kick."

That said, if our government makes laws regarding our companies conduct towards foreign governments, they have little choice but comply. It's tough to even see where to take a stand. When a government wants information on possible sexual predators? Why wouldn't they couch all their requests thusly, then?

Sadly, at the end of the day the result is the same. Unwillingness to comply with local law will cause the "violator" countries to shut the markets to foreign competition. Is Microsoft or Google more important to China than China is to them? Not likely. So ultimately they will be subject to the rights the EFF argues for, which I back, to filter the content their citizens may receive. Since the filtering technology will never beat the spread of content itself, there will always be some trickle-through.

It's really the best we can hope for in this situation: advocacy through leadership. Who really gives a damn what countries are on the list at the outset? We can always add more; hopefully, we can remove some when their policies warrant.

Re:Grow a pair

[rifter]

Except that if you tried to do that, all corporations would simply up and reincorporate somewhere with less restrictive rules. And no one would want to invest in those American companies which do remain because good citizens simply can't compete with ruthless bastards. It would work only you had one set of rules for the entire world. It's not like we actually manufacture much here anymore, all those companies only stay because we have some of the most non-restrictive and capital friendly laws in the world, and a history of putting American business interests above, well, pretty much everything.

The simple fix to that is to make any company that wishes to do business in or with the US create a corporation in the US and have offices in the US. Besides which, your scenario already exists and such a law would reign these corporations back in. Too many "US" corporations have "official headquarters" in and/or are incorporated in other countries simply to get away with not paying taxes and not abiding by our laws; meanwhile they are headed by US citizens and employ them. That is blatantly wrong. And before you scream "protectionism" this is actually a requirement in other countries including China.

The US is the largest consumer of products in the world. No one will give up all chance of selling to that market lightly, especially when the requirements are so small. We just haven't had politicians with the balls to exert the power that, say, Brazil has. Considering who we think we are, that is damn pitiful.

Re:Grow a pair

[rifter]

""A company doesn't have the right to incorporate in the USA if it can't follow US laws, and it doesn't have the right to operate in China if it can't obey Chinese laws."

I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but reframing something we currently take for granted. Should U.S. incorporated companies have to pay minimium wage to overseas employees?

Yes they should and they should have to abide by all the other labour laws we have here as well. There are in fact companies who already do this. For instance when the first Xbox came out there was an article talking about the fact the machines were being manufactured in Mexico. But the workers were being paid $15US per hour in those factories. It was still cheaper to operate there, but it was a much less exploitive practice. I honestly don't think that requiring companies to pay programmers in India at least $5/hour is really too much to ask. Even when the minimum wage finally gets raised it's not that horrible for the kind of companies who are outsourcing labour to other countries and it's not so unfair for the types of jobs these people are doing (well, actually, it's low, but it's a low bar anyhow. They deserve to be paid at least that much).

And as for environmental laws why the hell not? First off it is bad business to deliberately pollute the environment no matter what country you are in, and eventually any country has a potential to increase environmental protection even if it is simply in response to treaties that may or may not be pushed on them by the US and the EU. It costs a lot more to change from doing things the wrong way to doing things the right way than it does to do things the right way from the start. Being good from an environmental standpoint is a good marketing ploy that even large multinational oil companies know to exploit. It makes people happier here in the Us but it also makes people happier in the country in which you are doing business. It does boggle the mind that businesses would deliberately create unsafe factories and spew pollution; I mean it's just sloppy and can't be a good sign for the efficiency of your operation. Especially when some environmental practices actually result in lower costs or cost the same. I really think for the most part the biggest cost to a company trying to comply with environmental laws comes from having to stop everything and convert their operation over, which they would not have to do if they built their operation right from the start.

Re:Grow a pair

[rifter]

D:H+1:M:S: Half of the companies in the US have incorporated somewhere else. Liechtenstein and friends are reporting a boom in number of corporations incorporated.

D+1:H:M:S+1: Most of the remaining corporations have left.

This has already happened. Or haven't you been paying attention to all the companies that moved their headquarters to Bermuda, etc to avoid paying taxes?

Re:Grow a pair

[alan_dershowitz]

Hey there, I actually responded to another post that brought up this exact issue, you can check out that posting and the subsequent posts:

Link

The summary is, a particular set minimum wage and a particular set mimimum safe working condition are both legal standards rather than rights. Standards are allowed to vary from place to place while we (are supposed to, *cough*) accept that rights are the same for all people regardless of location, even if outside the USA.

Re:Grow a pair

[Original Replica]

You make a valid point, in differentiating between standards and rights, and I wouldn't expect local companies in many parts of the world to be able to afford the US minimum wage. But I think there are some grey areas between standards and rights, particularly in the areas you mentioned, wage and safety. Lets examine wages: At one end of the scale let's have $5 per hour and at the other end $0 per hour, slavery. Obviously slavery is a human rights isssue, but what about unfree labour?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labour "If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms: it does not exceed subsistence or barely exceeds it; is in goods which are not desirable and/or cannot be exchanged or are difficult to exchange; or the payment is wholly or mostly comprised by cancellation of a debt or liability that was itself coerced, or belongs to someone else.Unfree labour is often more easily instituted and enforced on migrant workers, who have travelled far from their homeland" As the US seems to have decided that subsistence wages are around $5 per hour, sure you can manage to "not die" for alot less, but that price is what is require for what we view as a minimum standard of living. This includes be able to afford things like: running water, and letting you kids got to school instead of work. Luxuries in some places to be sure, but my question is should we ask this of American companies, who that can afford that pay scale. Yes, I'll pay $125.00 instead of $120.00 for a new pair of Nikes, if that money is being passed on the bottom rungs of the world economic ladder.

Re:Grow a pair

[ajs]

Watch the Frontline episode entitled, "Tank Man". They do a decent job, given the sparse details available, at analyzing what Yahoo!, Google and Cisco did for China. Cisco's involvement isn't just providing routers that can filter traffic.

Re:Grow a pair

[StikyPad]

The irony is that "tank man" wasn't run over, although most people think he was.

I just think there are bigger things to worry about than whether or not some parts of the internet are filtered. On the scale of human rights violations, that falls somewhere between banning rubber duckies and mandatory curfew: It's inconvenient, perhaps, but hardly earth shattering. I'd be far more inclined to take issue with companies using underpaid laborers to produce their products.

But as far as I've seen, China is not North Korea or West Germany. Its citizens aren't forced to stay there, and Americans and Europeans travel to and live in China all the time. If China's citizens feel so oppressed, why don't we hear anything about it? Is the international press that incompetent? Or is there just not much of a story? There is no way you can convince me that the Chinese government is effective enough to censor ALL information. Why are there no further protests? Why aren't there riots in the streets and villiagers storming the capital with torches and pitchforks? Maybe it's because things really aren't that bad, and people put up with the inconveniences because they believe it contributes to the greater good.

Or maybe I'm wrong and China is a shithole, but 1 billion people have been cowed into accepting their collective fate.

A Bigger Role..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yahoo was under fire for recently turning over information to Chinese authorities"

"Microsoft was attacked for removing pages from MSN Spaces China at the behest of the government"

"Google was being criticized for removing political sites from search results displayed to China"

"Cisco was accused of helping to enable Chinese filtering of the Web"

"they're all invited by the U.S. government to play a bigger role, while being vague about what the role should be."

Easy, since they did so well in China, they now consult for US Homeland Security.

Word play aside...

I do wonder, really - how much do these companies (and other companies) do the same to folks in the US and worldwide and... how much do we hear about it?

Does anybody believe that other governments don't do the same thing?

Uhhuh

[TodMinuit]

I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.

Ambien

The companies protested that they had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were troubled by their own actions

Until they got the check and the good PR.

And is GOFA a good law?

No it's not. Such a law won't stop anything from happen, it'll merely move it out of the hands of US companies. I don't think that's a good thing.

Re:Uhhuh

[morgan_greywolf]

No it's not. Such a law won't stop anything from happen, it'll merely move it out of the hands of US companies. I don't think that's a good thing.

Right, but then companies will have no choice but take a 'take-it-or-leave-it stance' with the Chinese government. It's a game of 'good cop/bad cop'. When the Chinese government comes in and says, "give me your subscriber list", the companies can now pass the buck, point a thumb back at Uncle Sam and say, "Huh, sorry, you'll have to take that up with them. In the meantime, the only other thing we can do is stop providing services in your country."

Re:Uhhuh

[WhiplashII]

Especially since the companies all have contracts with China now. If they decided to stop providing service, they are hit with penalty clauses - not to mention the black eye that breaking a contract would give them.

But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract. So the contract payments et al remain in effect, while the agreement to be evil goes away.

Ingenious, really.

Re:Uhhuh

[morgan_greywolf]

But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract. So the contract payments et al remain in effect, while the agreement to be evil goes away.

Ingenious, really. That's true of U.S. contract law, but I'm not sure what China's contract laws are like. Anyone know?

Re:Uhhuh

[newt0311]

first off, they are negotiable. Regardless of whether they have been signed, sealed, or are still being proofread. Something very important to keep in mind.

Re:Uhhuh

[KDR_11k]

But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract.

The problem is that the action would be illegal in some other country but not the one you have the contract with. As such China can require you to follow their laws without giving a fuck about what laws the US has.

Re:Uhhuh

[Anonymous Coward]

How long do you think it will take the Chinese government to put in place a gateway that applies filtering to Google *after* retrieving the results? About 2 days, that's my guess.

The only difference will be that Google will no longer be able to charge the Chinese gov't for the service.

Re:Uhhuh

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night.

• Ambien

I thought they slept on big piles of money.

Re:Uhhuh

[WhiplashII]

As such China can require you to follow their laws without giving a fuck about what laws the US has.

Any US company is going to not sign a contract without some stipulation about following US laws. FYI, most international contracts have a clause that says it will be interpretted in New York - no matter where the companies are based.

Go figure.

Re:Uhhuh

[KDR_11k]

Realistically, would China keep paying you if the part of the contract they care about got removed or would they just say "tough luck" and stop paying you or even arrest you for breaking local laws (this censorship is based in chinese law, after all, not just random contracts)?

Make internet technology a munition then

[xtal]

..and refuse permission to export to countries that don't respect civil rights. There. Even playing field.

This is a joke; they're all hypocrites, they all worship the almighty dollar over human liberty. Every company listed literally is falling over themselves to access new markets.

If you want to trade with countries like this, at least have the balls to owe up to what you're doing. You obviously don't feel THAT bad. I'm sure someone rotting away in jail because of your reporting feels much worse.

