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Opera Closes China Loophole; Reinstates Censorship
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Coming hot on the heels of Microsoft's censoring of Chinese search results, browser-maker Opera has become the latest company to joyfully contribute to prosperous growth of the Great Firewall of China. For speed and convenience, the mobile phone-based 'Opera Mini' browser receives formatted web pages via Opera's own line of proxy servers. These unfiltered proxies gave Opera's Chinese users rare unfettered access to the wider web. However, this loophole has now been closed, with Chinese users now being directed to 'upgrade' to 'Opera Mini China,' which closes this loophole, returning them to the bosom of party censorship, and Opera to the favor of the Chinese Government. Truly; 'To Get Rich Is Glorious.'"
Please Upgrade to Slashdot China.
Unfortunately there is no better browser for my needs. Still, good that this makes the news. Name and shame, but in the end it won't change a thing. The market in China is not something many companies will want to lose out on. And as long as we're still buying nike's or other clothes made by them little kids there, we better look in the mirror first.
In practice, Opera likely had little choice but to comply with local laws, and make a new version for Chinese users that cannot access all the "filtered" sites, same as any other Web browser.
They had no choice. So, the Chinese government would prevent them from doing business in China which is giving it away for free? I've never seen Opera specific advertising when I use Opera. So, I don't get it. Exactly what would Opera lose if they weren't in China?
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
...happens to whatever is filtered through Opera proxy. Stats, passwords, preferences, online purchases, banking - this all goes through the Opera proxies and is wide open to employees. Although a small slice of the WWW market, Opera gets an insight into much larger piece of online activities of its users than, say, Google does - it has "phone home and report everything, ever" built in as its fundamental design decision.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"returning them to the buxom of party censorship"
buxom ??? What word do you think they were aiming for?
I can imagine that there's citizens of China that have unfettered access to the internet; there are plenty of companies out there that host software VPN's that allow a user to appear to be from a different country. The information is out there, you just have to know how to get it, although there is some risk. Hell, a business could probably make a good amount of money hosting terminal or Citrix servers just for FireFox usage for China users.
I'm sure there's a fairly large risk involved, and the punishments are probably severe. But where there's a will, there's a way, especially in technology.
Can other people use their proxy to see what they can't see? I'd really like to see, first hand, what it's like to browse through their proxy. I just wonder what sites I visit normally that aren't available.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
welcomes our new Chinese overlords
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Option 1: Refuse then, get blocked meaning you make no money and china gets no uncensored news
Option A:Comply keep making money and china gets no uncensored news.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
It is unfortunate that companies in this situation are caving to the requests of a government that has different ideals about the freedom of information than we do, but honestly, do you expect anything different? These companies aren't in the business of battling China on their political ideology. They are out to sell a web browser and maximize the NPV of the company. This is what a business and a free market is all about. To do anything different would be a strategic move that while it could be argued might benefit Chinese citizens, it is much less likely to benefit Opera. Furthermore, if they did fight China on this one, I think it would be naive to think that they did it for any other reason that as a calculated risk to gain marketshare and ultimately profit. So don't act surprised when stuff like this happens. The sooner people realize what businesses are and aren't, the sooner they will understand the forces shaping the world in which we live.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are way bigger, monstrous sized companies who does serve to China's interests. Who did the "great firewall" to begin with? Which hardware does it run on? Can you imagine the data bandwidth, processing power required to do such "out of Internet nature" thing?
What about gigantic game companies who abides their "1 hour only" rules? What about once hippie run company shipping their "edition" for China?
Opera is like a grocery store run by family compared to those companies which are gigantic. They got bigger but they are still small. Their main income is from mobile&electronics and I don't think any mobile company on this planet dares to confront China. Their shareholders would really punish them so bad that Opera ASA as we all know would cease to exist.
I love the Chinese people - very fine people, respect for education, pretty girls, good solid folks. But their government is crap, and has been crap for 100 years, and the current collection of power mad bullies running the joint are a bunch of asshats who deserve all the punishment and torture they meet out upon their rivals and those who seek to exercise their basic human rights as outlined in the UN Charter.
