Apple Pulls Anti-Censorship Apps from China's App Store (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:Services helping Chinese users circumvent the "Great Firewall of China" have been pulled from Apple's Chinese App Store en masse. On Saturday morning, at least some software makers affected by the sweep received notification from Apple that their tools were removed for violating Chinese law. Internet censorship in China restricts communications about topics including democracy, Tibetan freedom, and the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. The culling primarily seems to have affected virtual private networks, or VPNs, which mask users' Internet activity and data from outside monitoring. According to a report by the New York Times, many of the most popular such apps are now missing from the Chinese App Store.

Comments

Re:Material support for a hostile foreign governme

[93 Escort Wagon]

We aren't at war with China, obviously. So how, exactly, would imposing the wartime rules you're thinking about work?

When you're in a country - your own, or someone else's - you are expected to obey their laws. If you choose to disobey them for any reason, you should do so knowing that the country will probably punish you if they catch you.

Seriously - how would it go over if the US arbitrarily said "other countries' laws do not apply to our citizens"?

Re:Money before ethics

[bjwest]

Take a look at how much of that useless crap you own is made in China. A good portion of the U.S. economy -- your paycheck included -- goes to that repressive regime.

Re:IOS and now iOS

[Frosty Piss]

It's all down to money, if you want to sell in that country you have to abide by their laws.

And that's the way it is in most countries.

But more to the point, when the general consensus even here at Slashdot is that the primary duty of any shareholder owned company is to maximize profits, should this be any surprise?

As long as corporate law does not define some non-abstract requirement to be beneficial to society - and what does that mean, anyway? To me one thing, to the Chinese, another - than what is done with one's products is of no consequence.

Zyklon B, anyone?

Manufacture and invest elsewhere

[myid]

I'm glad Tim Cook is trying to protect the environment, and that he's trying to avoid using conflict minerals. But I wish he'd stop making things in China, as long as China's government was so repressive. I also wish he wouldn't invest in Chinese companies, or build a "new research and development center" there.

Suppose Xi Jinping repressed only people of a certain race, or only gay people. That would be outrageous discrimination. But since Xi severely limits the freedom of all of his citizens, that's not "discrimination" - it's just "unfortunate". However, it's not unfortunate enough to stop doing business there. (I'm talking about all American companies that do business there, not just Apple.)

I'm very glad to read about the Apple-related manufacturing plants that will be built in India and the US. I hope this is the start of a trend away from manufacturing in China.

Re:Material support for a hostile foreign governme

[Kjella]

Everything you said made sense. And yet I fear the world where any company will roll over and submit the moment the government wants something. A lot of modern rule of law is based on the assumption that a private entity like say your phone company has records and the government needs a warrant to see it. Whether that system is officially broken like in China or unofficially broken like with the NSA in the US, it's getting to the point where you should just assume any information given to any organization for any reason whatsoever is stored and passed to the government willingly or unwillingly. And since most of us have embraced civilization and is dependent on trade to survive it's pretty hard to avoid. It's depressing.