Re:Make internet technology a munition then

[Fex303]

Every company listed literally is falling over themselves to access new markets.

Literally? How does an intangible company literally fall over? I think you might mean figuratively.

Sorry to be a pedant, but people do this all the time now and it's been starting to (figuratively) get my goat. 'Literal' has a specific meaning, and when people start using it when the opposite is the case, it just becomes pointless.

I'm sure someone will say that 'literally' is today being used to simple provide emphasis, which is fine until I want to say that something literally happened and people just think I'm providing emphasis.

Re:Make internet technology a munition then

[KDR_11k]

Heh, imagine the EU prevented trade with countries that ignore human rights. By the EU definition that includes the USA. I think the USA's definition of free speech would also prevent trade with the EU.

Re:Make internet technology a munition then

[justchris]

That's a very naive way of looking at it. Not everything is motivated by money. These companies actions probably are, but more in a more indirect way.

The capitalist structure is the closest thing we have to what everyone simplifies Darwinism down to, Survival of the Fittest. In this case, the fittest company is the company that continues to make more than it spends. If it doesn't, it dies. Every good thing and bad thing they do is, therefore, motivated by money. Because without money, they cease to exist.

However, there are 2 other things to take into consideration. First, why do these companies exist. Some company philosophies are actually beneficial. Take Google, as a for instance, their entire purpose in existence is to expand the possibilities of the internet, what it is capable of. This is (in my opinion, at least) a good thing for all of humanity. However, if they don't make money, they don't survive, and it doesn't matter how high the ideals that are the basis of the company are. I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo was created with similar ideals in mind. (I won't vouch for Microsoft of Cisco, but I wouldn't doubt they have a purpose other than just making money.)

Second, companies are made up of people. Sometimes tens of thousands of people. Even at the head of these large corporations, are people with their own sets of values, morals and beliefs. Money does not automatically obviate these values, but does a fairly good job of mitigating them. In order to keep doing business, sometimes you have to compromise your values, sometimes your values change with a new worldview. Whatever the case, the people at the head of these companies may have compromised their values to stay in business, so that they can continue whatever it is that they believe they're doing (I want to stress believe, what they're actually doing and what they believe they're doing need bear no resemblance to each other).

There's also the possibility that, in this particular situation, they had no values to compromise. They went into the market innocently, and then found themselves doing things they were later uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, being limited to a single culture has a tendency to make one myopic. Values are not established until a situation presents itself in which you need to make a decision, and most of the time, you have to make an 'incorrect' decision, before you realize there's anything wrong with it. Values are established, and you do your best not to do that 'wrong' thing again. This is probably unlikely with a multi-national corporation, but we rarely no what our limits are until we step beyond them.

All I'm saying is, they're not necessarily hypocrites. Actually, they're not hypocrites at all. They're not saying one thing and doing another. They're not saying anything. And it's not as if they're trying to hold someone else up to standards they don't follow themselves. They're in the midst of trying to create a standard to follow. And simply backing out may not be the best option, financially or morally.

Well, we can start compiling the list already

[guruevi]

GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries"

• United States
• China
• Korea

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[udderly]

Also:

• Saudi Arabia
• Germany
• Cuba
• Singapore

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[Anonymous Coward]

From the bill:


(8) Legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes.--

            (A) In general.--

            The term "legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes" means for purposes of enforcement, investigation, or prosecution by a foreign official based on a publicly promulgated law of reasonable specificity that proximately relates to the protection or promotion of the health, safety, or morals of the citizens of that jurisdiction.

            (B) Rule of construction.--

            For purposes of this Act, the control, suppression, or punishment of peaceful expression of political or religious opinion, which is protected by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, does not constitute a legitimate foreign law enforcement purpose.



This would apply to the US seeking information about posters to AlQueida webistes... so the chaces of passage is statistically zero.

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> This would apply to the US seeking information about posters to AlQueida webistes...

Trying to track down those plotting to blow up your buildings and kill your citizens does indeed count as a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[4D6963]

Korea

Korea... let me guess, you're american?

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries"

        * United States
        * China
        * Korea


There's no such country now as "Korea", so I argue that this doesn't meet the qualification to be modded insightful . The original poster should explain whether he means the DPRNK (Democratic People's Republic of North Korea), the ROK (Republic Of Korea - that is, South Korea) or both.

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[newt0311]

not according to the wording. Besides, if tracking down terrorists is a legitimate reason for the US to get info. why not the Chinese gov. After all, all those websites are from terrorists. Its all in the definition. Thats why this law will become worth less than the piece of paper it is written on in less than a month.

Re:Well, we can start compiling the list already

[KDR_11k]

Yes but if you grab anyone in the process that may just have been spreading propaganda you violate this law.

Old News

[N8F8]

When in Rome....

When in China...

You basically have three choices:

1) Ignore the market and leave it to the competition if there is any.

2) Conform to the local rules to gain invaluable early adopters and possibly change things once you are in a position with leveredge.

3) Try to bend the market to your will. Call this the confrontational approach.

Of the three I'd submit that #2 has the best chance of success in the long term.

Re:Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the chinese are going to allow american companies into their markets sufficiently such that those markets will be dominated by americans. Not without having a helluva lot of guns and leverage themselves.

And if you think microsoft, or yahoo, or any other company doesn't think censorship is a bad idea when it's in their best interest, then you've got another thing coming. They may have a different way of dealing with it but hey. When all you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...

Re:Old News

[vertinox]

When in Rome....

Act like a Visigoth and burn it down? ;)

Seriously, sometimes you can act like a barbarian and force your way in with the correct leverage battering ram. As you know the RIAA/MPAA has no qualms getting the DoJ and various other governmental agencies put pressure on Chinese authorities to comply with copyrights.

Why can't other businesses do the same with more altruistic purposes?

Sadly, maybe human rights doesn't earn stock holders or lobbyists enough money?

Re:Old News

[Austerity Empowers]

#1b - Come up with a criteria for what a minimally moral (by our definition) government is, and prohibit companies that interact with them from selling products in your country. The bill of rights is a good conversation starter.

I like this better as it puts civil rights in the hands of people, not corporations or governments. Somewhere in history this was shown to be better for us.

Re:Old News

[N8F8]

put pressure on Chinese authorities to comply with copyrights.

You are kidding me right? You ever been to China? Asia? Mexico? The US is the only place where you can buy legal copies of any given software/music/video at the corner market.

Re:Old News

[KDR_11k]

The US is the only place where you can buy legal copies of any given software/music/video at the corner market.

The rest of the western world would like to remind you of its existence.

Like that will stop them

[Billosaur]

But if the companies' hands are tied by U.S. law, then they can basically present the Chinese government with a take-it-or-leave-it deal: You can use our e-mail and messenger and blog services, just know that our government won't let us turn over users' personal information if you ever want it. The Chinese censors are presumably coming from the point of view that they'd rather have a controlled Internet, but that it's more important to reap the economic benefits of having the Internet in their country, even if some control is lost (after all, if they didn't believe that, they wouldn't have connected to the Internet in the first place). Hence it's not likely that they'd throw out Yahoo Mail and Google search and MSN Messenger when so many users depend on these and use them for business as well as personal use. (Even if there are Chinese-made alternatives, there would be the huge cost of switching everyone over, and no longer being able to use the old tools to communicate with American companies.) So a law controlling the actions of U.S. companies would very probably allow them to keep doing business in censored countries, while giving them an excuse not to turn over users' data.

At which point the Chinese government will erect the Great Firewall of China (adding in their buddy North Korea for good measure), and then force their citizens to use government-sponsored computers, routers, network connections, mail clients, etc. And then Chinese censors will be able to have the data anytime they want it. China has all the capability needed to do this, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Re:Like that will stop them

[Anonymous Coward]

(adding in their buddy North Korea for good measure)
Why? North Korea doesn't even use the internet...

Re:Like that will stop them

[drinkypoo]

Will such an initiative necessarily improve the quality of life for, say, Chinese citizens? Nope. But it will ensure that American companies aren't profiting off their suppression and murder. Also, China is not exactly at the forefront of technology, you may have noticed. It's not that they don't make substantial contributions but they are typically not at the head of the class. They can only get best-of-breed technology by buying it. I theorize that their treatment of their citizens has a chilling effect on scientific development. Certainly there've been many reports of faked research coming out of China... And China is legendary for copying others' products down to the last screw, because it's easier than actually developing your own tech.

Re:Like that will stop them

[Anonymous Coward]

let see what the market share in China look like:

websearch: Baidu.com yahoo+google+everybody
                          50% 30%

IM: QQ yahoo+msn+google+everybody
                            90% 10%

eMail: sina+netease+sohu yahoo+msn+google
                                80% 20%

Router: cisco Haiwei

Chinese government: " we take leave-it deal for 200, Alex"

Re:Like that will stop them

[pluther]

At which point the Chinese government will erect the Great Firewall of China (adding in their buddy North Korea for good measure), and then force their citizens to use government-sponsored computers, routers, network connections, mail clients, etc. And then Chinese censors will be able to have the data anytime they want it. China has all the capability needed to do this, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

I highly doubt that they could actually do that.

If they had that capability, they wouldn't have invited Google, Yahoo, Cisco, etc., in in the first place.

I think the far more likely possibility if this law passes is, either these governments live with a little less monitoring of their own citizens, or they end up not providing internet access to mosts of them.

Re:Like that will stop them

[Billosaur]

If they had that capability, they wouldn't have invited Google, Yahoo, Cisco, etc., in in the first place.

Au contrair. Given the Chinese penchant for copying what works, why wouldn't they let them in?

Re:Like that will stop them

[Billosaur]

But I suspect they would have enough technical acumen (accumulated and stolen) to cut off/severely limit traffic from the outside and impose their will on their own people. After all, even if their technology is not top-of-the-line, as long as they mandate its use, it will be top-of-the-line for China. Given no access vs. government-sponsored access, I think the Chinese would be pragmatic about it. However, as now, there would be a dissident community inside China trying to break through the restrictions. Sounds vaguely like something out of 'The Matrix'.

Re:Like that will stop them

[grmoc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_i n_mainland_China

Look for "Great Firewall" it is another name for the "Golden Shield Project", which has been policy in China since 1998.

Re:Like that will stop them

[KDR_11k]

Sounds vaguely like something out of 'The Matrix'.

No, sounds like something out of pretty much every socialist dictatorship, probably the fascist ones as well.

Re:Like that will stop them

[justchris]

You're looking at this all wrong.

