Slashdot Mirror
China Explains Internet Situation In Whitepaper
eldavojohn writes "In a new whitepaper, China has declared the Internet to be 'the crystallization of human wisdom' and officially issued what appears to be a defense of its policies on Web censorship, while at the same time making contradicting statements like 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet' and (in the same paper) 'Laws and regulations clearly prohibit the spread of information that contains content subverting state power, undermining national unity, [or] infringing upon national honor and interests.' The paper also claims some questionable superlatives such as 'China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking.' On the positive side, this 31-page document might be offered as an operating guide for businesses, like Google, looking to understand exactly what the law is surrounding the Internet in China. The document is a rare glimpse of transparency in China's regulations."
Do Chinese people enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet in a substantively different way than we do?
I can say whatever I want, except things that are against the law to say. It's the same system in China, but they have different laws. I'm no expert, but I think the only meaningful difference is that citizens cannot criticise the government -and don't get me wrong, that's a big difference, but they report they are trying a system where the nation is unified. Maybe I disagree with that approach, but I think it's suspect to say that China opposes freedom of speech when they only differ on a single issue.
Further, there are many laws here in Canada that limit speech, that don't have a corresponding law in China. Specifically, I'm thinking about race.
'China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking.' is quite true: they are bashed a lot for it!
Which is more ridiculous, China's claims in this whitepaper, or the RIAA's claims in the LimeWire suit? I'm leaning towards RIAA. Discuss.
"You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!"
Living With a Nerd
China has declared the Internet to be 'the crystallization of human wisdom'
Imagine how proud Al Gore must be.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
The word "freedom" in legal contexts means not only that the government won't try to stop you from doing what you're free to do, but also that the government won't punish you for doing it. That's the standard definition Slashdot, and the rest of the world, has been operating under ever since the idea of freedom became important. No loopholes here.
On the positive side, this 31-page document might be offered as an operating guide for businesses, like Google, looking to understand exactly what the law is surrounding the Internet in China. The document is a rare glimpse of transparency in China's regulations. (emphasis added)
Actually, China issues documents like this all the time. They don't normally represent glimpses of transparency because they're in no way binding on the government. That is, you could follow all the substantive recommendations (if there even are any) and still be deemed to have "undermined national unity" or "infringed upon national honor" based on nothing but the PRC's desire to get you.
Thus the first sentence above is apt but the second is questionable. Might this be a glimpse of transparency? Only time will tell. If companies carefully following the guidelines available manage not to run afoul of the PRC government, then the answer will be yes. Otherwise, it's no glimpse of transparency at all, and even muddies the waters a bit more than was already the case.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
For those of you who believe that our rights are somehow egregiously eroded in the US, I give you China.
If freedom of speech is prohibited in the US, I haven't seen it.
crystallization of human wisdom???
Man, they've really handed one to the comedians with that one.
Some time ago, I saw a quote from some old sage to the effect that libraries contain the summary of all human wisdom -- and much of its foolishness. It occurs to me that the same situation has developed on the Internet, but several orders of magnitude greater. Of course, since the Internet took off, the sum total of human wisdom probably hasn't grown all that much. So we should conclude that that, while the Internet may now contain a summary of all human wisdom, that summary is buried deeply in many orders of magnitude more foolishness.
But consider what was predicted for television back in its early days, and what it developed into, I suppose this should have been expected for the Internet, too. The main difference here is that with television, the concentration of control into a corporate heirarchy was able to effectively eject most of the wisdom stuff, since that has never been as profitable as foolishness. This never worked with libraries, because they couldn't be organized into a controlled heirarchy. The Internet is even more impossible to control, since any person or small group able to set up a few links (wired or wireless) can establish their own small Internet playground outside the control of anyone. This allows for the aggregation of wisdom by the small crowds interested in such arcanae. It also allows the aggregation of anything else by other crowds interested in them.
But anyway, we should make sure the phrase "crystallization of human wisdom" reaches the attention of all the comedians we can send it to. It has a great potential, especially coming from a Chinese government committee.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Which I certainly don't see as a problem. Don't get me wrong, I think racism is a horrible, horrible thing, but I think it an equally horrible situation when people can be legally fined or jailed just for saying offensive things - racist or no.
That's the problem with too many groups today. People have no capacity to separate activities which they find DISTASTEFUL, from activities which they believe should be ILLEGAL. To many it's all just one in the same. Growing up in the south, it's basically what I've come to call the the "That ain't raht." philosophy on law. Specifics don't matter - if it "ain't raht" then there "oughta be a law". And like porn, defining what "ain't raht" isn't always within everyone's capacity - they just know it when they see it.
Accept that people WILL be assholes, and for the most part, that's fine. Let them be. We all should be a just a little bit assholish from time to time, because if you aren't offending ANYBODY, then you're just not living. For any of us to be free you have to accept that lots of people are going to be doing things that you really, really don't like.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
They say the same stuff to us. While that whole health care thing really didn't shut down the internet, it did scare people and was quite the bunch of bullshit.
We're also told we have a free media, but this administration and the previous administration have both thrown reporters in jail. Of course all of this Net Neutrality talk is a bunch of bullshit too.