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Google Considers China's "Web Mapping License"
eldavojohn writes "Back in May, China rolled out new laws requiring online mapping services to be 'certified' by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. The laws appear to go into effect this month. Today an AFP article outlines Google's consideration of these rules and notes that it's unlikely Google will meet the qualifications to become certified as all of its servers holding the mapping data are outside of China. The AFP also reported that 'Foreign firms wanting to provide mapping and surveying services in China are required to set up joint ventures or partnerships with local firms.' Unless large changes are made, Google's services might get a lot more stunted as China regulates onward."
The AFP also reported that 'Foreign firms wanting to provide mapping and surveying services in China are required to set up joint ventures or partnerships with local firms.'
I omitted my commentary on this particular clause as it's pretty much just speculation but I would claim that the government is encouraging/requiring/enabling corporate espionage. Not to mention the probably very sensitive close up data Google may or may not have of areal images of the United States. Now, it might just be that the government wants to foster local businesses but I would argue that it has more to do with strategy and espionage. I know I'd be uncomfortable.
My work here is dung.
No surprise here. If doing business in China is about one thing, it's about greasing as many palms as possible. Don't forget to mention the bribes to be paid to local officials.
Doing business in China is almost as bad as doing business in Chicago or New Jersey... almost.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
China is CONSTANTLY accusing other nations of protectionism and yet are always pulling shit like this. I guess the lesson they are trying to communicate is that protectionism us bad, unless you are China, in which case it is good! I guess that is to be expected from them though, they constantly scold other governments on their fiscal policies yet refuse to open up their own books to public scrutiny.
Monstar L
This is designed to simply drain the IP from western companies into Chinese ones. This is on top of China having their money fixed against the dollar.Yes, they said that they would change it a bit, but inside of 2 days, they rolled back the change. Quit honestly, China is an a cold war with the west via economic means. At this time, the west needs to tell CHina to either obey their agreements (float their money, drop their trade barriers, quit dumping/subsidizing, follow through on their international agreements such as CLintons as well as IMF) OR simply impose a slowly increasing tariff on ALL GOODS coming from China. If the west, India, and Brazil will follow through on this, then China WILL obey their agreements.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is that the roar of 10,000 slashdotters typing, "...censorship as damage and routes around it, ..." ..?
Isn't it time that Google pulled out of that backwards-run country once and for all?
Frankly I'm beginning not to care. There's enough Chinese that if they got the guts tomorrow they could wipe out the regime, including the PLA, in about fifteen minutes (there would probably be a few tens of million dead, but Mao killed more than that with his incredibly retarded economic policies during the 1950s). People too cowardly to tear every Communist Party member's head off deserve the kind of rule the Party gives them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
fast forward to 2013.
After Google's mapping service failing to gain much market share in China, Google decides to pull out of China (again) because of censorship (again).
In such case of foreign government blackmailing Google, US should respond with serious measures towards China companies and their operations in US. However, knowing how weak Obama is when it comes to nations he cannot mindlessly bomb all day using drones, nothing will happen.
839*929
It is all about CoNtRoL. All nations should be very concerned about Goog having hi-res images - China is flexing its muscles over it (as in many other areas). There must be many back-door agreements with governments across the globe to hush out sensitive areas, etc. If you were a government, you would not want hi-res images of your military bases, etc on servers offshore. You want this data where you can control it - in-country.
On the other hand - having this data offshore, the world can enjoy China in hi-res and, quite frankly, stuff them if they block images of themselves within China.
This is not even a very well veiled attempt to get any company that wants to do business in China to open up all of their source code and "hand the keys to the kingdom" to the Chinese government.
Ironically I bet there are companies that carry a big IP hammer to beat up the rest of the world with will be beating down the doors to become slavering lapdogs of China for a chance at the profits pie. Of course China will say "you companies just do not understand China so we need to repackage everything you do to fit our "culture"". What they are really meaning is that "Give us all of the stuff and we will let you play in our sandbox... until we can reverse engineer your application or system and stick a "Made in China" label on it. The we will give you the boot or make the conditions so impossible for you to do business you will run out with your tails between your legs".
Tisha Hayes
You do realise that after the opium wars and colonisation period, they're far more pissed at the West and Japan then at their own leaders?