To the people of China: Welcome to the 21st century. We're glad you made it.
To the Chinese Government: FUCK YOU. YOU SCUM SUCKING FREAKS.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Surely sometimes it is not quite stupid to, but instead one has to, ignore a certain market area? An extreme example being gas-chamber manufacturers and Nazi Germany?
Them Nazis. Always so helpul when trying to drive our points home.
Samsung recently decided (wisely) to switch to Opera in all their handsets, including smart phones. Imagine what would Chinese Govt. do to handsets including Opera browser in device ROM. That would send Samsung from Number 2 mobile maker to "others" immediately. I guess shareholders would send Samsung CEO to enjoy some Tibet hippie living with Opera CEO in no time.
... or not. I mean, restricting some content on the web isn't nearly as bad as invading other countries, killing its civilians by the hundreds of thousands and setting up puppet governments, and yet nobody here is calling for boycotts against American companies that support all of this (which is all of them, or at least those that pay taxes).
returning them to the buxom of party censorship
You can't be returned to the buxom of anything, because buxom isn't a noun. It's an adjective.
Were you thinking of bosom? They're two words with completely different etymologies: Buxom used to mean "bendy or pliable" and is related to German biegsam.
the mind is like a muscle: work it out, challenge it with ideas hostile to your own, and you only wind up with a stronger mind and stronger ideas
i understand that the technocrats think they are protecting the chinese citizen from foreign interference and degenerate thoughts, but for whatever perceived good is being done by a policy of censorship, the much larger real negative effect is to turn chinese citizens into cotton heads full of nothing but empty thoughts, placid lies. the truth is always ugly and disharmonious. that's what makes placid lies so much more attractive
for a mind where the serene lie is more valuable than the rude truth, inward thinking reigns. this is the same inward thinking, away from the wider world, building a wall against the outside world, literal and figurative, that led to the rot of the old chinese dynasties, and left china weak and ripe for exploit by foreign powers. the shame of this history drives so much of modern chinese infuriated pride: never again will china be defiled by foreign powers. the literal and figurative rapes of japanese imperialism, the british opium wars to force heroin on its citizens: this led to china's rebellions and eventual modernization
however, in the policies of the technocrats of beijing today, we see the same seeds of the same thinking of the old brittle bureaucratic mandarins that led to china's previous downfall. sheep are very harmonious, docile, placid creatures. they're also dumb. dear china: why do you choose placid lies over ugly truths? the harmonious still pool is beautiful, but weak. the raging river is ugly and dirty, but strong
the chinese government are turning their citizens into housepets. this is not a strong nation, this is a weak one, populated by simpletons who could have been strong minds, but the chinese govermnet made sure they were empty weak minds, by censoring anything that would challenge the dominant monoculture. yes, legions of robots can turn out lots of cheap goods, but you would think that you would like a china full of strong and wise chinese, not slaves. and yet the chinese government clearly values their citizens only as slaves, unable to think on their own, with censorship policies that mean chinese minds are never exercised
the chinese government does not respect its own citizens. the chinese government's censorship policies is recreating the conditions that led to china's historical rot, and the chinese government's policies will mean china will be weak again, and dominated and exploited again
that is why, in the name of respecting the chinese people, i do not respect the legitimacy of the chinese government. the chinese government does not respect its own people. the chinese government has an agenda which serves only its own flawed priorities, and do not serve its people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Turn the proxies over to another authority or company like a European ISP and make Opera Mini customizable to go back to using proxies like those.
If people are so worked up over this, why not develop a browser that cannot be censored instead of posting to Slashdot?
US republicans (and democrats) with their sub set of wacky right wing christian religious nuts are very quick to forget their anti communist beliefs when money is involved.
Even the more educated Slashdot crowd is very "pragmatic" with China.