Yes, technically China has the capacity to do this.

Financially, losing the American companies that provide these services already would be disastrous for China. They would either have to simply lose the services entirely, thus crippling their own economy, until eventually an alternative develops. Or they'd have to immediately start developing alternative technology, spending millions of dollars (not Yuan, or whatever it is they use in China, I forget, but actual US Dollars...at least in value) to get them going before their economy suffers for it. And they wouldn't have many of the richest countries in the world to prop them up when they fall, because we'd already have a law in place preventing such a thing from happening.

Does this outlaw MPAA/RIAA strong-arming?

[skiingyac]

FTB:

The term "substantial restrictions on Internet freedom" means actions that restrict or punish the free availability of information via the Internet for reasons other than legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes So does this mean that when the MPAA/RIAA tell country X to block something even though none of country X's laws say they have to (in this case foreign refers to country X not the USA), that said country is restricting Internet Freedom?

Re:Does this outlaw MPAA/RIAA strong-arming?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>The term "substantial restrictions on Internet freedom" means actions that restrict or punish the free availability of information via the Internet for reasons other than legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes

>So does this mean that when the MPAA/RIAA tell country X to block something even though none of country X's laws say they have to (in this case foreign refers to country X not the USA), that said country is restricting Internet Freedom?

Of course. That's why those countries say "go stick it" whenever the MPAA/RIAA raises ridiculous demands like that.
It's _their_ country, it's their law, it's their life.
If some foreign-from-X business entity doesn't like what country X is doing, tough luck for them. Why would country X care?

Although most countries have their RIAA/MPAA clones in place, don't worry. Greed is universal.

Any chance this could backfire on the **AAs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the U.S. got on the list, would that take precedence over the DMCA as it relates to suing end users over peer to peer uploads?

How they sleep

[Dr. Eggman]

"I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." They sleep on top of a pile of money with many beautiful women.

Re:How they sleep

[QuestionsNotAnswers]

"I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." "I sleep at night on satin sheets in a luxurious mansion in a quiet cul-de-sac by the sea next to a companion whose beauty would make you weep with desire" - Leunig

I'm confused

[BrianRoach]

Ok ... someone please elxplain, because I don't get it.

Doing internet business in communist and other countries which have oppressive regimes and following their local laws rather than US law (free speech, censorship, etc) is bad.

Pouring billions of dollars into their economy via manufacturing and giving them "preferred trading status" while following their local laws rather than US law (wage minimums, working conditions, etc) is good (See: China).

Makes perfect sense if you're a politician I suppose.

- Roach

Re:I'm confused

[skiingyac]

You're confused?

1) We spend billions of dollars and kill millions to fight terrorism and oppressive dictators in various countries, "because its the right thing".

2) We make drugs illegal and drug dealers import them from said countries instead of growing them here & taxing the crap out of them, and we manufacture billions of $$ of weapons and when they're not top-of-the-line anymore or we just have too many, we sell them to random places and they end up in the same said countries. I'd imagine all that money & ammo has some effect on our success in #1.

Policy doesn't have to be logically consistent, it has to create/perpetuate a self-sustaining system in the short/medium term.

(not the way I'd do it, just telling it like it is)

Re:I'm confused

[rawb]

I'm not confused at all. Both US parties, for the most part, support free speech at least enough to give lip service to it. Championing that globally is "American".

Half of America doesnt believe in the minimum wage or government oversight on business at all. So it's no surprise at all that we don't champion those rights abroad.

Hell, America was one of the biggest impediments (and still is) to including social issues like wages and access to services in the universal declaration of human rights.

Re:I'm confused

[Kelz]

Here the question becomes: Does China need US (no pun intended) more than WE need THEM?

Re:I'm confused

[bendodge]

When the government artificially raises or lowers the price of something, the havoc created is directly proportional to the distance of the artificial price from the natural one.

The Federal Government is supposed to:
1. Pass and enforce laws
2. Administer Justice
3. Defend the country

Notice the glaring absence of "Regulate Business". If any market regulation is be done, it should be done at the lowest level possible (e.g. state, local).

Re:I'm confused

[alan_dershowitz]

Working conditions and minimum wage are subject to differing standards while freedom of speech is considered a sacrosanct right. Only at certain levels are standards connected to human rights, but reality dictates that if a country is only at a certain level of economic development you can only expect a certain standard of work conditions for example. I would argue that these are still things that are within the US government's power to regulate, and probably should

Re:I'm confused

[Mike1024]

Ok ... someone please elxplain, because I don't get it. [...] Doing internet business in communist and other countries [...] is bad. [...] Pouring billions of dollars into their economy via manufacturing [...] is good (See: China).

I think the idea is doing business in oppressive countries isn't intrinsically bad, but actually acting to help with the oppression is bad.

To use an emotive example, if I sold a million dollars worth of paper clips to nazi germany, that would be OK, but if I sold a million dollars worth of gas chambers to nazi germany, that would be immoral - even if paper clips and gas chambers are equally legal. The morality and the legality are very different things.

With that established, the obvious question is "why is aiding political oppression considered worse than employing people at below minimum wage, given that both are legal in China and illegal in America?". Well, American history has 'freedom, freedom, freedom' written all over it, and politicians love talking all about freedom and the idea of making it universal (see also: Iraq), but minimum wages are a fairly recent (and slightly socialist-sounding) innovation which some people don't even support, and differences in living costs and suchlike make a global minimum wage an odd-sounding idea.

Just my $0.02,

Michael

Re:I'm confused

[BrianRoach]

"Only at certain levels are standards connected to human rights, but reality dictates that if a country is only at a certain level of economic development you can only expect a certain standard of work conditions for example. "

If that's the case why isn't the same assumption made regarding rights?

You're saying we assume that a developing nation won't have our standards for work conditions, etc ... but they should have our standards when it comes to things like our standards for speech and expression. That doesn't make any rational sense to me.

- Roach

Re:I'm confused

[BrianRoach]

I understand your view, but the distinction you're drawing is a bit gray, IMHO.

Is it not "acting to help with the oppression" by using (and profiting) from sweat-shop labor without any action (or even interest) toward insisting that the conditions be improved? I don't see this as any different from the issue at hand (IT companies operating under local law).

I just don't buy the whole "dump buckets of money on them and suddenly they'll convert to capitalism" theory. I'm more of a realist that thinks the moment that labor/manufacturing costs increase in China, the corps will simply switch to the next super-cheap manufacturing workforce (which is pretty much how it ended up in China - Korea and Pakistan were costing more).

- Roach

Re:I'm confused

[newt0311]

indeed, a politicians primary goal is not to benefit the country (like its supposed to be) but rather to get re-elected. That often involves doing something that the random incompetent idiot would feel good about like wasting money on the UN or the worthless war in Iraq.

Re:I'm confused

[KDR_11k]

Those are means, not a purpose. The one and only purpose of a government is to make the society it governs work. If that society would work better with regulated business business gets regulated. Besides, regulating businesses falls under passing and enforcing laws.

Re:I'm confused

[KDR_11k]

if I sold a million dollars worth of gas chambers to nazi germany, that would be immoral

But what if you sold them to the US?

Re:I'm confused

[58797A7A79]

...but minimum wages are a fairly recent (and slightly socialist-sounding) innovation which some people don't even support, and differences in living costs and suchlike make a global minimum wage an odd-sounding idea.

I agree. In some countries, $5 USD an hour would make those people into millionaires by their standards. Likewise, many things in London will cost the same number of pounds as they do in dollars over here in the US.. which means they cost twice as much over there. Also, their jobs tend to pay around the same number of pounds per hour as ours do dollars per hour...meaning they get paid twice as much.

So, if anyone gets to set a global minimum wage, I want it to be England.. 7-8 pounds per hour into USD doesn't sound too bad for a minimum.. ;)

Re:I'm confused

[justchris]

just don't buy the whole "dump buckets of money on them and suddenly they'll convert to capitalism" theory. I'm more of a realist that thinks the moment that labor/manufacturing costs increase in China, the corps will simply switch to the next super-cheap manufacturing workforce (which is pretty much how it ended up in China - Korea and Pakistan were costing more).

Ummm, doesn't that prove the point. We go to the cheapest country to do industry, and eventually the industry in that country changes to the point where workers are receiving higher wages, equipment costs more, and they become more technically accomplished in their own right.

At that point, they're too expensive for us to keep doing business there, but they're already far enough along that they're starting their own industries that compete with ours (see Korea and India) and we move on to a cheaper country.

At some point we'll run out of really cheap countries, and have to move on to sorta cheap countries, and eventually, it'll be cheaper to manufacture in the US, so we'll have to bring the industry back here, until it becomes too expensive here again. It's an endless, but somewhat beneficial, cycle.

Re:I'm confused

[BrianRoach]

"Ummm, doesn't that prove the point. We go to the cheapest country to do industry, and eventually the industry in that country changes to the point where workers are receiving higher wages, equipment costs more, and they become more technically accomplished in their own right."

Where along the way did the working conditions improve or conversion to democracy occur? They simply wanted more money for what they were doing, and I doubt it went to the workers.

Last time I looked neither Korea nor Pakistan has a roaring economy, and have in fact lost a great deal of its newfound manufacturing jobs to China. Unless they want to undercut China, they're not getting those jobs back either unless your big wheel makes back around to them again in 30-50 years.

- Roach

Re:I'm confused

[alan_dershowitz]

Because that doesn't make any logical sense. A right by definition is a non-negotiable standard. To use the USA as an example, a nationwide $5.15 minimum wage is not a right granted by our Creator, but the ability to redress government for grievances is. OSHA doesn't charge companies with human rights violations for a company not being in compliance with a standard of safeworkplaces.

It shouldn't be hypocritical or confusing to follow this model for American businesses running in China because it's exactly the same one we use here.

Re:I'm confused

[justchris]

I never said working conditions improved, I said wages improved, which they did. And I'm not entirely certain what the conversion to democracy has to do with this conversation. Capitilism does not require democracy, despite what the American Government would have you believe.

And the solution for Korea is exactly what it has always been. Now that they're too expensive to manufacture our equipment, they start manufacturing their own. That was part of what I said before. Samsung is a Korean electronics brand, and they have been edging out Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) in some of their largest markets.

And no, neither Korea nor Pakistan has a roaring economy, but then, they never did. But Korea's economy, at least, has been on an upward slope for several years now. It's slow, but there are limits, since they still face competition with other markets internationally, who are far ahead of them. Believe me, if their economy was getting worse, they'd be more than willing to undercut China to bring more money in. Which just proves that they've picked up on the capitalism thing, despite their particular style of government.