We've been doing this PR crap here in the West for centuries now. It really isn't hard to deflect the rage of the mob towards the outside enemy. And as your argument goes, there's enough Chinese to wipe US and most of EU regimes.
Frankly I'm beginning not to care. There's enough Chinese that if they got the guts tomorrow they could wipe out the regime, including the PLA, in about fifteen minutes (there would probably be a few tens of million dead, but Mao killed more than that with his incredibly retarded economic policies during the 1950s). People too cowardly to tear every Communist Party member's head off deserve the kind of rule the Party gives them.
There's three explanations.
1. They're too scared to fight the system. That's your explanation.
2. They're too lazy to fight the system.
3. They're happy with the system. This is what I've been led to believe.
There's a lot of "Yay, China!" sentiment amongst the common people over there. Sure, you'll have the occasional dissident but for the most part they're drinking the kool-aid and enjoying the powdered lead, just like we do here in the States.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This law has big implications for open mapping projects like Open Street Map. Have a look at the warning on the China page for OSM:
This [law] to outlaw the entire OSM project, and any participation or contribution. ... People visiting China would be well advised to avoid overtly wandering around looking at GPS units, and avoid carrying OSM related documents in your luggage. Or you might prefer to abide by these strange Chinese laws, and just not do any mapping there at all.
People too cowardly to tear every Communist Party member's head off deserve the kind of rule the Party gives them.
What a brutish approach to politics."So a few million die" - so why haven't you resorted to violence against anything your government does that you don't like? I'm sure you could drum up enough of a local militia to send a message. I mean you clearly don't fear death or arrest or abuse.
When the strong oppress the weak, saying the weak deserve it because they are weak makes you sound like the biggest bigot ever and is incredibly short-sighted. That's the kind of attitude that promotes slavery and abuse of women. If you don't want to be grouped with those people, you better find a way to defend that claim or retract it.
How can China prevent Google from making its maps available? You don't need to be a Chinese company to make a map of China, so if even if Google continues to show the of China, how is it bound by Chinese laws?
Not exactly surprising, but not for corporate espionage.
Don't know if you noticed, but maps are militarily significant. If you have people providing maps of your country, using the gps on phones within your country to improve the quality of the maps, locate places, it's in your interest to have influence over them, particularly if your biggest competitor owns the satellites and the services run from within their borders.
I mean come on, the howls of outrage and surprise are laughably naive.
Deleted
There will be no 2013, remember? Nibiru, the Mayas, alignment of the Earth with the plane of the galaxy, the reptilians, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group... 2012 will be the end of the world.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Once their money comes back into balance with the dollar, they will collapse
Once their money comes back into balance with the dollar, you'll find the US economy will collapse as a major amount of the US national debt is held by the Chinese. It started off as a cheap way to fund American consumerism without having to worry - after all, China buys your bonds and you spend the cash they just gave you on Chinese goods - wins all round!
But.. that means they hold an enormous amount on US debt. If they decided to sell it on, both Yuan and the dollar would take an almighty hit - enough to pretty much collapse the US economy. Fortunately the Yuan is pegged to the dollar and doesn't float about - which could cause a bit of a collapse in either currency depending on which way it moved,
See, if the Yuan devalued against the dollar, they'd stop buying US debt. And so the cost of selling that debt would increase - the US needs to keep selling debt partly to fund the previous debt repayments - if the interest payments went up... you can see that wouldn't be good for the US. Considering how huge the debt is, that wouldn't be good at all.
Also, if the dollar didn't buy as much yuan as before, that would mean inflation for the US - no more cheap goods to buy.
