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Google Shareholders Reject Censorship Proposal
prostoalex writes "At the annual shareholder meeting, Google put forth for voting a proposal for the company not to engage in self-censorship, resist by all legal means the demands to censor information, inform the user in case their information was provided to the government, and generally not to store sensitive user data in the countries with below average free speech policies. As this proposal, if passed, would effectively mean the end of Google's China operations, the shareholders rejected the document at the recommendation of the Board of Directors."
Google lost the ability to "do no evil" the minute they became a publicly traded company.
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
The right to profit trumps the rights of others to live without government oppression or intervention.
Shouldn't the title read anti-censorship proposal?
There are plenty of good ways to resist censorship and try to bring about change. Refusing to do business in the country is one way, but working within the system is probably more effective. I don't see that Google is wrong here; some other company more willing to go along with the government would take their place if they pull out.
They simply don't miss something they never had. The vast majority of chinese people living in poverty simply won't get to know anything else but the status quo. The Chinese who have the money and influence to change something are satisfied enough with what they have, and don't want risk a live in jail or exil I guess..
Another champion shown to be false.
.... sadly :(
Nothing else need be said
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
"I don't see that Google is wrong here; some other company more willing to go along with the government would take their place if they pull out."
"I don't see where I'm wrong here," the hitman said, "if I don't do it, some other hitman would take my place if I pull out".
The argument that doing something unethical becomes ethical (or less unethical) because others would do it if you don't, is nonsensical.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Its interesting how much this mirrors our own congress... when money is at stake, they vote against liberty and freedom.
Money is definitely the new god.
I'm failing how to see how this is evil.
Let's not kid ourselves. These proposals were aimed at doing the following:
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens. The rationale, I suppose, is that China wants Google so badly that they will shed off oppression just to have it.
If you believe this, you're fooling yourself. There's not a damn thing that Google can do to give people in China the right to free speech. If this proposal passed, the Chinese government would simply block Google from all of China, and by the time the Chinese people do hopefully have free speech someday, they'll all be using Yahoo and MSN instead of Google.
If you don't like the fact that the Chinese people don't have free speech, be mad at the right people, the people who are actually responsible for it: The Chinese government. Stop being so indignant with companies who are doing what they can with the rules they have to play with.
I'm all for Google fighting the DMCA. However, I am not in favor of forcing them to, which is exactly what this proposal would do. They should have the right to choose the battles they wish to fight. If I start my own business and decide that I (and my shareholders) want to fight for the prevention of animal cruelty and dedicate some of my profits towards that goal, that's noble. If an outside group decides that I (and my shareholders) should fight for the prevention of animal cruelty, and then we get raked over the coals because we decide that there are more worthwhile causes to take up, well, I wouldn't care so much.
Is repealing the DMCA a priority of mine? Yes. Do I call people (or companies) "evil" for not making it a priority of theirs? No.
And is anyone thinking that this is a double standard? Even in the United States, Google engages in proactive censorship. I'm sure there has been at least a few cases of national security information the government didn't want to get out being taken down, and we know that copyrighted videos have been pulled. In the case of China, this proposal says that Google is supposed to say, "To hell with it, we're going to do it anyway." In the case of the United States, though, Google is supposed to say, "We'll use legal means to resist."
As for telling people when Google has to disclose information about them, I actually would be in favor of such a proposal. It sounds like they are trying to keep Google for doing something like getting someone arrested, and when you cross the line from censoring your own operations and ruining other people's lives, it's a different ballgame.
But keep in mind a couple of things. First of all, it's not like China is the only place this can happen. If I used Gmail to send out terrorist threats here in the U.S., our government would compel Google to turn over my personally identifiable information. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, but there's no practical way Google can say, "Okay, this is a harmless joke e-mail, so we'll wipe the user's data. This is Chinese free speech, so we'll wipe the user's data. Whoops, this is a terrorist threat, so we'll keep this around for a while." Even if they could, I'm not so sure that is such a good idea, either. Again, there's a double standard of impractically expecting Google to comply with U.S. law, but thumb its nose at international law.
Also, to my knowledge, Google hasn't turned over personally identifiable information to a government like China. Is there some reason to think that it has? Or that if it was ordered to, that Google wouldn't fight it as vigorously as possible? How do we know that it hasn't already happened, and unlike Yahoo, Google was successful? It seems to me that compared to other soulless bastard corporations, Google would be one of the most likely to actually care about stuff like that.
The parent is flamebait, huh? Not quite. If people aren't willing to help themselves, they certainly aren't worth the time for others to help. The power of the ruling class(es) means little when the numbers are against them. And this regurgitated "they don't know any better" is such a lame cop out. They may not know the exact extent of their oppression but I'm sure that more than enough of them feel that they are being oppressed.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Yes we ARE! He was elected twice. If people don't like it now then too bad, shouldn't have voted for him or wasted a vote on a green party candidate.