What they need to do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is pass the law that says you cant give info out to forign govs, but make the punishment be like 5 bucks... that way the company can use the veil of US Law to not give the info to the gov.

Turning over identifies and filtering content ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Yahoo was under fire for recently turning over information to Chinese authorities"
"Microsoft was attacked for removing pages from MSN Spaces China at the behest of the government"
"Google was being criticized for removing political sites from search results displayed to China"
"Cisco was accused of helping to enable Chinese filtering of the Web"

This is a poor list. Turning over identifies and removing/filtering content are vastly different activities. You trivialize the former by lumping it in with the later.

the game

[rolyatknarf]

So these companies get the US government to prevent them from handing over information to a foreign government. Then, when that foreign government wants to track down a violator of their rules these companies get to play the:

Same Lame Blame Game

"There is nothing we can do to help you because our US government prevents us from doing that". Now their ass is covered and someone takes the heat for them. They want to take no risk or responsibility. Nothing new about this. Profit without liability.

A small correction

[psykocrime]

Authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, North Korea, the People's Republic of China, Tunisia, Vietnam, and The United States block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens try to obtain.

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:A small correction

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Please provide links to web sites you cannot access within the United States.

Please provide info about how the US monitors their citizens without due process of law, i.e. warrants for searches. Oh, wait. Nevermind! :(

So umm

[pembo13]

So calling yourself a democracy really make you better than a totalitarian government? Maybe there should be a set of items against which a government should be checked against. I know of a country or two where the majority of citizens do not like what their supposedly democratic government does...but the government still does it. So if you're going to use business and technology to play politics, one may should at least make the rules fair and transparent: I don't think just wagging your finger at China is that.

Re:So umm

[skiingyac]

I was at a conference a few months ago and had lunch with someone from Iran. He talked about how he was unhappy with how Iran's president was pissing off the rest of the world, etc. He said he voted for him, but he likened the election to being given a choice between two spoons, clean ones which he took from the table and held up. Maybe one is a little shinier, but they're both spoons. And he lamented how people guessed wrong and they are now stuck with some crazy guy for 4 years.

I've not been able to vote for too many presidents, but I can't say I was ever thrilled with either of the 2 spoons... er, candidates.

Re:So umm

[planetmn]

I know of a country or two where the majority of citizens do not like what their supposedly democratic government does

I'm assuming this is supposed to be an attack on the US. If it is, you do realize that the constitution and our government was actually set up so that majority rule wasn't how everything was handled. There are a lot of ways that our government works to protect the rights of the minority over the opposition of the majority. So just because greater than 50% of constituents think it's bad policy, doesn't mean that the government should immediately reverse course.

-dave

Re:So umm

[justchris]

Wait, what? You want a fair and transparent government? When did they start making those?

Good old government

[moeinvt]

What a bunch of elitist jackasses we have in the halls of Congress!

They start bloody military conflicts where thousands are killed and maimed, trample on The Constitution, run up $8 trillion in national debt for future generations to pay off, etc. etc. and then have the AUDACITY to suggest that some corporate execs should be overwhelmed with guilt about filtering search results and shutting down web pages?

Re:Good old government

[forand]

So you are one of those that thinks because I do something wrong I can't see you doing something wrong? This is such a bunch of crap. If Charles Manson was the first to come out and say that Enron was a dirty company with horrible financial records would it make it less true? Politicians are in the business of standing behind curtains making bad deals and telling us all how to live. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don't lets hold them accountable for their actions but if they get something right we shouldn't throw it out because they are bad people.

Re:Good old government

[Anonymous Coward]

If Charles Manson was the first to come out and say that Enron was a dirty company with horrible financial records would it make it less true?

Obviously yes. I see you haven't spent much time in society.

Re:Good old government

[moeinvt]

"So you are one of those that thinks because I do something wrong I can't see you doing something wrong?"

Certainly not in principle.

I won't go into the Yahoo! case, because, as one other post correctly pointed out, it shouldn't even be in the same category as the others. Let's focus on the actions of Google (since we couldn't get a fair trial for MS here). I'm not willing to concede that they actually did something "wrong" in their dealings with China, but for the sake of argument, I'll pretend it was somehow "bad".

My criticism of Congress is based on the relative extremities of the actions in question and the blatantly self-righteous arrogance in the tone of their accusations.

In your "Manson accuses Enron" example, mass fraud certainly pales by comparison to mass murder, but does that gap even come CLOSE to the quantum leap between starting a WAR and filtering search results(and then stating openly that you did it)? That's more like Charles Manson saying you shouldn't be able to sleep at night because you used a sexual-orientation based epithet(and then freely admitted that you did it).

Re:Good old government

[KDR_11k]

Pointing something out is one thing but making laws and trying to apply them to sovereign nations is highly arrogant. This kind of arrogance is what a lot of people think of when they think of the US, no matter how common it actually is. Its the source of all the anti-US sentiment throughout the world, we see the US act like they are the ruler of the world and obviously we don't like that conduct. Currently the US has the power to bully many countries around but they really need to hold onto it because if they were to lose it they'd be left with few friends.

Re:Good old government

[Jarn_Firebrand]

$9 trillion.

Hmmmm, lemme get this straight . . .

[mmell]

Just how is a US law like this supposed to tear down the Great FireWall of China?

Oh, that's right - instead of complying with Chinese law, these players will tell the Chinese government "We can't hand over the records you've requested as a matter of US law".

Previously, they capitulated because their only choice was to face being blocked by China's Great FireWall. This changes that how?

Re:Hmmmm, lemme get this straight . . .

[zussal]

Maybe the Great Firewall would do everyone some good. If the Chinese government really wants to isolate themselves so badly then LET THEM! The isolation will be their demise and the rest of the world will thrive with it's internet. Maybe then the Chinese will realize they need the rest of the world and it's cultures and ideas to be the great country they "claim" to be.

GOFA meant well, but...

[acoustix]

Do the US Representatives and Senators that passed this law remember that they also passed laws banning certain content on the Internet? I realize that blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, but it is still censorship.

Nick

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[manifoldronin]

Do the US Representatives and Senators that passed this law remember that they also passed laws banning certain content on the Internet? I realize that blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, but it is still censorship.

And...?

You can't just label something and go "case rested." If you do realize blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, then you should also realize that not all kinds of "censorship" are bad, otherwise you would just be overglossing.

"I realize the cop shooting a running-away fugitive and a rapist strangling his victim are two different things, but it is still killing human beings." Is that statement true? Of course, but does it get us anywhere? No.

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[KDR_11k]

What our culture deems acceptable is not acceptable in the view of other cultures and forcing our views on them isn't going to make them like us. We should respect the right of other countries to form their laws around their own moral values.

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[manifoldronin]

We should respect the right of other countries to form their laws around their own moral values.

No, it should be "We should respect the right of other peoples to form their laws around their own moral values." I don't really think in a country where its government censors all the publications, public speeches, and Internet traffic the people actually would have any right to form their own laws.

Nothing personal, but I think applying moral relativism to some fundamental human right issues is both hiding one's head in a sand hole and grabbing moral highgrounds hypocritically.

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[justchris]

Nope, there is no logical dissonance here. In this case, their actions are entirely consistent.

In both cases, the US government is acting to protect people who cannot protect themselves.

In the case of child pornography, they are acting to proctect children who may be too young to even know something is wrong, and are generally too weak to stop it even if they do.

In the case of GOFA, they are acting to protect the rights of people who have proven to be unable to alter the policies of their oppressive government.

So you see, it's all a matter of perspective. Anything can seem inconsistent if you look at it the right way.

Also, a sidenote, the law has not yet passed. It is still being discussed, I believe.

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Do the US Representatives and Senators that passed this law remember that they also passed laws banning certain content on the Internet? I realize that blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, but it is still censorship.
>You can't just label something and go "case rested." If you do realize blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, then you should also realize that not all kinds of "censorship" are bad, otherwise you would just be overglossing.

Indeed. Censorship is always bad. Even banning a video a mass murderer recorded of his live doings is bad. Banning texts glorifying Nazis or whatever is BAD. Banning child porn is bad.
Catching the ones that recorded it, good.
Taking the server offline lawfully after a fair trial, good.

Note that just because it's there you don't have to look at it.

On the other hand, when someone is concealing something (and I mean _anything_ ) from you, that's just evil: After all, if you don't know how child porn is, how to be against it? I do see that one doesn't sleep well after one saw it, but banning is no substitute to knowing.

That is, censorship forces you to act on incomplete information, which is to say, probably wrong.

It's a case of keeping the people (citizens, and ultimately the government - because those _are_ - elected - citizens) stupid deliberately. Only goes downhill from there.

Protect-the-children is the primary excuse for all kinds of totalitarian laws anyway.

Re:GOFA meant well, but...

[manifoldronin]

That is, censorship forces you to act on incomplete information, which is to say, probably wrong. It's a case of keeping the people (citizens, and ultimately the government - because those _are_ - elected - citizens) stupid deliberately. Only goes downhill from there

I don't usually reply to ACs, but this kind of "matters," so:

You are right above in general, but that still doesn't get you to the point of "all censorships are bad." For that, you'd have to establish that acting on incomplete information is always a bad thing - I mean, what kind of legal act of yours could go wrong if you are missing some child porn?

Protect-the-children is the primary excuse for all kinds of totalitarian laws anyway.

No, I can tell you right now that is not true and simply some other overglossing. Just take the case at discussion as an example, most of the politically-oriented censoring in China (mind you indeed according to Chinese laws) is done on the ground of "keeping a stable and harmonic society."

Summary of the summary?

[192939495969798999]

Longest.... summary... ever!

Corporate/Government Pair

[Doc Ruby]

Corporations know that unless the government regulates the market with universal requirements, some competitors will seek the appearance of short-term (and illusory long-term) gain, despite the good reasons (business and ethical) to prop up tyrannies. Those who want to do the right thing but can't afford to fail to compete with those who will do the wrong thing need the government to level the playing field.

It takes balls for corporations to ask the government to regulate them, rather than the absolutely standard "self-regulation" lies they almost always tell to get

Fact is that doing wrong is often more profitable than doing good, at least at first. That's one reason the people create a government to protect our market, which unregulated can undermine our freedom. When corporations work with that system, rather than against it, they're working with the people, rather than against us. Which makes sense, because the corporate execs are people, too.

