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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.
"returning them to the buxom of party censorship"
buxom ??? What word do you think they were aiming for?
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
That's awfully principled of you. "I would stop eating at a restaurant where the owner is an asshole, but then I'd have to walk half a mile more". It's like an attempt to paint yourself as a moral person, while being lazy and not doing anything anyway.
If you think it's really the wrong thing to do, and wrong enough to justify a switch to something else, then switch. If you think it's a perfectly fine thing for Opera to do, then just say that. But to take your option is simply hypocrisy. Sticking to principles isn't free, there is always some sort of sacrifice involved.
The way you're doing it, indeed it won't.
This is true; but less useful than it sounds.
Sometimes, censorship(especially of the more or less extreme "news blackouts and gunmen occupying the radio stations" flavor, or Iran's SMS being down for service at a convenient time) is in fact about stopping the flow of information among motivated people. This is very hard to do perfectly; but can often be done well enough to dampen some particular event.
Day to day, though, censorship is less about dissuading the truly motivated(though, if it can make them easy to detect and harass, that is a plus) and more about preventing the casual from becoming motivated. In most cases, people aren't just born motivated, they become motivated based on experiences or information. If you can control the information available to casual browsers, you can substantially modify the risk of having to deal with motivated adversaries later.
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.
Look, the Nazis need a database just like anyone else, don't they? It's not like our database is going to invade Poland. It's just a database, just a product. Everyone else is selling to them. What, you want us to lose out?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
My understanding is that they've got a special censoring proxy. A more reasonable option would seem to me to be a multiple choice question in the settings:
- "Use Opera's proxy for users outside China"
- "Use Opera's proxy for users inside China"
- "Use a different proxy"
- "Don't use Opera's proxy at all"
China can block the external proxy, and the browser can then auto-sense which Opera proxy to use, or let you bypass it altogether and go straight to the great firewall. That way everyone's happy.
Personally I'd prefer it if I didn't have to go through Opera's proxy; it may make things faster, but I always see it as another point in the chain where things can go wrong (security, privacy etc), and seems redundant when my phone's on a LAN. Do any recent versions let you turn it off?
... 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).
We aren't talking the "main" Opera browser here. Opera Mini is for mobile phones that aren't powerful enough to support their full mobile client. Opera Mini proxy servers compress and optimize web pages so that it's easier and faster for your mobile phone to show them.
This doesn't affect Opera on computers or the full-scale Opera Mobile client.
When dealing with large, murderous, totalitarian governments (no, I don't mean the US, which only aspires to the last), mentioning the Nazis isn't always inappropriate.
What's why you're posting on an x86 system. You're just so outraged at IBM.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
During the Cold War, the most effective way of breaking through to the people behind the Iron Curtain was to keep our doors open (ahem, CUBA!) and allow them free access to the 'west'. Eventually, it snowballed, fences and walls came down. The so-called "People's Army" turned their guns from the people to the government, in some cases, or were just dropped, and the people tore down the blockades.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
there's the china channel firefox addon - http://chinachannel.hk/
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
And even if pulling completely out of China had been an option, it would have been a bad one. Don't you get it? Fewer services means less and easier work for the government when censoring. The more services, the more difficult for the government to keep track of everything, and the greater the chances of workarounds being open.
As long as Opera keeps working in China there may be ways to work around the censorship (and there are). Opera pulling out wouldn't help at all!
It's extremely short-sighted of you to assume that you know best, and that it's fine to sacrifice Opera's employees in China. It's extremely short-sighted not to see the benefit in more services meaning more potential cracks in the firewall.
Also, will you stop using all Google services, if you actually do stop using Opera?