So really, the US needs China to keep the dollar high. If they stop, you, them, and almost everybody is screwed. (Ok, maybe the Eurozone would come out of it better - assuming it doesn't collapse itself)
I never said the Chinese were unique. Germans, Russians, Greeks, English, a whole assortment of people have submitted themselves, at times quite willfully, to dictators. In fact, I'd say the last three hundred years, largely since the Glorious Revolution, have been anomalous. The fact remains that until a nation says "Fuck you" and proceeds to kill or drive out the dictators, they're going to have to live with it, and if they don't want to drive out the dictators out of fear of personal safety, well, they truly have enslaved themselves. Particularly in a country like China, where the unarmed masses would be more than sufficient to literally rend the regime into oblivion, it's sad to see them follow the ancient model of mindlessly following the leader. For the most part, they have a responsible leadership, but that leadership got there in large part through internal collusion against the old guard of the Maoist era, and not through any particular concern for reform or human rights. I mean, Mao is still revered, with the caveat that "he made some mistakes", despite the fact that he probably holds the distinction of causing more deaths than any other human being in history. In reality, his cadaver should be pulled out of its pathetic display, stomped to the ground, and those that glorify this monster should be shown an abattoir or the border, and given about five seconds to choose.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But it's the CCP that has control over the PLA. I've been informed that the top ranking college graduates (local Chinese) in China are offered great wealth and political power into the CCP. Every year they need fresh blood to replace the old guard that retires (death, natural or otherwise). The CCP knows that the only way to maintain control is to tie the fate of all China together. It's a political survival mechanism. Together China rises, or together everyone falls.
Side note: Why do you think China is buying so much US Treasury Securities? So they can have America as an ally instead of an adversary. Again, political survival.
Life is not for the lazy.
The Democrats want to bring Chinese style regulation HERE!
VOTE REPUBLICAN.
SAVE AMERICA.
What a brutish approach to politics."So a few million die" - so why haven't you resorted to violence against anything your government does that you don't like?
I don't know about you, but if the government does something I don't like, I can peacefully protest without being hauled off or driven over with a tank. Perhaps MightyMartian is lucky enough to live in a country where it is unnecessary to resort to violence in order to protest against the government. When you have a government that won't use violent force against protesters you get the million man march instead of the Boston tea party.
When the strong oppress the weak and no one does anything about it, it's unlikely that the situation will change in any appreciable manner. The weak don't deserve what they get, but they're going to keep on getting it until they stand up for themselves. If you want rights and freedoms you currently don't have, you'd better be willing to die for them because the powers that be aren't just going to give to you freely. Sugarcoating the sad truths of life doesn't magically make the world a better place.
It's horribly depressing, but if the Chinese people want to enjoy a greater level of freedom, a lot of people must be willing to die for it, and a lot of them probably will. As conditions in their country continue to improve, the greater thirst for freedom and subsequent revolution will be as inevitable as the sunset.
I have a feeling that if Chinese could vote they would vote for the CCP by a landslide.
That's the kind of attitude that promotes slavery and abuse of women.
It appears that Godwin's law needs a corollary. In the few thousand years of "civilization" slavery has only been a dirty word for about 200 years. Abuse of women? Women aren't helpless. I must say I am surprised you did not mention genocide and those darn Nazis. If you ever want to make a point referencing genocide as a shock tactic, you might want to mention the British. They are the only one to have committed a successful genocide in modern history.
Enough Chinese people, but not enough logistics.
You talk like the Glorious Revolution was an actual revolution. Look it up: it was purely a squabble between factions of the upper class. I'd be hard pressed to come up with any way that it constitutes earning a democracy by the lower classes.
It ended once and for all in Anglo-Saxon realms the notion of absolutism. It took another couple of centuries for the franchise to be expanded, but it marks the overthrow of absolute monarchy, unlimited executive exercise of power, and ushered in the rule of constitutional law.
China doesn't even enjoy the limited rights that the Bill of Rights, 1689 delivered.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There aren't enough boats to mount an invasion. China could go nuclear on the West's ass, I suppose, but they certainly don't possess enough nukes to do it thoroughly, and as badly damaged as we would be, China would be wiped out when we struck back.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Poppycock
Even the majority of the economists do not sound so alarmists about this. The reason is that if China were to slowly allow it to float (raise it slowly by 40% then finally allow the true float), then both nations will do just fine. The reason is that it will give America time to bring back jobs and then tax them. And China will still accumulate dollars and will want to invest them somewhere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's about control. They aren't trying to "find out" how Google does google maps, they are trying to create an in-country choke point. This choke point will choke the money from leaving the country _and_ choke the information reaching the citizens.
Imagine if you were the Bureau of Stuff of Some Country, and you could take 50% of the profit on every enterprise taking place on the internet in Some Country. Imagine that you can do it by letting random enterprises do random things, and then only attach yourself once a random thing had proven profitable. This is the money half of the equation.
Now imagine you are the Bureau of No of Some Country, and you could interpose yourself at the source of each new flow of information instead of needing a "wall" to selectively keep a flood of random Yes from entering your country. You could pre-impose your No well before it became a possibility.
