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China Emphasizes Laws As Google Defies Censorship
Lomegor writes "Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on Thursday that all companies are welcome to operate in China but that they must do so under local laws. Although not explicitly, this is in some way a response to Google's threat to leave the country. China also stated that they have strict cyber laws and that they forbid any kind of 'hacking attack'; when asked if those laws apply to the government as well it was quickly avoided. 'It is still hard to say whether Google will quit China or not. Nobody knows,' the official in the State Council Information Office was quoted as saying." I sure would love to be a fly on the wall of these discussions. We certainly live in interesting times.
China to Google: "Listen to us and obey our laws, even though they do not apply to us and we will abuse this power against your company and your users."
Even worse is that Google probably fears their technology will fall in the hands of the Chinese who will just build an alternative google *exacly* as they like it, and not like before with 'cooperation' from google. This way China wins and Google is left without a market in China at all, leaving with a damaged reputation for 'helping' the Chinese oppression and gaining nothing in the end... Pulling out is the wise thing to do, but not on their own. They have only said 'until here and no further', if Google moves out of China it will be because China makes them, and then Google is the hero of the story and China will be the party losing face.
The rest of the world must follow our rules. But we could not.
Moral relativism needs to be shot to hell.
Comparing the DMCA to political censorship and torture is ridiculous.
The GP accuses you of commiting a fallacy of scale, and I must say I agree.
Sure you can logically draw comparisons between the DMCA and chinese censorship laws, it's not particularly hard or imaginative. The problem is when you compare the two on equal grounds. One involves gross violations of basic human rights, the other involves less Brittany Spears remixes on youtube.
Don't get me wrong, I have strong moral issues with the US patent and copyright laws. But I have far greater issues with human rights violations, regardless of who commits them. Not all atrocities are created equal.
Call me crazy, but I don't excuse the things the Chinese government does just because they convinced their population that they should. If thinking that basic human rights are universal makes me an imperialistic American dog, then I am a proud imperialistic American dog.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Because most of those people are relatively poor (compared to their Western counterparts, anyway) and because even a healthy revenue isn't worth subjecting yourself to someone stealing all of your company's proprietary secrets (which could cost Google a LOT more in the long-term than they are making with ad revenue in China).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is not "that they are censoring", it is "what they are censoring" that gets human rights violations involved.
If google censored websites about Gitmo for the US government, I would be equally inflamed.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
They do in USA too
Huh?
Others have pointed out you're comparing apples to apple seeds here, but there is a larger point to be made, the Cold War equivalent of Godwin's Law: Anyone who responds to a criticism of any country with a rant about how bad the United States is has immediately lost the argument because they have failed to address any of the criticisms, but instead introduced a lot of emotionally-charged irrelevancy based on the false assumption that the original critic is somehow an admirer or defender of the United States.
It didn't make any sense during the Cold War (for us non-Americans, especially!) and it makes even less sense now. The American Empire is broadly speaking evil. Everything thinking person agrees with this. To impute the belief that the American Empire is basically good too someone who points out how utterly vile the Chinese government is, and then to try to turn the discussion to the completely irrelevant area of American crimes, is simply the act of someone who knows how evil the Chinese government is, who knows they do not have a single fact to defend the Chinese government with, and who wants to distract everyone by bringing up how evil the American Empire is.
So let's call it "Godwin's Second Law" that anyone pulling this particular lame stunt automatically loses, and move on to the actual subject of discussion in this thread, which is how outrageous it is for the Chinese government to pretend that the rule of law is the least bit important.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Saying they leave market makes them look weak and stock price would drop.
Funny, that's exactly what all the state-run chinese newspapers are saying.
And the reason I don't buy it is that plenty of internet companies have dropped various services in various countries and they never needed a scapegoat - American business doesn't give a shit about "saving face" like that.
In fact, one of the most positive things a US business can say is, "this market has proven to be unprofitable so we are cutting our losses by exiting it" - that tends to cause the stock price to go UP because investors expect that the company will no longer be losing money in an unprofitable venture. In the west, there is no shame associated with stopping the loss of more money.
So, while a story about needing to save face may play well with people who have spent all their lives in a culture that values face as much as they do in China, it is just an example of how "the east" has its own share of problems with understanding the way "the west" works.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.