China sucks not because it is a communist state, it sucks because it is a police state. But who cares, if we can make a buck, we can all ignore in bliss the Chinese government's peccadilloes.
Fascist, communist, fake democratic national security states (Australia/UK/Russia/USA etc.), all the same crap. Sell your soul for your bank owned plastic McMansion and your cool cars. Let's just leave it to the "free" market, who cares about politics anyway.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Everyone seems to forget that Corporations are Amoral and base all decisions on Legalities. Simply put, Morals have no place in a corporation as the decision goes like this. Is it Legal? Does it Offer a Competitive Advantage? If yes to both, Do it. It's that damn simple.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I'm torn on this. We want freedom. Does that mean we let the companies have freedom to do business with China and follow their rules? Or, should we demand that companies from the "free world" not contribute to the human rights problems of China, and others?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This joker is a pretty convincing case for MORE censorship in China.
stupidity is the default condition. always was, always will be. the majority of a populace of any country, in any time period, past, present, and future, is dumb. no government policy you could ever devise will ever change this truth
your problem is that you have taken my point and inverted it: that somehow if what i say is true about china, then the liberal uncensored west must breeds geniuses. no, this is completely false and an act of deducing the most insane thing from my point about chinese government policy
a more accurate comparison starts with the observation that the majority in the liberal west are morons, obviously. the majority of any populace anywhere: usa, russia, france, india, middle east, south america, africa, etc: morons. but that's not the issue, nor the problem
the issue is taking your intelligent, or rather, potentially intelligent citizens, and ENSURING they remain stupid, with government policies. censorship leads to unchallenged, weak, flabby minds. of course there are plenty of conditions in the usa, for example, that means that some intelligent kids will never fully spread their wings, and will remain stupid. but this is a LOT different than a chinese governmental policy that PURPOSEFULLY forces their intelligent children to stay ignorant
you can't make dumb people smart. however, you CAN make smart people dumb. in analogy: no amount of sunlight and water will make a weak seed into a strong oak. but if you have a strong seed, but fail to give it water and sunlight, you will have a stunted tree
or said more poetically: you can't make lead bricks fly, but you can most definitely pop balloons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is why Corporations should NOT have the same rights as people,
All the people involved in their cyber warfare units under the direction of the Third and Fourth Departments of the PLA department of the General Staff have access out the outside world, specifically our networks (if you read the latest reports, the level of penetration is appalling). Of course, since almost 95% of the members of the cadre are either members of the Communist Party or their youth movement, I doubt they're gonna go browsing around CNN or Fox News.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
All that "ting-ting-ting" and fan-waving. No girls, either.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
"why not develop a browser that cannot be censored"
This is one of those things that *sounds* good, but I suspect that in practice, is rather implausible. Even if, technologically, you could do something like a browser which uses TOR or something similar to get around the firewall, anyone in China using it would probably be at risk of being thrown in prison or beaten or something, using it. Now, if they want to take that risk, more power to them. I suspect, people being people, that most Chinese would rather use the 'censored' browser, and take advantage of what limited freedom of communication that gives them, than to risk severe penalties for using a 'contraband' browser.
For browser vendors like Opera, I really feel like, even with capitulation with the "Great Firewall", they are still helping people. Why? If Opera didn't create the "Chinese" version of Opera Mini, it is entirely likely that China would completely block their rendering servers, and then people wouldn't be able to see *any websites at all* with Opera (although, that's a good argument for why you shouldn't use remote rendering, from a purely technological point of view; give me a real browser). But, be that as it may, even censored Web access is, I think, probably better for freedom and human rights than no web access at all, because I'm sure the government can't censor 100% of 'unapproved' speech 100% of the time, and even if they could, history shows us that people are remarkably good at 'working the system', to get speech past the censors which is either borderline, or coded, or has multiple levels of meaning.
Would Opera really serve people in China better, by not participating in China at all? Possibly. It's a tough call. One that I'm perfectly willing to leave to the Opera management and employees. Sure, maybe they are only interested in making a few Yuan, but I'll leave them the benefit of the doubt in this case.