What about internet gambling?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of course is the obvious of having a government mandated list of who these laws apply to. And I'll bet damn sure that the US wouldn't be put on the list to prevent the US from seeking that information.

Second, the US wants to allow the US companies to push all the web data and allow the foreign countries to work according to US laws, but then they strong arm all the foreign casinos from working with US players. If they want everyone to have full access to the US data, then the US people should have full access to all the freedoms that other countries offer. I totally agree with the person who pointed out the US has no problem working with countries that don't honor our minimum wage standards, etc.

Re:What about internet gambling?

[KDR_11k]

The EU is already complaining about the online gambling ban and may go to the WTO with it.

Why just a list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should this law apply to only a few countries? The law should prevent censorship or turning over data to ANY country, including the US.

What a joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This post and this law assumes that US companies are the only options foreign governments have, and that US companies have any kind of leverage to tell foreign governments to 'take it or leave it'. That is a naive and incorrect assumption.

2. I find it very ironic that the US government is passing these laws, given the FBI's quasi-legal mass spying of internet traffic and the US government's own requests that companies like Google turn over large amounts of information on search histories. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?

Re:What a joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is doing it for our own good and we have nothing to worry about unless we're terrorists. China is doing it because they're EVIL!

You trust Uncle W, don't you?

Re:What a joke...

[KDR_11k]

Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?

Don't worry, the next generation won't be able to spell any word with more than two syllables with all these cuts to the education budget.

Just who is the good guy?

[juergen]

I am not too much worried about US companies having to obey foreign local law. The notion that US law applies everywhere is ridiculous, even if I can see how some companies would like that, and maybe that's their real agenda. Would make global domination so much easier.

What worries me is foreign more or less oppressive goverments dictating local companies how they do bussiness. With threats of beeing labeled (aiding) terrorists if not complying of course.

Yes, that's the US goverment I am speaking of. Examples are absurd data gathering on air travel and financial transactions. Appearantly they forced some European companies into secret collaboration, even over local law. The EC started investigating privacy breaches, but I don't expect much to come out there. At least the Chinese don't meddle out of home.

Righteous move?

[Annoymous Cowherd]

Is take it or leave it really the attitude that would promote change?

At this point in time, I feel being disconnected from the flow of information would be the most harmful thing that could happen. We've already taken for granted the impact the abundance of data has had on our lives.

The freer the flow, the faster we advance. By trying to make moral decisions on their behalf, you're likely to do more harm than good. Although it is a controversial topic with no real right answer, simply halting all services would mean leaving the people with even less to look forward to.

And really. Do we think that because the government blocks political content, the people are really left in the dark?

FCPA, anyone?

[mi]

Not to mention, at some level, this isn't a "human rights" thing, it's a "sovereignty" thing -- companies are bound to obey the laws of the countries they do business in. This ridiculous proposed law giving Google the "freedom" to disobey Chinese censorship laws is a complete non-starter, for the obvious reason that a Chinese court isn't going to care what the relevant US law is...

What, I wonder, is your opinion of the FCPA — law, which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials? Granted, this new law is going a step further, since bribery is illegal in all countries...

All this will do is prevent Google, Yahoo, et al., from doing business in China, and I suspect guys like Baidu.com will be more than happy about it.

Then so be it. I doubt, this will be the case in practice, though. Faced with this new law, and certain, that all of their American competitors will have to do the same (this assurance is, really, what each of the companies in question really wanted), each company will find a way — possibly by locating their servers in Mongolia, India, or South Korea, for example...

Indeed, this will likely have a detrimental effect on Chinese freedom, since US-owned companies are more free to bend Chinese laws without fear of physical reprisal or of nationalization.

Err, sorry, I don't follow this logic... American companies' ability to bend China's oppressive laws should contribute to, rather than detriment from the freedom of ordinary Chinese...

Re:FCPA, anyone?

[KDR_11k]

Err, sorry, I don't follow this logic... American companies' ability to bend China's oppressive laws should contribute to, rather than detriment from the freedom of ordinary Chinese...

However it decreases the freedom of the country as a whole to make its own laws on subjects their culture might disagree with the US on. Imagine the EU decided to make it illegal for companies to do business in areas where capital punishment exists. Different people, different cultures, different laws. By attempting to interfere with the laws in other countries you create a lot of negative sentiment, the kind that political leaders use to make people fly planes into skyscrapers.

Re:FCPA, anyone?

[mi]

However it decreases the freedom of the country as a whole to make its own laws on subjects their culture might disagree with the US on.

This is about as valid, as claiming, my nose violates your fist's freedom of movement. US is regulating its own companies — and we are free to do so, limited only by its own Constitution and other laws and international treaties.

But why did you ignore my analogy with FCPA? The act severely limits other countries' officials' bribe income — surely, some of the negative sentiment thus created has contributed to the WTC destruction, has not it?..

Imagine the EU decided to make it illegal for companies to do business in areas where capital punishment exists.

They are free to do so.

By attempting to interfere with the laws in other countries you create a lot of negative sentiment, the kind that political leaders use to make people fly planes into skyscrapers.

Yeah, right. It was our fault, was not it?..

How to contact your people in Congress

[bruguiea]

For those who live in the U.S.:

You can get your 5+4 ZIP Code:
http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/

And then find those who work for you in D.C. and your State capital:
http://www.congressweb.com/

Cheers,
Tony

can you get any higher?

[manifoldronin]

Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.

slashdot never fails to amaze me in terms of finding out there is always somebody who is capable of climbing to an even higher moral highground, no matter where the rest of the world stand.

Maybe the author is simply speculating on what those companies are thinking, but wouldn't this still be a lot better than "we don't have the balls to stand up, and we secretly hope that our government doesn't either?"

Classic...

[scooviduvoctagon]

"...they all invited the U.S. government to play a bigger role, while being vague about what the role should be."

Feed the monster.

U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countries

[G4from128k]

Wouldn't the U.S. (and just about every country in the world) also end up on this list of internet restricting countries. Between pending regulations on political/lobbying activities on the internet, CAN-SPAM, hate speech, civil penalties for NSFW images in the workplace, filtering for libraries, kiddie porn laws, online gambling laws, USA Patriot law, DMCA, etc., one could argue that the U.S. heavily restricts activities on the internet too.

I deploy China's censorship as much as the next guy, and would strongly argue that it is very bad for the Chinese economy. But wonder if I have the knowledge or the right, much less the obligation, to hassle them about it. Perhaps we must realize that we don't have a monopoly on how to regulate the internet in the context of a cultural-dependent definition of the relative rights of societies versus individuals versus commercial enterprises versus select groups of citizens (e.g., kids, minorities, etc.).

Democracy comes at the barrel of a gun

[WillAffleckUW]

Or at least it appears that way nowadays.

I'm all for idealism, but since those who profess Democracy seem to hate our Freedoms, how could this concept ever get not only passed into law, made into treaties, but enforced?

Re:Democracy comes at the barrel of a gun

[mandelbr0t]

If you're talking about GWB, then he appears to hate freedom because he does. The United States can hardly be considered a democratic nation, nor will Iraq be anytime soon. The form of government currently operating in the USA is Fascist. Unlike most fascist governments, you won't have to overthrow them with a violent revolution, but you will have to get out of your armchair, quit listening to the Pundits and actually VOTE for a democratic government.

Re:Democracy comes at the barrel of a gun

[WillAffleckUW]

actually, I think Cheney has led the nation towards a mixture of fascism and libertarianism.

Too many isms are bad for you.

"Restricting" isn't a binary condition

[Futaba-chan]

One obvious problem: "restricting" versus "not restricting" isn't a brightly-defined binary choice. Many European countries, for example, have laws prohibiting Holocaust denial, and require ISPs to take down or block access to neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial sites. But they're a far cry from, say, China. The proposed legislation doesn't deal well with that distinction....

Corporate Citizenship

[Archangel Michael]

The problem here is that there has been a huge divide between "legal" and "moral" responsibility, because we cannot legislate "morality" because of the left wingers view of what right wingers want in regards to "morality". This is the unintended consequence of this liberal mindset.

For those on the left and right, it is a moral dilemma of huge proportions. The left doesn't want to legislate morality because they want free sex, porn on every corner, and unfettered access to abortion. The right doesn't want morals to interfere with their pocketbooks.

Both sides have it wrong. Morality is doing what is RIGHT, in spite of what is "legal", or "illegal". The problem we have in most western societies, is we have laws in place that make what is MORAL, actually illegal. So when people stop acting morally, we ought to understand WHY it is that way.

Nobody wants anyone else's morality thrusted upon them, but also, they want their morality thrusted upon everyone else.

Now you know why.

Troubled

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA
"The companies protested that they had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were troubled by their own actions, and "

No choice? How about not doing business if it violates your ethic. I guess money overrides ethics; your company makes more money; you make a bigger bonus. Some how I don't think that this really troubles them; if it did; they wouldn't have made those decisions. It is more like; BUSTED (engage damage recovery): we should feel sorry. "Yes, I feel bad, I feel trouble ". Has anyone see the keys to my Porsche?

Re:Turning over identifies and filtering content .

[TubeSteak]

Turning over identifies and removing/filtering content are vastly different activities. You trivialize the former by lumping it in with the later.

I would assert that removing information is just as (if not more) insidious as the chilling effect of turning people over to be arrested.

One form of control is no better or worse than the other.

Have you actually seen many Chinese websites?

[hackingbear]

Well.... first don't assume that only American companies know how to create Web sites. If Americans don't take that market, fine, there are thousands of similar web sites from e-mail to blogs in China. In fact, many US sites like Yahoo are not popular in China because their front pages do not contain tons of "sexually implicit" materials as you can find in a true Chinese website.

I have been living in China for a few years. While it is absolutely true that the government has restrictions on the cyberspace. The Internet is still the most open place for public opinions. In fact, except a few very sensitive issues like Taiwan or Fa Lun Gong, you can see many criticism of the government or the party; I have read posts that simply refers the party as dictators and the posts were appearing in major sites like Sina.com. Other examples I just read (sorry you need to be able to read Chinese):

http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/defa ult.html?channel=cj&newsid=31-1-3297449

http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/defa ult.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12182898&style=0

So restricting American companies' conducts in China is both useless and unnecessary. This is advocated by politicians who know not much about China and just try to appeal to the equally mis-informed public.

Aside what do most Chinese people worry about? Politic? Democracy? Freedom? No. They worry about sky-rocketing housing price, education and medical costs, and they worry about jobs. The same things we worry about in America. Things like democracy and freedom of speech do not solve all those problems. Look at Philippine, Mexico, India, ... Are people better off in those countries with elected officials?