The control item is particularly important here because you cannot _firewall_ Google maps selectively.
Say you are a Chinese dude, and you know that "something prohibited" is right north of something else. you can get that map of something prohibited by searching for that something else and then scrolling around. If china can require the information be brokered locally, the "Mass Government Grave" won't be blacked out or filtered, it will be listed as "Xue's Farm" or "Rocky Hillside Funtime Panda Reserve". Likewise for the "Comrades of the Party Beer Volcano and Free Hooker Forest".
The problem with censoring maps by exclusion is that even the holes provide information. If you cannot control and _edit_ a map at the source, you cannot _believably_ obscure what you want obscured.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Amount owed by the US government: $13 trillion. Amount owed to China: $877 billion (check it out). Percent of total debt owed to China: 6%. I don't know why you think that would collapse the US economy.
Qxe4
I rely on Google's maps to get around because they show every road and place name in Chinese and Pinyin (which is indispensable for those who can't read Chinese or read it poorly). Not to mention that the interface itself is in English on Google. After the search censorship clash and redirection of search through Google's HK servers, I've been waiting with apprehension for something like this.
It's infuriating to hear blatant lies from the government saying that the internet is open here. They really have the audacity to publicly make those statements. If it's open why can't I access wordpress, youtube, blogger, or myriad other domains? Other sites randomly fall victim to this blockage too like the Python download server for some inexplicable reason.
Another thing is the obvious use of deep packet inspection. An easy way to prove that this is being done is to do a Google search for some banned terms. Even going through an unencrypted public proxy results in blocked searches for certain terms. If you want an example of such a term try "ultrareach." That's the name of an encrypted proxy service that enables you to tunnel through the "Great Firewall."
The motivation for blocking these services I fully believe is both censorship and protectionism. Crush the voices of dissent, and as a bonus, eliminate competitors allowing homegrown alternatives to flourish.
Russia: Entire middle Asian part of Russia has already been effectively chinified. Read on tolls they are forced to place on raw materials extraction to at least somehow prevent essential strip-mining and strip-deforestation going there. Chinese have Russia by the balls already, it's just a quiet "we're taking over by breeding with you" kind of takeover for now.
US: Many of the chinese minority there aren't exactly happy with US itself (hello chinks). You'll notice many going to their parents' homeland for at least vacations, and many openly or hiddenly wanting a stronger China. Has been losing raw materials acquisition "cold war" to China for a while now in South America.
EU: Arguably best position to survive as it has no large Chinese minority and no common border. Still very dependent on China economically and is badly losing on raw material gathering to China in its former colonies (i.e. Sudan, Libya, similar African countries).
Conclusion: they don't need direct warfare to take over 2/4 of their main opponents. I'm honestly not sure what's going on with China-Japan relations due to extreme uniqueness of their relationship.
I am living in China for almost two years now.
Alternative 3 is correct. They are very happy, and they should be if you look at their perspective, their standards of living improved like no other place in the last 10 years or so. That is what people really care about, as long as they can get all they want, why should they fight? Because their government is making some companies unhappy? Why should they care?
Like everywhere else, only the elite understands what is happening, but they only that action when their position as elite is challenged.
That's not brutish - it depends on the desired outcome. Walter Duranty retains his Pulitzer Prize to this day for covering up the deaths of a few million people. Don't be so quick to judge.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Unless the US just decides they aren't going to pay.
It sounds to me that this could mean: he got a caning because he took 195 photos with GPS logging and looked up 80 of them.
In China, accurate maps are military secrets. There is no public USGS. Even Google Maps does not provide proper coordinates. This map phobia has to do with some ancient story about a stolen map. Indeed, being in possession of accurate maps of European countries could get you arrested or executed not so long ago. To print a map in China, you must contract with a local cartographic firm who will then do the work of producing your map for you. Needless to say, military facilities don't appear on such maps. It is simply not allowed to print maps otherwise. Look at the bottom of the Shanghai Tourist Map, you'll see the imprint of a cartograhpy company. I've seen tourist type maps before that seem to subvert this law by saying "for novelty purposes only" or "souvenir" but as always I'm sure the government could scrape around and find a reason to to shut them down, if it wanted.