Corporations are run by people. People make the decisions.
Everyone has a responsibility to take into account the consequences of their decisions. You can't hide behind "I shot that person because it adds shareholder value" - you still shot the person. Nor does "If I hadn't shot them, Yahoo! would have done" wash - you still shot the person. You cannot separate what you do in your work role from your personal responsibility. It's still you, and it's still on your conscience. If doing the right thing means you get fired, live with it and find a different occupation. In many countries, we have the luxury of choice.
That said, some people (such as those at Google) have argued that censored access may be a limited force for good in China, which is better than no force at all.
Personally I don't agree with that argument but I understand it and they may be proven right in the long-term.
-1 Troll
Yes, I'm sure the alternatives were "do this" or "you don't have to do this if you don't want to", rather than "do this" or "myseriously disappear from the face of the earth". But who cares about Opera's employees in China anyway, right?
If you travel to help out in an area where arranged marriages are common, and one of your contacts will be married away through an arranged marriage, you do not approach the situation Western-style, by calling the police or mounting an armed rescue from kidnappers - you do nothing at all. Companies aren't the only ones who fail to disturb local customs - nobody does it.
Yet another company bows to censorship in the name of money. (Yes, Opera is freeware, but Opera Software is a for-profit company)
Capitalism follows no ethical model; it simply isn't profitable.
Same goes for browsers.
Freedom for people (as in The People) totally trumps freedom for businesses to make money. Conflating the two inevitably leads to reversing them.
Why don't we in the west hammer chinas firewall/prxy servers with as many worms/trojans and viruses as possible. When the whole of china cease being able to get Internet access, they would have to take the wall down or face open revolt. :)
"Sticking to principles isn't free, there is always some sort of sacrifice involved."
Principle: I hate the RIAA/MPAA, think music has declined in quality, and want to bring down the man. Now if you'll excuse me I got some torrents running in the background.
These articles about company or product X bowing to the Chinese censors are often accompanied by calls to boycott the product in the US. Completely insane.
Wake up. We are in a trade war with China and must be complete agnostics when doing business there. We should cheer every inroad a US company makes in China. Attempting to hurt a US company just because you disagree with the way China is run is like shooting your foxhole buddy because you don't like Nazism.
Wrong target and wrong tactic. You cannot win unless you remain on the playing field.
You can Godwin me if you like, but don't forget there were a great number of companies that did business with Nazi Germany in the years leading up to WWII. A fascist dictatorship that allows some business to flourish will always find capital from free nations. But by its very nature, the capital will never help remove the dictatorship.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It's like an attempt to paint yourself as a moral person, while being lazy and not doing anything anyway.
Not really. He could just say, "yeah, I hate how Opera deals with China.. but they still make a pretty good browser."
Do you propose we work to overthrow the Chinese government? I thought we learned from the Bush administration that idealistic crusades are a heap of trouble in their own right. Maybe at some point you have to say "screw the Chinese people", and move on.
This is my sig.
This is exactly why we need a corporate death penalty, one that includes the top management of the company in question. That will stop this sort of misbehavior in its tracks, because unlike crimes of passion where the death penalty is stupid, these people are actually looking ahead as they consider their long term best interests.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
There doesn't seem to be any connection here. There are plenty of individuals who operate under the same algorithm. In fact, it's often those individuals who form corporations in the first place!
The problem is that the government is controlled by the corporations. Since we are no longer citizens, our only recourse is to use our significance as customers to persuade corporations to pass on directives to their political operatives. Unfortunately our status has steadily diminished with our buying power, though we may have some pull as the secret protein ingredient in Chinese baby formula.
"Every time the Great Firewall comes up, somebody always mentions one or more of its numerous technical weaknesses. Those are largely beside the point. If the system is good enough to ensure that casual users receive only a steady stream of ideologically comfortable information, the system will ensure that it never faces more than a limited number of sophisticated and adversarial users."
