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China Warns Google To Obey Or Leave
suraj.sun writes with this snippet from an Associated Press report:
"China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or 'pay the consequences,' giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking. 'If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences,' Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature. ... 'Whether they leave or not is up to them,' Li said. 'But if they leave, China's Internet market is still going to develop.' ... Li insisted the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people. 'If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it,' he said."
Mr. Google:
Before leaving, please deploy a transparent, ubiquitous distributed darknet app. I just know you're sitting on one.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
The question is will Google jump off the tracks before the China train hits them.
I really don't know who would be more hurt by this. On one hand, Google provides huge resources to China, but on the other hand...google surely gets a lot of revenue from such a huge market.
Well Google should tell China they can deep throat it and choke. I'm all for companies having to comply with national and international laws, but censoring search results is NOT something they should comply with. I realize this gets into the grey area of "who are you to decide what's right and what's wrong", but still...government-sponsored censorship of search results? Nothing you could do or say could convince me that is a good idea.
Information yearns to be free.
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..and if we want your data, we'll take it and you'll like it. Seems Google found someone more evil than them.
"Protecting the rights of the country and its people", brought to you by the Ministry of Truth.
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This will settle once and for all whether or not Google's motto represents true company ethics, or pandering. Go, Google! Set a true example for the modern corporate world to follow!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
regardless of google leaves or stays, american companies are going to suck up to china, and american government is going to do that too. maybe only there will be a few weak statements regarding the state of human rights in china. it will be business as usual :
american companies are going to help chinese government in suppressing its own citizens for profit. american companies are going to help chinese government to do anything that conflicts with american constitution, and american ideals you people are so proud of.
and you get worked up everytime someone points that out ....
Read radical news here
Li insisted the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people.
Li is a lying little tyrannical thug. What he would say if he were an honest man, is that the Chinese government is scared to death of what might happen to the party minions when ordinary Chinese realize that Mao killed more of them than Tojo.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Anything that would promote a different party is harming stability right? I mean, we can't afford to change our dictator too often if we wish to preserve stability!
Their government does not want the kind of "openness" and free exchange of information that is Google's trade. That is their prerogative. Google should pull out.
They won't, of course. Too much money to be made there.
They will cave in, compromise, and do (more) Evil.
It'll be interesting to see how Google's PR monkeys spin it, from a front-row-seat-at-the-Fall-of-Civilization perspective...
Governments are the enemy of its people in all cases and in all nations. The highest form of patriotism to ones country is to constantly question, challenge and investigate all government officials in every nation, in every circumstance. Don't let secrets be held.
You bitch about China, but you continue to buy their wares. You let the U.S. go farther into debt and let China lend us more cash.
Hypocrites.
'If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it,' he said."
Yes, wouldn't want the people to know about the corruption of your officials. That wouldn't be a good thing.
I used the issue of China in my IT ethics class and said that having Google or Cisco leave China because they refuse to censor brings up a whole host of other issues. If Google leaves, are they taking their code and such with them? What about equipment they used? Are they scrubbing that before leaving? What about any documents pertaining to how their searches are done?
While the Chinese people won't see much of a difference if Google leaves, the Chinese IT folks might have some issues recreating what was once there. Personally, Google should leave and post whatever information they want so people know what they had to deal with in China.
As most asian countries have a cultural bias towards not losing stature, having their dirty laundry aired, the really dirty stuff, would be a mighty slap in the face which China won't be able to deny so easily. They'll deny it, but their words will ring hollow.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
As much as I hate to say it, China really has Google by the balls on this one. I'm sure there are a million companies with the right connections/deep enough pockets in China right now eagerly waiting to assume Google's spot on the hill and they are all willing to do whatever the government there says.
I really don't see how Google can adhere to its corporate mission statement and continue to do business with China, although part of me has a hunch that we'll find out since shareholders will demand Google not leave one of the largest markets in the world.
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Killing foreign nationals? That's going to go over well. I mean, China could start killing native Google employees, but they would still be treading far too close to causing an international incident. China relies on Multinational Corporations far too much to basically start a war with one over search results. China would become a much less attractive area for manufacturers.
Anytime some dumbass talks about censoring for your own good, like Australia or New Zealand, people should use this quote. Like China?
Hillary has asked Al to go to China to recover Google and the internet he created from the hands of the evil dictatorship of the Chinese people.
i get the odd feeling that google will leave
Read radical news here
China's leaders still live in a world of controlled information flow to the masses. This works well if the masses have to come to you for their information and culturally accept this form of government.
The more Chinese that return home after being abroad and experiencing a free flow of information, the faster these policies will no longer be tolerated by the masses. Government will have to change with the times. But the change will have to come from within and it will take another generation or two.
For now, Google has to play by the rules of those in power. The business opportunity is too great to ignore, so we can predict they will conform.
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Any government that is afraid of its people having information
(let's perhaps make an exception for specific information on how to make weapons of mass destruction
out of common household ingredients)
is inherently not a government "of the people for the people".
It is not confident in its own popularity, or in the inherent stability through general agreement
of its governmental system.
Does the Chinese government not realize that their insistence on censorship simply
highlights the inherent weakness in their government and system of government?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Before I get modded troll, consider he does actually have a point. Openness and free exchange of information are serious threats to social stability in China (which is, as others have pointed out, what Google does best). China watched the fall of the Soviet Union as a result of glasnost and perestroika. They are eager to avoid the same mistake, as the costs of social instability (both human and economic) would be far too high, for the country, its people, and not least themselves.
