(Untitled)

[teacupdiaries]

I never got around to that nap, and now it's too late to take one. DOH! I have NOT been productive today (apart from the gym, class, food shopping, and wrapping ebay items) so i feel a little guilty now. I'm so tiiiiiiired, though.

Anyway, this is important. Read on

Comments

[anonymous]

The way I see it is that legally, IIRC, Google /have/ to do this in order to run google.cn. So either people in China who can't bypass or work around the censorship have no access to google at all, or they have access to a censored google. In both cases, people in China can and do get around it to use non-censored versions of google.

Personally, I think they shouldn't have done it, but I can see why they did.

[teacupdiaries]

Sign your name, so I know who I'm talking to. :) Please and thank you!

[msoya]

Apologies, Keller, that was me. I had a perfectly logical reason for not signing it lst night, but I /was/ pretty tired, so I can't remember it now :P And I'm not sure if the comment even makes much sense...

[teacupdiaries]

No need to apologise. :) I knew you were male by the way you write, but wasn't sure *which* of my male friends you were, and I'm nosy so I like to know these things.

And your comment made perfect sense. No worries. ;p

[mokele]

An idealistic part of me wants to think that maybe, just maybe, google is planning on fucking china over on this. Like claiming to be censored, then occaisionally having perfectly innocent technical oopsies that cause the censorship to drop, rather regularly.

That's what *I'd* do, but then I've never let any considerations for legality, ethics, honesty or anything else stand in the way of me doing what I consider the right thing.

[hidenplainsight]

Hmm. Setting aside the legal issues of Google's responsibilities to shareholders and to the nations in which Google operates, and the foresight in China of requiring multinationals to adhere to the laws of whichever country they are operating in at that time (preserving the integrety of the "nation" model of society), the gritty core of the oppression in China and Google's bowing is not that bad when compared to Yahoo, which cooperates in investigations by the Chinese government leading to the arrest and suppression of dissidents within their country. Merely blocking certain key words is a farce. Especially when, as has been demonstrated, you can bypass these filters by mis-spelling the keywords associated with the "censored" content. Because website authors > filtering technology. Just ask any porn site operator.

[mokele]

Setting aside the legal issues of Google's responsibilities to shareholders and to the nations in which Google operates, and the foresight in China of requiring multinationals to adhere to the laws of whichever country they are operating in at that time

Well, from my POV, my responsibility to do the right thing overpowers any responsibility to the shareholders, laws or nations. If my doing the right thing causes the company to go bust, so be it. If it causes an international incident, so be it. If I have the flagrantly break the law to do it, I will.

I believe that not only is breaking unjust laws acceptable, I believe it's our moral responsibility to do so. Given the opportunity as head of Google, I would openly screw China on the deal, boast about it, and use it force an international incident that would compel the world to actually *act* on these horrible human rights abuses.

Deep down, I really am Chaotic Good.

[hidenplainsight]

Actually, you're more of an Anarchist. You promote personal responsibility above everything else; it also places moral/ethical/legal judgement solely in your hands. Thus, it's your views which determine right or wrong

[hidenplainsight]

Blaming Google for having to put up with Chinese human rights violations and censorship requirements isn't quite the right direction. Better to blame your government, my government, the UN, and those that continue to allow China to get away with human rights violations.
Singapore demonstrates that censorship and party dictatorship does not have to lead to an oppressed society; China is allowed to get away with the violations they have, and we citizens of the world allow them to; China assumes Tibet is a province, and not a true country. They do it with Taiwan as well. The U.N. and other nations allow them to do this without effective resistance.

The better idea may be to sever all network connections to China except for a single 1200 bps dial-up line.

[teacupdiaries]

Google did not HAVE to agree to the terms OR deal with China when they heard said terms; they did so for more profit. I'm not against Capitalism by any means, but that doesn't mean I agree with purposefully turning a blind eye to make more money. It's not as if China held their arm behind their back and cried "GIVE, you non-commie bastard!".

I'm "blaming" (more like "questioning their moral integrity") Google for supporting something that is actively detrimental to another country; not for China's policy itself. That IS what I try to take up with my government (fat lot of good it's ever done, though).

It's just frustrating for me because I don't know what to do now. Do I keep using Google, or turn a blind eye?

[hidenplainsight]

In order to operate in China, and not be targeted by Chinese actions against them, Google had to agree to play by the laws of China. The other choice would be for Google to be blocked entirely from within China, and possibly for Chinese state hackers to be given a go ahead. Not that I think China would destroy a western company for fun, but one of Google's business principles is "Try not to be evil." Google isn't supporting China, but acceding to its demands because not to do so is to invite the wrath of communists. Whereas in the U.S., Google is telling the FBI, CIA, etc to go f themselves because the law supports them here

[teacupdiaries]

*sighs* I see what you're saying (and thank you for the info about Yahoo) but I'm still weirded out by it, since Google could have chosen not to operate within China at all.

I just love me some Tibet. ;_;

[bewylderbeast]

I was outraged when I heard about that in the news the other week. It's not just information on Tibet, but on anything the Chinese government sees as subversive.

The problem is that China already uses a firewall to block out anything it's government doesn't agree with. This includes results from other google sites. So whether or not google agreed to censor itself is not a huge issue, as the Chinese government was doing it already.

Though I am dissappointed in them. Before Chinese citizens had a chance of maybe finding something about issues, such as China's occupation of Tibet. But what effect would boycotting google have?

[teacupdiaries]

But what effect would boycotting google have?

Exactly. I'm pretty sure it's not going to change anything, but complacency is not something I enjoy.

[faileas_grey]

two little things, from a techie
1) google is making a rat's breakfast of the filter, its case sensitive, easily bypassed by spelling mistakes and so on. Its kinda TOO sloppy to be serious

2)The US navy helped fund a programme called "tor". some hackers (the good guys) even made a version of firefox with it built in (torpark) and a whole anonymous OS (can't remember what its called). Any savvy privacy loving chinese citizen would and should use these.

personally, i think google is giving the chinese government lip service; i mean they're the ONLY search engine that refused to give the american government logs of searchs. Yahoo TURNED IN a pair of chinese journalists to the chinese government... as things are, google are still reasonably nice guys from a technophile's point of view at least.

Faileas Grey

[teacupdiaries]

Thank you for commenting. :) That's certainly enlightening. It looks like maybe things aren't as bad as I think they are.

[faileas_grey]

they arn't, politics as usual, and people makeign noise rather than making a difference ;)

[teacupdiaries]

Well, to be fair, the people who sent me the email are an organisation working on emancipating Tibet, so they're making noise AND making a difference (or trying to; it's not like China is easy to deal with ;p).