North Korea is a very good example of this. Iran is another.
MOD PARENT UP
To clarify however, a corporation exists for one reason only: To make a profit for its shareholders.
"Is it legal?" is the right question at first glance.
A more complex treatment is "If it's not legal, can we make more money than we'll spend defending and paying off lawsuits?"
If the answer is yes, then even legality *does not matter*.
Kyle Reese: Listen, and understand! That Corporation is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until its profits are made.
Wait, you can get rich creating products that circumvent Chinese censorship and then shutting the loop hole? Sounds like a new business model!
Basically the Chinese Firewall is now blocking/redirecting our proxy IPs and ports. We created a non-proxy version so that users can still at least use Opera Mini on their phones.
We offered uncensored Internet access to all of China for as long we could. We hope people were able to use the information to continue to fight for their freedom.
It's is really sad the Mozilla foundation has stood by and done nothing to get free information into China.
Yes, right, they censor. But let me give you my "user experience" of the event.
It was saturday that, and I was showing around to the people of Citrix how much Shanghai is great, just right after the Xen Summit Asia 2009. Then we went to a mall to see the electronic. I wanted to check for a price and got that stupid page asking me to download. The issue being that I could NOT download it because for a reason, Opera MINI doesn't have the access rights to do it on my Nokia e62. So, at the end, I was stuck WITH NO BROWSER AT ALL. Thank you, M. GFofC, I couldn't check for the prices of the stuffs I wanted to buy, so I didn't buy anything. Yet another example of how much the censorship helps the economy...
I hope you will understand why I'm posting this one anonymously...
but human beings are at least capable of moral and ethical behavior (also capable of compassion and empathy). Corporations have no emotion or soul.
to joyfully contribute to prosperous growth of the Great Firewall of China
Truly; 'To Get Rich Is Glorious.'
Trolling doesn't get more obvious than this.
Pretty pathetic.
I can't help but notice that Opera 10.10 with the long awaited (by some) Opera Unite was released TODAY and there is no mention on Slashdot.
I know this is not its intended purpose, but given how the overwhelming majority of hacking attempts, automated or otherwise, come from Chinese IPs, and having a reputation as the digital nuisance country may be undesirable to them, why not take this thing a step further and try to curb some of the common hacking attempts from shooting out of their country?
I assume they can block outgoing and incoming data, if they can blacklist they could also whitelist, they can URL filter (which could come in handy for some kinds of attacks through the web server involving sql invading urls or maybe roundcube or wordpress http vulnerabilities), they can filter packets to, for one of many instances, spot and stop people using google to find websites using and old version phpmyadmin and phpbb, couldn't be too hard for them to spot IPs trying to log in to some server outside the wall over a thousand times in a few hours, ... why don't the Chinese just hire the nod32 guys to come up with a list of no-no behavior, definitions to red flag their IPs that are infected with very malicious and communicative viruses and redirect those IPs to windows update and nod32 and avast and the trendmicro online thing? They clean their machines to the Great Firewall's satisfaction, then they get their internet back.
They'd be doing the world a service, they could pull off some of the above without it being too much of a logistical or political nightmare and they'd take a step in the direction of not being in the butt of jokes for how 90% of IPs showing up on network intrusion software logs are Chinese. They'd turn this vast and elaborate system much of the world finds objectionable into something that also does Good Things.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
Godwin's Law
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
Sticking to principles isn't free, there is always some sort of sacrifice involved.
If the company with the monopoly contract to supply electricity to your city were doing some immoral things, would you have the principles to join the Amish so as not to support this company?
But if the free world passed laws barring it's corporations from cooperating with Chinese censorship, they'd have to choose between caving or building everything themselves.
Corporations represent the shareholders interests. They are only as amoral as the shareholders wish them to be. The problem is not with the corporate system, but greedy shareholders who don't care who they harm for profit. It's that darn simple.
It's a dangerous world you wish for, where corporations pressure governments into taking certain actions or making certain policies.