I think as people in China get richer and richer, they will ask for more and more political rights and freedom. That has been the case for last 20 years. Those things will not need to come overnight. What works is a middle-class-driven economy.

There is life out side of politics in those countries.

Proud To Be An American

[Doug Dante]

I realize that there are some thorny issues here of business and politics, but take a moment and read the statement of purpose from this bill: "It shall be the policy of the United States ... to promote as a fundamental component of United States foreign policy the right of everyone to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers;" The rest of the world can go and bash us for what we do wrong, and there's plenty there, I know, but this is something that we can and should do that is RIGHT.

Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr

[zussal]

Yeah, but the U.S. INVENTED the internet. So... what's your point?

The reason there's a list of countries ...

[oneiros27]

It isn't because of Saudi Arabia -- it's because of the U.S.

GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries" and would in most cases prohibit U.S.-based companies from censoring content or turning over users' information to the governments of those countries.

(emphasis added)

Think about it -- a law which says a company isn't allowed to keep personally identifiable information, and isn't allowed to give it to the government ... yet, we have the attorney general trying to push the exact opposite for ISPs in the US (oh... but it's for kiddie porn, so that's okay, right? they wouldn't use it for tracking leaks or other crimes against free speach, right?)

Useless Without International Sanctions

[logicnazi]

I have to say that I'm extremely exasperated by the complaints against google for censoring their content. Yes, censorship is bad but it really pisses me off when people blame a company just for being tangled up in some unpalatable area even if their actions are a net benefit. The, quite compelling, justification that google gave for engaging in censorship was that if they didn't do it the Chinese would have access to even less information and that more censor friendly companies would take over.

This law still presents the danger of similar bad consequences. To the extent that foreign companies can still censor material we may see companies like Google who reluctantly censor material at government request replaced with foreign companies eager to please censoring government to curry favor. The net effect of this might be to create a second economy in censor friendly IT information. The last thing we want is to have a Chinese company position itself as a more censor-friendly alternative to google to all the oppressive regimes around the world.

So I'm unsure about the goodness of this bill. It may be on net positive or it may not.

What I would surely support would be an international treaty, signed by as many free societies as possible, that agrees to impose penalties on ANY company that colludes with government censorship. If the Chinese alternative to google can't avail itself of EU/US financial markets, get ad money from companies operating in these environments or otherwise access the free world it would prevent a censor friendly company from rising to offer an alternative to the free speech friendly services. Even better it would provide the best kind of pressure, internal demands by corporations who want to make money, on places like China to relax their censoring laws so their companies can compete in the world market.

Not to mention the fact that an international treaty like this would be more resistant to things like the US-Saudi friendship.

Let me see if I understand?

[Tzutzu]

We will pass a law that say US companies should not provide info about the customers to governments.

Except to the US government and *IAA, because that is about combating terrorism and piracy.

Right?

China man say...

[Anonymous Coward]

You block now round eye, or you no get Chinese Yen!!!!

Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr

[halivar]

The Declaration of Independence states that we hold certain truths to be self-evident, that all (not some, not Americans, not just rich white men in a specific cultural context) have inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In our Constitution, we enumerate some of man's "liberty" rights, foremost among them the Freedom of Speech. This doesn't carry legal weight in China or Saudi Arabia, but it should be our conscience when dealing with them.

Our forefathers believed that all men on the earth, regardless of culture, have these rights upon birth. If we now say that a man's inalienable right to free speech depend upon his cultural context, we betray the single most important ideal our country was founded on.

That said, yeah, the DMCA and Patriot Act don't help; they, bit by bit, have got us believing that the right to an opinion is something that can be abridged, and that's intolerable. However, if we don't speak for Chinese dissidents, saying "but we don't have the right, or we'll be hypocrites," then no one will speak for them at all. I think they would rather we were hypocrites than silent.

Re:U.S. on the list of (women)

[Anonymous Coward]

The rights do not apply to women and girls however :) (which is good). Unfortunatly our culture and government hates and disrespects men and thus applys these rights to females... which reduces men's liberty.

https://cat2.dynu.ca/

If you want to be a U.S. company, there are rules.

[Kadin2048]

companies are bound to obey the laws of the countries they do business in.

Not quite true; the primary obligation of a company is to the laws of the country that it is incorporated in, which is the closest you can get to where a fictitious, legal entity "resides." After that, then they have some responsibility to the laws of the country where they would also like to do business, but only if those laws don't conflict with their home country's.

If you don't want to follow U.S. laws, you just have to not be incorporated there, and not have any offices there, and not have your stock listed in any U.S. exchanges, and you probably don't want to have any employees based there, or have any of your corporate officers fly there, either. But if you do those things, particularly if you base the company out of the U.S., then you're beholden to U.S. laws, which may limit where you can do business.

You can't have it both ways: you can't enjoy the protection of First World laws and derive the benefits of being traded in a First World stock market, while bribing people left and right, collaborating with terrorists or repressive regimes, and generally acting like the corporate equivalent of a tin-pot dictatorship. (Or, at least you shouldn't; clearly some companies get away with things they shouldn't, from time to time.)

I think this proposed law makes a whole lot more sense, even, than the FCPA (which I had mixed feelings about initially, since I'm not sure that bribery is universally immoral, or at least not immoral to the same extent that turning some blogger over to the Chinese, so he can be imprisoned and tortured, is).

It is OKAY to ban Child Porn though.

[zussal]

Sometimes it's about morals and ---- amazingly ---- not politics.

Tell that to the people...

[Anonymous Coward]

...rotting away in Chinese prisons.

Oh well, here goes my karma

[element-o.p.]

Not to be a troll, but it's not these companies but rather the U.S. politicians that should have trouble sleeping at night! From the summary:

...Yahoo was under fire for recently turning over information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of a political dissident...Representative Tom Lantos summed up the mood of many of his colleagues by telling the companies, "I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

Meanwhile, AT&T is turning over phone records to our fricken' government without either a warrant or a subpeona, legislation like the Patriot Act and CALEA is trampling over 200 years of civil rights, and detainees are rotting in Guantanamo Bay while Alberto Gonzales is saying that there is no guaranteed right to habeas corpus in the Constitution.

Give me a break--it must take some serious cojones to point the finger at China while doing as much as possible to emulate them right here in the good ole U.S. of A. <shakes head in disgust>

hypocrisy

[alphamugwump]

So, it's ok for the US to subponea for search records, but if China wants stuff blocked it is a major civil leberties violation? Something is a little weird here.

A cultural attack?

[Inyu]

Freedom is good, and constrains are also good. If you don't have bones that are constrains, you will not be able to move freely. :-) I think this kind of law could be considered an cultural attack from America, - to disorganize the country. Just a thought.

Re:A cultural attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

But american has already won the culture war.

"A step in the right direction" != good law

[flaming error]

The phrase "a step in the right direction" is an admission that the law is flawed. In this case, the contributor admits the law is toothless regarding censorship, and privacy is only enforced selectively, as dictated by the US government.

This may help Silicon Valley, but it does little for the global struggle for freedom.

Re:Not Always Proud To Be An American

[Doug Dante]

This bill defines "Minimum Corporate Standards for Online Freedom" (Section II) and provides both civil and criminal penalties for violating the law in section 206. That is follow through.

In Illinois...

[Al Dimond]

I grew up in the state of Illinois. In Illinois it is illegal for car dealerships to be open on Sundays.

This is not the case for other businesses. Most businesses in Illinois are open on Sunday; of course, they don't have to be open any day, and some business owners choose to keep their stores closed on Sunday.

But car dealerships must stay closed. I've been told that the dealerships all got together and asked the state legislature to pass a law enforcing this. Why would they ask for a law restricting their behavior? Probably because they wanted Sundays off, and knew that if other dealers opened on Sunday they'd have to open as well to stay competitive. If the law was removed and a single dealership in an area opened on Sunday it would only be a matter of time before they all opened. So the net result of the law is bad for working consumers looking to buy cars, who now have only one day out of their weekend to do it.

Tech companies' support of this law is exactly the same. They want to be protected against companies that would gladly do things that they don't want to do. But the net result of the law from the perspective of the government passing it, less choices for censoring governments, is probably a net positive for people in those countries (at least as our government sees it). It won't work totally; in fact, it might wind up like Illinois' ban on fireworks sales, leading to giant fireworks stores right across the Indiana and Wisconsin borders, totally outside the state's legislative arm.

Fascist legislation.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first line of HR 275:

"To promote freedom of expression on the Internet, to protect United States businesses from coercion to participate in repression by authoritarian foreign governments, and for other purposes."

So this bill will do nothing to protect US private citizens, and will do nothing to prevent coercion by the US Federal Government. In other words, this is a pro-big business, pro big-goverment piece of legislation. Why am I not surprised?

Useless and unnecessary

[hackingbear]

Well.... first don't assume that only American companies know how to create Web sites. If Americans don't take that market, fine, there are thousands of similar web sites from e-mail to blogs in China. In fact, many US sites like Yahoo are not popular in China because their front pages do not contain tons of "sexually implicit" materials as you can find in a true Chinese website.

I have been living in China for a few years. While it is absolutely true that the government has restrictions on the cyberspace. The Internet is still the most open place for public opinions. In fact, except a few very sensitive issues like Taiwan or Fa Lun Gong, you can see many criticism of the government or the party; I have read posts that simply refers the party as dictators and the posts were appearing in major sites like Sina.com. Other examples I just read (sorry you need to be able to read Chinese):

http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/defa ult.html?channel=cj&newsid=31-1-3297449 [sina.com.cn]

http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/defa ult.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-12182898&style=0 [sina.com.cn]

So restricting American companies' conducts in China is both useless and unnecessary. This is advocated by politicians who know not much about China and just try to appeal to the equally mis-informed public.

Aside what do most Chinese people worry about? Politic? Democracy? Freedom? No. They worry about sky-rocketing housing price, education and medical costs, and they worry about jobs. The same things we worry about in America. Things like democracy and freedom of speech do not solve all those problems. Look at Philippine, Mexico, India, ... Are people better off in those countries with elected officials?

As people in China get richer and richer, they will ask for more and more political rights and freedom. That has been the case for last 20 years. Those things will not need to come overnight. What works is a middle-class-driven economy.