When Google went public only a small portion of outstanding shares were floated. Besides, don't they have a different share class structure. What I'm saying is that the IPO didn't cause this vote to turn out any different. The people who voted this resolution down are the same people who decided that their company would "do no evil". It is absolute bull shit for American companies to participate and aid China in their censorship efforts. There is absolutely no excuse.
Here you go, google's new slogan at it's clearest.
The whole "do no evil" / China thing is quickly becoming one of my pet peeves. There is no all-encompassing moral code.
If you go to another country, you abide by their rules or you face punishment. The belief that "our" way is better than China's way is the same kind of thinking that got the US in the Iraq war. (Oh, look how wretched they are! We most go liberate them!) All countries have PR campaigns that try to keep the populace going a certain way, China just goes further.
Yes, my stance is a slippery slope; so is the opposite way of thinking. The point is, YOU can't be sure that YOU are GOOD.
Oh, BS. This wasn't a proposal that Google hire gun-runners and try to overthrow the Chinese. It was a proposal that Google refrain from odious practices. Yes, it would cost them money. No, it wouldn't cause the Chinese Communists to wake up and say, "Oh, wait, we should allow free speech".
It would have been a principled stand. It would have been an example. And once Google was on board, attention could be turned to other companies that conduct odious operations in collusion with the Chinese government.
Don't think organized business activism can make a real difference in the world? Think that "someone else" will always just make up the difference and the system will not change? I'd suggest you talk to someone from South Africa...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I couldn't agree more. However when 10,000 of their most active members and leaders gather at around Tiananmen Square and get shot dead and run over by tanks it tends to discourage the rest. The few exchange students and workers from China around here are timid and compliant. They don't even admit they know anything about those events. They are completely into the consumer culture and fashion. There is no life in them. Its like with the today's Irish. Hundreds of years of British oppression and brutality made sure that the only ones that are left are the descendants of the cowards, the collaborators and the incompetent. I am reminded of this whenever I visit the shithole Dublin has become.
The Tamk Man was the last rebel...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Fine, take a stand on censorship. But by hounding Google, you're doing it wrong. I can't say this enough, it seems, so I'll bring out the obnoxious bold letters again. Google has no impact whatsoever on whether or not the Chinese government censors its citizens. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg.
Could they take it up as an issue and maybe make an impact using their financial resources? Maybe. But then, they could also take up fighting genocide in Darfur. They could take up preventing AIDS in Africa. They could take up womens' reproductive rights. They could take up building tidal wave detection and alerting systems in southeast Asia. They could spend every dime they have on solving the world's problems. They already spend a lot. Which other ones should they take up? What do they have to do before they're no longer evil? Go bankrupt?
If anything, by hassling Google, you're actually being counterproductive, as there are much more effective means of trying to make positive changes than wasting your time griping about a company that has absolutely no say-so in the matter at all. Do you really feel so strongly that filtering search results in China is so evil that you should boycott Google for doing it? I'm sorry, but that's pretty stupid.
Plus, if this is the standard by which you judge whether a company is or isn't evil, then you're pretty much screwed supporting any company. As I've said, every company that deals with China at all has to abide by Chinese laws. Do you have a television? Did any of its parts come from China? You obviously have a computer, who made all of the components in it?
Oh, and what do you plan on doing about the U.S. government? That's right, our own government. You know that huge national debt that we keep hearing about? Guess who owns $416.2 billion of it? That's right: China. Just to put that in perspective, that's just shy of the amount of money that has been spent on the Iraq War. That's right, put another way, China is indirectly paying for our little experiment in spreading so-called democracy. (You sure as hell didn't think that we were paying for it, did you?) So unless you want to move out to the wilderness and get by on subsistence farming and hunting, I guess you're supporting oppression in various places around the world.
So of all the productive things that could be done to help unfetter the Chinese people from government oppression, and of all the ways in which you depend on China to live a normal life, why are you singling out Google to pick on? I mean, I already know the answer, but I'm interested in seeing what you have to say.
Yeah, a big reason Baidu is so big in China is that they don't get randomly blocked by the great firewall. Remember that for the most part people just want to do their searches, they don't care about the great rights struggle and whatnot. If Google doesn't work 50% of the time then people will just switch to one that does, even if it is run by the Communist party and not as good.
I read the internet for the articles.
Don't forget: Four: China could throw a bunch of Google's Chinese employees in jail on whatever charges they like, creating a PR nightmare for Google ("Yeah we tried not to do evil, but a lot of our people are in jail now, their lives permanently ruined.") For good measure, China could execute a few. That would bring any other company thinking of 'doing good' right into line. This of course simplifies the politics associated with China doing business with American companies, but it is not outside the realm of their capability (nor I imagine willingness) to do if they thought it would help them keep control.