I think it's rather naive to assume that corporations should have zero input upon governmental policies which define their operating environment. Even if the input is limited to complying or cutting ties, companies should have the freedom to either kowtow to hostile foreign governments or pan their patronage entirely. Put simply, businesses ought to have the freedom to boycott. Personally, I believe that "aiding and abetting censorship" is actually bad for business while taking the moral high ground will lead the patient to greater profits.
How would you feel if instead of demanding censored media access, the Chinese Government was requiring Opera to actively involve themselves in propaganda and insert falsified information onto the network? Or if the Chinese Government demanded Opera to use it's proxy network infrastructure to actively engage in espionage against Chinese citizens? Would it still be Opera's "duty" to comply with whatever the Chinese Government asks?
A lie of omission is still a lie. Censorship is by definition a form of deception, and no better nor worse than introducing fabricated information onto the network. Tiananmen Square denial is identical to Holocaust Denial. It is immoral and unconscionable for Opera (and Microsoft, and Google) to play Ministry of Truth at the behest of any government. We cannot stop them individually, and Google in particular is too large to meaningfully boycott, but we can and should make our voices be heard and defend basic human rights at every turn, including the right to unbiased news and information.
It makes good (long term) business sense to bet in favor of the human condition and against greedy, oppressive governments. Selling out to tyranny helps nobody.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
Indeed, all that the original Godwin's Law implies is that the probability of a Nazi reference approaches 1 as the discussion gets longer; the idea of the reference being gratuitous/inappropriate/etc. is just a corollary, and perhaps an unofficial one at that.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Douglas Adams quote, for those of y'all who didn't get the reference.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The list of companies complicit in helping support China's restrictive Internet policy grows year by year. Many say they are just protecting business interests and that they would lose an otherwise lucrative market. That may be so, but there is a moral as well as a financial factor that should not be ignored. Back in 2005 Cisco fought a shareholder action that urged the company to adopt a comprehensive human rights policy for its dealings with the Chinese government. At the time it was acknowledged that the resolution would not be binding on Cisco's executives. But Dawn Wolfe, a social research and advocacy analyst at the firm, which prides itself on its socially responsible investments, said the action sent "a strong message to management, and it gets across the sentiment of shareholders in a way that writing a letter can't do." Opera, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and others should take note. as regards China, they are playing a game of protectionism of sorts. They are trying to force out competition by blocking competitors or making it more difficult for them to operate. Hu Jintao's comments, prior to Obama's arrival, when he said, "we must oppose protectionism in all its manifestations" is laughable given the 'attacks' on western Internet companies.
There is such a thing as the long term, my friend, including long term profitability.
A world with censorship and authoritarianism is, by definition, a less prosperous one. Companies (and their leaders) have no less an ethical responsibility to make the world a better place than do individuals.
So fuck you, too.
expandfairuse.org
So does anyone have a useful alternative to offer? I'm bummed now that I can't watch YouTube anymore (again).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's my understanding that they're just routing through China's existing firewalls.
You're setting up a strawman, though. I didn't suggest we bar Opera, Google et al from operating in China, but that we bar them from cooperating with the censorship.
China can tell Opera to cooperate or get out. As it is now, they have absolutely no reason not to cooperate. They don't lose anything from doing so.
If we were to make Opera et al choose between China and the free world, China would lose much of the leverage it has over these companies.
Really? Which law would that be?
The law is that public companies have to be transparent to their shareholders--nothing else. This is why there are entire "ethical investing" mutual funds--many people only want to invest in companies that behave ethically. Not to mention they may feel it's a better long term bet....
Please don't spread this nonsense, it's very damaging.
expandfairuse.org
No one is suggesting we should isolate China.
Given that the Chinese firewall is built by western corporations, if we blocked that activity, China would have no choice but to abandon it.
No, some Opera is not better than no Opera, because no Opera isn't on the table. There's no way China could censor every mention of Opera from the internet. They could try to stop Opera from making money in China, but that just removes any power they have over them.