There is life out side of politics in those countries.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[k1e0x]

You are a fool to trade away you liberty for a house, education, health care and job.. they usta provide that much to slaves. Everyone wants freedom, everyone wants liberty.. don't believe me? ..then why did you, and most other Americans move out of their parrents house? Survay says! "Because they want to do their own thing, and have there own stuff" or in other words.. freedom.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[hackingbear]

That's true but freedom including speech freedom is relative. I'm not saying it is a bad thing. I'm saying it is only realistic to get more of these freedoms when the general economy improves. This is evidential in China. I was born there in the 1970's (at the time any complaint to the government privately would result in harsh punishments) and lived there until 1989 and then returned there for a few years lately. I can tell the amount of freedom, from freedom to change job to freedom to talk, people have gained over the decades proportional to their general income level.

Even though Internet access in China is restricted, it is still much better than if we try to force the Chinese government to take it away from people. It can only be pushed gently.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[k1e0x]

You don't have "limited" or "relative" Rights, Your rights exists outside of any form of government. Government can't create new rights or take rights away, they can only infringe upon them. This is all they have the power to do in a philosophical sense.. For example, You have a right to life, even if a state has no law or punishment against murder it is still wrong. Law does not decide the basis of right and wrong.

I think people in China are starting to learn about freedom, as income levels rise so does communication. Perhaps they are learning about freedom.. this is actually not that different than things like YouTube here were we learn about the abuses of power by our own government. The people of China need to get rid of their government, that is the only way they will get all the liberty and freedom that people desire.

As for the OT, I believe its wrong to try to tell people how to do business. If Yahoo or Google want to do this they are free to do so, but it will reflect on them in a negative light and cost them in the end.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[hackingbear]

I think people in China are starting to learn about freedom, as income levels rise so does communication.

You got the idea. No matter what your rights are philosophically, the actually rights are limited by Chinese or other 3rd world governments and to less extends by US and other developed government.

The people of China need to get rid of their government, that is the only way they will get all the liberty and freedom that people desire.

Well... other than civil unrest and bloody revolution. How can you get a better government quickly? But I don't think any Chinese would want that.

Democratic election? It would not happen overnight without that bloody revolution (or maybe US invasion, Iraq again 100x worse?) And elections in 3rd world countries produced no better governments over the years -- they are just as corrupted.

People will learn and ask for rights beyond basic foods and sheltering as their income level go up. The American history has shown the same path. Blacks, Chinese or other minorities did not even have rights to buy lands, let alone political rights. But as the US got prosper, they also made the claims and got the rights.

The good thing is that once people are on the path to economic prosperity, no dictatorship can stop their growing desires for rights and freedom.

American trades and products are our best weapons. In fact today the people in China get more rights and freedom than before exactly because the US had opened up the trades. For that, the Chinese people should thank the Americans.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously have no idea about the Chinease culture and its impact on
the their understanding of freedom. You just can not assume everyone
around the world want "freedom" as defined by you.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[k1e0x]

> People will learn and ask for rights beyond basic foods and sheltering as their income level go up. The American history has shown the
> same path. Blacks, Chinese or other minorities did not even have rights to buy lands, let alone political rights. But as the US got
> prosper, they also made the claims and got the rights.

Your still thinking that you get your rights from government. "People will ask for rights?" You don't need to "ask" this is the point. If you have to ask permission its not a right. Rights actually come from property.

Example:
Hea, Can I have a piece of your pizza? -- Pizza is not your property, you need to ask.
Hea, Can I have a piece of my pizza? -- Pizza is yours, you do not need to ask anyone.

> You got the idea. No matter what your rights are philosophically, the actually rights are limited by Chinese or other 3rd world governments
> and to less extends by US and other developed government.

You rights are actually never limited or revoked by government. Your rights exist independent of other people, that includes the government. They *can* be infringed upon, but you don't loose them (They are not even all distinctly defined anywhere as far as I know.) Well.. you can loose them.. but only to god or whatever takes them away when you die. (this is the same thing that gave them to you in the first place.)

Example:
Your -insert minority group here- government says you can't own land.. do you have a right to property? Yes, and its currently being infringed.
Government is taking your property by eminent domain.. do you have a right to property? Yes, and its currently being infringed.
You are being robbed by a man at gunpoint.. do you have a right to property? Yes and its currently being infringed.

> Well... other than civil unrest and bloody revolution. How can you get a better government quickly?

Ask the people in the communist Soviet Union. The central government lost the ability to govern states declared their independence and the people realized that it no longer had control over them. By in large they started to ignore the laws. The people enforcing the laws were ignoring the laws. I think he fastest way to a better government is to simply ignore it.

Personally I view this government (USA) for what it is, a group of armed thugs who do practically whatever they want all the time. I follow their rules because I'm afraid of them using force against me, but they do not have any sort of right to rule me. For the most part I live my life the way I want to despite them. I don't really question if things are legal or not.. first there is the question of is it right or wrong, then I decided if I can get away with it without some other people coming after me. (ex boyfriend government, whoever. :p)

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[hackingbear]

Exactly what all your "rights" are philosophically is more of a, well, philosophical and ethical issue. Essentially it is what people think their rights should be vs what they actually have. The history has shown that people (and society) changed the scope of what their rights should be all the time.

Example: Hea, Can I have a piece of your pizza? -- Pizza is not your property, you need to ask.

Hea, Can I have a piece of my pizza? -- Pizza is yours, you do not need to ask anyone.

What about if you change your examples to:

Hea, Can I have a piece of your marijuana? -- Marijuana is not your property, you need to ask.

Hea, Can I have a piece of my marijuana? -- Marijuana is yours, you do not need to ask anyone.

Well... it used to be that you did have the right to have your own marijuana because it was just another type of your property, but no more. It is illegal to own any marijuana; your marijuana right has been taken away no matter how you argue that it is your fundamental rights to have it.

Other current debates of rights include: rights to have abortion, rights to same sex marriage, etc.

My point is that it does not matter if you have certain rights philosophically, as the social economic condition advances, people will (1) widening their scope of rights (2) if they don't have the rights they think they should have, they will certainly make the claim over time (3) if there are large enough population wanting that "right", the government, dictatorship or democratic, will have to give in and grant the rights.

Re:Useless and unnecessary

[k1e0x]

I reject your "over time" argument. Sine the beginning of time man had rights, they are exactly the same then as they are now. Very basically You have a right to life, you have a right to property and you have a right to liberty. All other rights are pretty much an extension of those. (a right to privacy is a right not to show others your property).

Just because some other people in the form of a society, or a King, or Road Warrior Bandits, or Democratically Elected Government or, who ever else wants to say "You don't have rights" doesn't make your rights vanish. People can even be told *and believe* that they don't have rights but that also does not make them vanish. Your rights are not what 3 people say they are so.. your rights are not what 6.5 billion people say they are. The amount of other people make no difference because they do not have any more rights than you do.

Just because your government makes something illegal doesn't mean you do not have a right. In my opinion there is little our federal government does that IS legal anymore. Government simply can not provide us liberty. It is government that is the essence of evil, tyranny, oppression, and slavery in the entire world and it is government that only has one tool at its command.. force. Government can't convince you that its good to do something, not even with all the experts in the world backing it.. it can only use force in the form of laws, fines, taxes, prison and eventually guns.. they just have no other tool at there command. If you try to say NO to the government, you will eventually have a gun pointed at your head.

The topics you raise basically come down to the question of "Do you own your body and life or not?" I think its quite clear that you do. However, you do not own other peoples body's or lives.

This means you can't rightfully tell someone what they can smoke, eat, drink, or snort for pleasure. Their actions under the influence is another matter.. but in basics I don't have any claim or right to say what you can do to your own mind.

Since I don't own other peoples lives, I don't get to choose who they can and can not spend their life's with. I think the governments involvement in any type marriage between two consenting adults of any sex is obscene and perverse. As you may be aware America didn't always have a marriage permit .. I mean license. We don't need it now. I am also against the creation of laws with the aim to "provide rights" to certain "types" of people. Gay rights, Minority rights, Civil rights, small purple fuzzy animal rights.. I think these terms are redundant and only confuse people on what rights are.

With abortion.. Ya got me.. I am slightly in favor of it.. but I sway in the wind by day to day. Murder or Choice.. I don't really know. I need to have long conversations with sage like folk to make up my mind on this.

Re:If you want to be a U.S. company, there are rul

[newt0311]

easy answer, incorporate in Liechtenstein. 33,987 people but over 3 million corporations incorporated because of favorable laws (mainly low taxes - 20% max in anything) enacted by the constitutional monarchy there. Also a country with a national budget surplus.

I jwould assert that you are wrong...

[Eric Damron]

"I would assert that removing information is just as (if not more) insidious as the chilling effect of turning people over to be arrested."

Removing information is bad but in no way causes the human suffering that turning people over to be arrested causes. Your remark is rather stunning...

We don't need your law.

[k1e0x]

I fail to see how "human rights" can be protected by a "law" - especially a law in this country trying to protect people in other countries. (All rights are "human" and law is what takes away rights.) If the people of China choose to allow a government like the one they have that's fine, If Yahoo wants to work with them that is also fine by me. I know I might get modded down for being heartless here but thats the way it is.

Right now Yahoo and others are free to do business as they see fit.. after we pass this law we will be taking that freedom away from them. Thats what this is about.

The people of this country should be far more concerned about our toltalitarian government and how its abusing the its own peoples rights.

Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr

[KDR_11k]

Life and liberty can be taken by the law (death penalty and jail time, respectively), why would freedom of speech be any different?

The Solution to Authoritarianism? Authoritarianism

[RexRhino]

Yes, only when the U.S. government has absolute power to dictate the actions of companies, even outside the U.S., including punishing them for actions that are legal both countries, can this scourge of overzealous government control be ended!

The key to fighting totalitarianism, is to give the government totalitarian control so it can fight totalitarianism!

Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr

[halivar]

I'm not saying freedom of speech should be inviolable; I don't think child pornography should be a part of our country's "free speech," so I do think that there are instances where freedom of speech can and should be regulated by law. What I'm saying is that restricting speech is one of the gravest things a government can do, and should by default be considered a crime against society unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary (like the aforementioned child pornography example). I say we treat it like we treat the death penalty.

China has the same sort of laws already

[kindbud]

But where the law could make a difference is in the prohibition against turning over users' personal data to law enforcement in censoring countries. Section 201 says that servers located in a censoring country cannot contain personally identifiable user information (so that the local police cannot simply storm in and seize the data).

