China Says Google Pledged To Obey Censorship Demands

bonhomme_de_neige writes "China renewed Google's internet license after it pledged to obey censorship laws and stop automatically switching mainland users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site, an official said. Google promised to 'obey Chinese law' and avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability, said Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecoms Development Department, at a news conference." Update: 07/21 21:56 GMT by S : Changed headline to reflect that this is mainly just China trying to paint a better picture of the outcome. In a comment on the linked article, a Google representative said, "This piece suggests that Google has 'bowed' to censorship. That is not correct. We have been very clear about our committment [sic] to not censor our products for users in China. The products we have kept on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google. Other products, like web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship." If you go to google.cn, you can see the prominent link to the Hong Kong version of the site.

Comments

RTFA and it's comments

[Nzimmer911]

They didn't bow at all. In Google's own words in the article's comment section: This piece suggests that Google has "bowed" to censorship. That is not correct. We have been very clear about our committment to not censor our products for users in China. The products we have kept on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google. Other products, like web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship Lucinda Barlow, Head of Public Affairs, Google AU/NZ - July 21, 2010, 2:43PM

Re:RTFA and it's comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Major news outlets have some pretty specific standards, unlike ./ which will basically post any BS summary even if it has sh*t to do with The Fine Article. Major news outlets (AP) report only information that is passed to them through specific channels which are vetted and carefully positioned to avoid public censure. Although this results in a lot of mind-control and bias, and the news is by no means 'true', it is much, much more reliable as a 'one stop' news source than Slashdot (let's face it, people don't RTFA and just start spouting off at the mouth based on the headlines, in the same exact way that people do when they read a headline from a major news source). So, that's why NBC won't report on Google 'bowing to censorship demands' because that's a misleading headline. TFA doesn't indicate that unequivocally (in fact in the specifics it seems Google has done a pretty good job of keeping their integrity here), and NBC only reports misleading headlines and false news stories if directed to do so by a global security authority.

Having said that, all news has its place and its best to form an opinion based on a range of sources, and in my opinion Slashdot's strength is not in the accuracy of the reporting or headlines, but in the fact that it brings relevant links and information to a discerning reader who can then draw his own conclusions. As someone once said of the internet, it makes smart people smarter, and dumb people dumber.

Not quite the case: Google HK still uncensored

[michuk]

As The Wired already explained a couple of days ago ( http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/google-china-fiction/ ) what Google and Chinese government agreed on is pure fiction. Google doesn't redirect Chinese users to the Honk Kong search engine automatically, but there is a button to easily switch and google.hk is left uncensored in China, meaning that the Chinese can still search Google without filtering. The article linked by Slashdot as the source presents the Chinese official version of the story which obviously hides the above fact.

Re:do evil

[bhagwad]

Do you even know what's happened? Just visit the google.cn page will ya? The whole thing's a bit button that takes you to an uncensored site.
Bowing to censorship my ass! If that's bowing to censorship, then more of us need to do the same!

Re:Tiananmen Square

[thijsh]

Yeah, lot's of things are claimed in the interest of "national security"... it's the most abused term since you can't possibly be against security of your nation (and yourself). But no country is really free of this abuse...
Example: the story of a mom (ironically named Freeman) who was arrested, convicted and lost her kids in the interest of national security. She surely must have been a terrorist... right???
The only thing different about China is the blatant censorship, most western nations try to be more subtle with their censoring... but it still happens (and guess which two words are always the reason).

Re:do evil

[Anonymusing]

Just visit the google.cn page will ya? The whole thing's a bit button that takes you to an uncensored site.

Seriously. It's not even hidden: it says "google.com.hk" in enormous letters right on it. The only other links go to the music, translation, and product links.

But, this is Slashdot, where it is rare to RTFA or, heaven forbid, try to experience the thing.

Aside: it's kind of funny to read the various headlines about this. Some say that China "approved" the Google request; others say China "compromised"; others say the two "make nice" with each other; others call it a "miracle"; still others say Google blew it. A crazy range of opinion there.

Re:Publicity stunt?

[Anonymusing]

So in essence all that posturing about defending human rights, freedom of expression and standing against censorship was a marketing ploy to try to mask their acceptance and embracing of totalitarian practices, all in order to worship the all mighty dollar (or euro, yen, or any other currency).

Read the article. Then actually visit google.cn. Google managed to find a loophole in it all: they still offer uncensored searching (via their site in Hong Kong) and there is no site search capability on their China-based site. It comes down to a remarkably silly technicality that, somehow, China decided to approve.

Re:Easier to just say...

[molnarcs]

Well, we'll only see some negative PR on slashdot because people don't usually read the linked articles. This is old news, it was up on BBC Online over a week ago. The only difference is that instead of the neutral "China Renews Google's License" they went for the more sensationalist "Google Bows to China" headline. Which is, by the way, not only sensationalist, but misleading as well. In other words, they still don't censor content for Chinese users, the only concession Google made was to redirect users to a "landing" site instead of redirecting them automatically to google.hk.

In other words, this is a dupe.

Re:Didn't they do this once already?

[SensiMillia]

Well, from Beijing:

surfing to http://google.cn/ will show you something that looks like google's homepage, only, it's just an image of the homepage. Clicking on it will lead you to google.com.hk. (the version in simplified Chinese characters)
What changed a couple of weeks back is that they do not redirect you automatically, you just end up on this landing page.

Interesting to note: passing a query directly to google.cn (from the search box in firefox), will just execute the query on google.com.hk

Re:Didn't they do this once already?

[icebraining]

Google.cn is *not* censored! It's just a link to the uncensored HK version!

http://www.google.cn/

The only thing they "caved in" is they changed an automatic redirect to a full page link! How is that evil in any way? "Oh no, people must click once to be redirected! The horror, the horror!"

Re:That's what China says

[douglips]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/update-on-china.html

Re:Wow, big surprise

[icebraining]

They are NOT censoring. *All* the search are still done in the UNCENSORED HK version. All they did was turn a automatic redirect into a full page link, effectively a loophole to comply with the letter of the law but not with the intent of the Chinese government.

Re:do evil

[poity]

I'm reading Slashdot from China at the moment.
That link causes an immediate connection reset from the ISP (Chrome: Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error.)
This happens every time something forbidden is accessed, and the entire domain will be inaccessible from this IP address for about 10 minutes

Google may not be censoring itself but when the censorship happens at the ISP level there's nothing they can do.