This isn't about Tiananmen or the Great Leap Forward, which are pretty much open secrets. It's about suppressing free flow of information, and maintaining control over all mediums of information exchange. They had control of the traditional media, phones, SMS, etc. The internet is another beast. Finding out and sharing information about corruption and other major shortfalls is far too easy with an open, uncensored internet. They don't want peasants knowing too much about local corruption, and when they do know, they don't want them to be able to organize or share this information. Censorship is a key component; allowing criticism of the government even on such now-unimportant bygones as the Great Leap Forward would potentially open the floodgates on new criticism on issues that could result in instability.
So, Li is right. In order to suppress dissent, they must maintain control and continue censoring. Whether you think the cost imposed by censorship and lack of free speech is greater than the potential losses from any resulting social instability is another matter entirely. Many Chinese think, and I often agree, that while the Chinese government is too sensitive right now, maintaining a stable environment for economic growth is a bigger priority than free speech. The farmers I talked to in Shandong and Jilin also agreed- they know they're getting shafted in comparison to urban dwellers, but they're still doing better than at any time in history, and would rather not lose their chance at a new fridge, air conditioning, and a TV in return for some abstract ideas about freedom to criticize the government. In their minds, censorship and its evils are the lesser evil, when compared to potential civil strife.
'If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it,'
If information can harm the stability of you're country, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!
Now that's just mean. I mean, "Rick Rohring" an entire country like that is just...WRONG.
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I am not sure that this is really about censorship. This is a staring contest.
Google called China out as a pack of thieves and thugs by revealing their hacking and break-ins.
Google made a statement that this was close to the 'last straw', and that they were thinking of leaving China.
This is an attempt by China to try to out stare Google. The topic on the table isn't really the question of 'Will Google stay in China an stop filtering the internet'? By changing the focus of the debate, China is trying to recast the issue as China's laws vs. a foreign company who doesn't want to follow them.
If Google leave under these terms, it doesn't look as bad for China.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Human rights have nothing to do with it. Google was hacked. If people can't trust the contents of their GMail inbox to remain out of the hands of Chinese intelligence, and Google can't ensure that some Chinese entity isn't stealing proprietary code, Google's profits will suffer. Pulling out of China will make this less of a threat. It's a cost-benefit analysis, and that's how it would be presented to the shareholders.
Hopefully, that means that china will no longer be able to search for email addresses efficiently to spam.
China has a terrible reputation as a global citizen. At times, they've flooded the market with shoddy goods made of questionable, even dangerous, materials. Their wholesale destruction of the environment is shocking, even to non-environmentalists. They manipulate their currency to make it impossible for importers to compete on an even basis. They have instigated what amounts to a low-level cyber war against businesses and governments the world over. They routinely muzzle speech and dissent within their own borders, and force those who do business with them to do the same. They reportedly have thousands of political prisoners, and every time they want to "make nice" with the West they trot out one or two of them and let them go home to show how kind-hearted they are.
Personally, I've had just about all I care to take of such noxious behavior. I may not be able to completely avoid "Made in China", but there's no reason to encourage them. There are plenty of other people to buy goods from.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
All this stems from an incident several years back in which Li Yizhong was sent a link in a message online. When he clicked on it, and stared for a moment into the gaping void of a man's disproportionately stretched anus, he was forever changed... Determined to fight a never-ending battle against harmful information so that he would never again face that horror.
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A free press protects the people from their government. Censorship protects the government from the free press. If the government of China really does have the best interests of it's people at heart then it would not have to use censorship to prevent it's failures from being brought to the attention of it's people. People don't need their government to protect them from porn or hate propaganda, people are amazingly good at doing this themselves. The government of China might as well say the moon is made of cheese, it would be just as true as claiming they need to protect their people from imaginary harm.
" Li insisted the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people."
Censor to protect rights?
Someone remind me why we're even dealing with these people? Oh yeah, wait. Lots of money. It's pretty amazing how some people fear "socialism" here in the U.S. but are perfectly willing to do business with communists.
"...the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people."
Uh huh.
Maybe I am missing something, but since when were the rights of any country and its people protected by censorship?
O.K., that is a bit rhetorical, I admit.
Well, God help us. Can't have any of that there "instability," eh? Gotta have it all nice and stable and nailed down. Yeah. That's what tyrannies thrive on.
Here's a clue, Li, baby. The people don't exist to serve the state in the manner which the state, in its infinite wisdom, decides. It's supposed to be the converse. A true, thriving society is not about "stability."
Could China's government be worse? Yes, it could be a lot worse, and it HAS BEEN a lot worse, in recent memory. But it's still an ugly denial of human dignity and liberty, and acceptance of that ugliness is a participation in an evil.
The problem is that Freenet is tough to use, I would argue it's tough even for geeks like us who read Slashdot.
The other issue is getting the app in the first place, and getting a list of peers that aren't blocked. And when you're risking life imprisonment, it's pretty damn important that you get peers that aren't controlled by the government.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What right does Google have to interfere with our internal politics?
I think that's the type of thoughts that Google's pull-out will generate in China.
If Google pulls out, then they most certainly are not interfering with China's internal politics. Pulling out means that you've given up and are now refusing to participate.
What's really funny about all of this is that the only big company we see actually doing anything at all to fight against censorship and oppression is doing so because one of its founders is Russian. All-American Microsoft is more than happy to assist in censorship and oppression, by contrast.
I'm so surprised! A sovereign nation with an authoritarian government insists that foreign companies abide by its laws! Who woulda thunk...