Working for a company that is doing business online, and is entering the Chinese market, I can confirm that China has laws that prohibits personal information on their citizens from being stored on servers outside their country. Therefore we are opening a data center in Beijing, even though we will be duplicating much of our hosting environment that is perfectly capable of serving the Chinese market right now. All to comply with China's version of Section 201.

So let me get this straight.

[vakuona]

It is OK for George Bush to entertain as his guest the President of the allegedly evil Chinese regime, and it is OK for the USA to support a country that has probably worse human rights violations (Saudi Arabia), but it is not OK for Google to remove results fro mthe index that are blocked by the great firewall of China.

Hmmm.

If the government wants to be taken seriously, then the first thing they should legislate is to make it illegal for them to kill innocent people in other countries because some baddies came and killed innocent people in their country. Now that would be progress.

Dangerous Thinking.

[Adambomb]

It's painful to give a pass to countries like Germany that also censor political speech, but I think that the situation is so much worse in places like China that we should do what we can in the short term. Its very dangerous to set precedents where certain groups are excluded from the wording. It might be more difficult than one thinks to expand a definition concerning who is an internet restricting country.

IANAL as per most such comments =)

parent is incorrect

[caitsith01]

They have a legal responsibility to act in the manner directed to them by the majority of voting shareholders That is actually incorrect.

Directors must act in the best interests of the company as a whole. They are in some circumstances actually in breach of their duties if they act according to the will of the majority but to the detriment of the minority of shareholders, or to the detriment of the company as an independent entity. To act blindly according to directions of the majority would (depending on the nature of the decision) amount to an impermissible fettering of discretion. This is one of the reasons companies have directors at all, rather than managers who obey 51% of the shareholders and merely administrate the company according to directions.

For example, if the majority of shareholders instructed the directors to favour human rights over profits, but the directors were of the view that this would create a real risk of the company becoming insolvent in the future, then they would be in breach of their fiduciary duties to obey the directive.

Why shouldn't companies obey the law?

[EvlG]

When an American company does business in another country, why shouldn't they obey the laws of that country?

That is, why would the US Congress get to say "ignore these laws that we don't like in China"

It's not our place to impose our views on another country!

You misunderstand the division of responsibility.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You misunderstand how the system works - and is SUPPOSED to work.

  - Incorporation sets up a barrier between corporate debts and the investors' personal resources, so that investors can invest with confidence that nothing more than what they invested is at risk. This barrier may only be "pierced" if the investor and company engaged in a criminal conspiracy and the investment was part of it.

  - Corporate officers are responsible for keeping the corporation running inside the rules and maximizing profit to the investors.

  - Governments are responsible for:
        - adjusting the rules so that maximizing profit while operating within them also "does no harm" at a social level,
        - enforcing the rules, and
        - negotiating trade terms with other governments so that their own corporations', investors', and citizens' interests are protected. (This includes their citizens' interest in the human rights of people in other countries.)

In this case the government is actually doing its proper job: Defending the citizens' interest in human rights abroad, adjusting the corporate rules so government-mandated corporate profit-maximizing does no harm, and doing whatever international diplomacy is necessary to achieve these ends where US companies' operations in other countries are involved.

As for punishing investors for corporate misbehavior: It's already in the system. Punishing the corporation itself reduces the value of the investors' stock. This gives investors the incentive (when they have enough control to make a difference) to pressure and/or replace the corporate officers to keep them from breaking the rules. It also encourages them to pull their investment out of companies that do harm (thus reducing the stock price, which hurts the officers in their personal finances and reduces the resources they can use in the future) and move it to others that do only good (increasing their officers' rewards and corporate operational resources).

Meanwhile, corporate officers that break the rules and get caught are personally liable for criminal prosecution. If they stay within the rules they are still liable for ouster and other downsides driven by the board and/or stockholders when their actions jeopardize the bottom line - with its government-mandated ties to not rewarding evil.

Shades of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

[CurtMonash]

Big companies sometimes really do want to be "made" to do the right thing, so that they can do it in lockstep without losing competitively to their less scrupulous rivals. Whether it's bribery or pollution or safety or censorship -- whether the motivation is simple economics or avoiding later political backlash or actual morality -- it's happening more and more.

They might as well be saying:

[Anonymous Coward]

"We would be happy to roll over for your government, too...we just need to be properly motivated!"

Let me get this straight

[iminplaya]

Will this mean that they won't have to answer to the US governmet when it makes a "request for information"? Or are they just going to go along because the government is conducting a "criminal investigation?

But blogger-journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that by creating a government-maintained list of "Internet censoring countries", the law falls short of calling for support of free speech in all countries...

I certainly hope that it includes the US, the preachiest country in the world when it comes to the issue of free speech.

Campaign politics so early in the season. It's still about protecting the bottom line.

The absolute best part of this.

[justchris]

The best part about this, is that it is political speech, and is therefore probably censored in China. Meaning they won't even see it coming.

This is a STUPID, STUPID bill.

[figgypower]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read about in a long time, and I hope, sincerely that it does not get passed. Certainly, the U.S. government should pressure the Chinese government to allow public dissent and individual freedoms. But FUCK, maybe the U.S. government should do that itself. Granted, the U.S. government's recent curtailing of individual freedoms is a far, far cry from the Chinese government's restrictions on its citizens.

nbsp;

So why is this bad? Because it's short sighted and not at well thought out. The Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 places a lot of pressure on American companies to NOT comply with local Chinese laws. Fine, China is simply going to kick them out and ask companies from Europe, Asia, Australia, or *wherever* else to come in and do what the American companies were doing. This will limit the freedom of American businesses to do as they would like, but *nothing* will get accomplished because there will be businesses outside of the United States who will NOT comply. So what does this mean? American companies lose out on termendous revenues and profits, and China stays exactly the way it is. That means, you Joe worker, is even MORE likely to lose a job in the name of slashing costs.

Fine, you say -- the American companies and we should not be earning "blood" money, anyway. Yet, now the American companies cannot act as agents of change -- they simply can't act at all. Right now, they're facing pressure to act differently and try to change the rules as much as possible, but not leave the market. If you're not even in the market, do you think China is going to care more or less? WAY LESS. Who cares if you refuse to block certain sites for us, China, when you don't even provide service for us. Right now, at least there is an ability to negotiate, if not nag and/or delay requests to block and provide information. There are loopholes in the The Great Chinese Firewall right now. Should we let the Chinese have complete control and seal up all these holes?

Also, if you read the bill, you can see how things get murky real fast. What if a certain foreign government has legitimate, legal purposes to ask for user information? How will it get at that? Only if the United States Department of Justice says its ok. Fantastic. I, a soveriegn nation, need permission from another country on whether I can follow up a legitimate, legal claim. What exactly is legitimate and legal to claim? The bill is quite sparse on those details.

Keep reading the bill -- it gets much worse. Not only is the Department of Justice spreading its long arm (or trying) over every nation on earth, but IF companies filter they must provide the filtering terms to U.S. authorities. No country is going to tolerate this.

Lastly, there is a clause at the end of the bill that allows the President, of all people, to excuse companies from the terms of this bill. HOLY FUCKING CRAP! Do you think Halliburton Internet Service (no idea if it exists) would get a Violate-Human-Rights pass? You bet your ass they would. There are just too many conflicts of interest and way too much possibility of political favoritism.

Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr

[justchris]

Perhaps you should look at it this way.

If we keep silent on the rights of the Chinese, that is precedent to take more rights away from the Americans. After all, the Chinese government gets to censor their citizens, why can't the American government do something similar.

After all, the basis of all American law is precedent. The only way to overturn a precedent is to set a new one that contradicts the original. Fighting for the freedoms of citizens of other countries does not automatically end the fight in this county, in fact, it can only help it, by raising the general consciousness to these issues.

And my mod points expired yesterday.

[justchris]

This is very informative, and insightful. All people have essentially the same worries. I wouldn't call the law useless, as it may put pressure on the government, and speed the process along, but change will happen regardless of what we do.

the stopped clock

[ChipMonk]

"A stopped clock is still right twice a day." It is still completely useless as a timepiece (its intended purpose). Similarly, even if Charles Manson told me that two plus two equals four, I'd still need to corroborate it with another source.

Re:You misunderstand the division of responsibilit

[drinkypoo]

You misunderstand how the system works - and is SUPPOSED to work.

No, I understand exactly how the system works, and how it is supposed to work - it is a system designed specifically to protect investors and corporate officers from responsibility for their actions, much like our government. It's all part of the same culture of kleptocracy.

You do realize that the books written extolling the virtue of capitalism are written by capitalists right? Adam Smith, for example, was himself and was funded by mercantilists. Think there was an agenda there?

As for punishing investors for corporate misbehavior: It's already in the system. Punishing the corporation itself reduces the value of the investors' stock.

Except usually this doesn't actually happen. Since the system is designed to insulate those responsible from actually being punished, usually the company makes billions on illegal activity and is then fined millions. Cost of doing business. Causes a momentary dip in the stock price on the way to ever-rising profits.

Meanwhile, corporate officers that break the rules and get caught are personally liable for criminal prosecution.

Yes. Too bad they are seldom actually busted. Sometimes they get busted for stock manipulations, but what about things like causing deaths? Remember Bhopal?

Dealing with the devil

[scruffy]

If you make a deal with the devil, you are bound to get dirty.

Or worse.

Complete bullshit.

[jotaeleemeese]

Any company worth its salt has ethical codes that all employees should adhere to.

I have never seen a shareholder bat an eyelid for a company losing bussines for foolowing such policies.

This is not out of goodness, it has been probed beyond any doubt that engaging in bussines in a manner that is unethical (or appears to be unethical) can have detrimental impact in your reputation, and thus, in your capacity to make bussiness.

Serious shareholders have understood this for ages, the alternative universe where you live seems to be filled with stupid ones without any sense of self preservation.

In which planet do you live?

[jotaeleemeese]

There are tons of examples of companies screwing up big time in one place different to the one where they are incorporated and being punished for it.

Companies have to comply at the same time with all laws were they operate (and here incorporation is just on more aspect of operating) .

The law of the country where the company is incorporated will never have precedence in a country where the company is killing babies lets say.

I'll pass your messages....

[jotaeleemeese]

.... to all the families of people dead in Iraq in the lst years.

I am sure they will be thrilled to bits....

Specks versus motes

[sydbarrett74]

Funny how our politicians lambaste overseas dictators for censoring websites when they turn a blind eye to our Il Duce George Bush issuing executive orders emasculating the FoIA in the name of 'preventing terrorism'....

Re:Not Always Proud To Be An American

[Doug Dante]

Gotta have the law first. :)