Anyway, that's what this is all about. The government feels that it needs to have the balls of any online map making companies. JVs are a good way to get totally screwed in the China market. "Let's hold a vote about the future of the company! 51-49 result yet again! Oh well let's empty out the company checking account and put it in our pockets, we held a vote and majority rules!"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
All comments so far are about economic/IP aspects. What about the political/cultural aspect of mapping? China could use this policy to enforce its preferred representation of the Tibet area. Like: replace all traditional Tibet names with new Chinese ones.
Seems to me that in this case "the weak" are clearly not that unhappy with the rulling of the "strong".
As long as China continues to grow fast from the poor Asian country it was 50 years ago, most chinese people will happilly accept the "excentricies" of the local political and judiciary systems (besides, Democracy does not magically make a system fairer or more honest, there are plenty of corrupt democratic countries out there) - after all, for most people in China, their life is way much better than it was 30 years ago.
That said, when that growth cannot be sustained anymore, changes to the political system will likelly be on the menu - which is why chinese leaders are so concerned about maintaining growth and a "harmonious society".
It's thus not surprising that they do whatever it takes to keep growth going, including forcing foreign companies to pass intellectual, process and management know-how to chinese companies if they want to have access to the chinese market. After all, to continue growing Chinese companies must go beyond of the stage of being just no-name sub-contracted assemblers or makers of low value products relying on cheap man-power and become world class designers and producers of branded high-value products which use state of the art high-tech production and marketing processes.
The Chinese are doing just the right thing for their people.
It's Western nations that are busy reinforcing progress-hindering IP systems and proping up pyramid-scheme-like financial services systems all the while Western companies are busy making today's bonus-excuses for high-level management by "breaking into the huge and promising Chinese market" with the full knowledge that it is temporary and that today in China they are nurturing tomorrow's international market competitors.
I've often thought that china should give the ppl the right to vote just to get the west off its back. They'd win not only by a landslide but they'd do so for the next 15years minimum. Hardly a risk for the people in power now anyways. Perhaps its that they feel their system of government is better though. And maybe they are right. /.ers are always arguing against mono cultures in plants... seems the same would apply to governance.
In other words that war in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't really worked out any better than Vietnam?
Maybe a few more wars will solve the problem then? A little more debt. A little more hate..
>>People too cowardly to tear every Communist Party member's head off deserve the kind of rule the Party gives them.
Why on earth would they do that?
The party line, and what the people honestly and truly believe for the most part, is that "China isn't perfect, but it's getting better."
When I visited China, people were actually very proud of their country's progress in the last 20 years. While there's a lot that could be said about a lot of things, I think there's very little support for a popular uprising these days.
As an amateur photographer who happens to carry an AMOD GPS logging device with me everywhere I go (to geotag my photos), I'm thinking that maybe China wouldn't be the brightest idea for me visit-wise. (I guess in a way it's a good thing I probably can't afford such a trip anytime soon)
Basically, I'm guessing that if the Chinese government is that concerned about folks mapping things, they're probably going to take a very dim view of geotagged photos as well. I guess (if I screw up my world-view enough) I could sort of see why a totalitarian government could be very concerned about the "dangers" of such information. After all, if I have a photo showing some seriously poor village on the edge of survival, but tag it as being somewhere that the official propaganda says is an economic dynamo, it kind of exposes the lie. It's far easier to just step on my neck with their jack boots.
On the other hand, I would point out that gps loggers these days are very small and compact and don't actually require you to be walking around with big, obvious "HEY I'M IN UR BASE RECORDING UR COORDINATES" equipment... It seems to me that unless you tightly control where a tourist can go and what they can see (which I assume China does to some extent), the information WILL get out.
Truthfully, there isn't that much of a real national security issue anyway... Satellite imagery for ever square foot of the Earth is available... maybe not to super-high resolution in every corner yet, but it's getting there. An invading army doesn't need to know the name of the street to bomb it. This is purly "national security" from the viewpoint of a very paranoid totalitarian regime.
The Digital Sorceress
They want China based companies because IIRC they MUST be at least 51% owned by Chinese, and the Chinese Red Army HEAVILY invests in many of these so-called "private" companies to help shore up their budget. (Not to mention the graft that the the communist dictatorship's bureaucrats and figureheads would miss out on otherwise...)
Sounds good to me...
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.