The Great Firewall of China, Continued 484
rcs1000 writes "Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...) has a terrific article on The Filtered Future and how China's censorship is changing - for the worse - the Internet. The piece makes a few points: firstly, China is really trying (largely succefully) to seperate its Internet from the rest of the World; secondly, it may be possible to use technology to circumvent restrictions, but that makes them no less onoreous; thirdly, the sheer invisibility of the restrictions makes them worse (when Google doesn't even show up articles about democracy, that's no good thing); and finally, some Western companies are actively co-operating with the Chinese government in their censorship. Is this the beginning of the end for the global, unregulated, uncensored, Internet?"
Stop blaming companies (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think they should act otherwise, then you should get your government to make rules about that banning the companies from bending to Chinese will.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, you have to hand it to them (Score:5, Interesting)
* There is a legitimate concern that people reading articles critical of the government will cause enough upset to collapse the government.
* The number of people involved that you are trying to black out information to number in the billions.
* You can successfully convince a majority of these billions of people that it is in their own best interest to give up their own ability to decide what to read or say.
I mean, yes, it's distasteful and all that, but beautifully executed. I don't think *I* could sucker 1.3 billion people, no matter how hard I tried.
Actually, I was pretty impressed that they managed to push through their one-child policy as well -- that had to be a hell of a tough sell.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still, you have to hand it to them (Score:1, Interesting)
Makes you wonder whether it will be worth it - will the Leninist idea of a revolution from the top succeed in China? Remember, we still don't know what's happening in the deep interior of that country.
Strange censorship... (Score:4, Interesting)
For a while, we all thought he was too busy to respond to our random email conversations. Turns out that he never received a lot of those emails. We all decided that it was because censorship but could never figure out what keywords brought it on. There didn't seem to be any rule-based system. It was almost as if millions of Chinese were censoring the emails of the other millions by hand.
Well, except the sentence "Hey, is this getting censored?" That email always got censored.
Re:Strange censorship... (Score:1, Interesting)
I see... (Score:2, Interesting)
Can they filter it all out?
no access to western websites (Score:2, Interesting)
owned by MS? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Ironically, it's Capitalism's Fault (Score:2, Interesting)
China is moving slowly towards a more open society (Score:3, Interesting)
A switch in China, which was to be expected after the fall of the Soviet Union, would probably solve these freedom problems, but replace it with utter poverty for more people, and will most likely break more civil and human rights.
The chinese people know about democracy, they know what is wrong, and they have their own underground movements to push the right buttons to improve the situation. The attitude of chinese people is luckily a more mellow attitude than that of the US or western world, giving them the time to get those changes without a lot of blood shed.
So for the mean time there will be a chinese firewall. Since we can not stop the chinese goverment from doing this, the chinese themselves will show them one day that it needs to stop. Lets try to stop our own goverments from imposing blocks on the internet, for example the US goverment forbids international gambling and pr0n sites. US companies (VISA/MASTER) help the goverment in this by preventing people who want to visit those sites from being able to pay using their creditcard. There are probably other blocks which are less visible (conspiracy theory?), and enough examples to fight in the US and other countries, where we live ourselves.
Re:Still, you have to hand it to them (Score:1, Interesting)
It doesn't exactly help when two major religions are trying to out-reproduce each other on ideological grounds (catholics and muslims).
Chinese policy, while somewhat harsh (it probably should be 'two-child policy', at least once the growth has been stopped), is the only sane attempt at restraining the population growth of the human race. Of course the 10+ child families in africa, india etc. mean that even if china keeps it's population in check, it won't change the final outcome - it might delay it by a few decades, but sooner or later the planet will simply run out of resources to support the exponentially growing population - and when we run out of the capacity to produce food for everyone, people will fight over it. I actually hope that the mess would happen after my time, since it will be a HUGE mess. However, considering that I'm 30, the odds are not too good...
No matter how evil it might sound, AIDS is probably a GOOD thing for the planet, since it's going to give a bit more time due to the effect it's having on the population growth in Africa. One can't help but wonder if it really IS a 'tinfoil hat'-grade lab-engineered secret plot to try and restrict population growth in 'unimportant' / 'undeveloped' countries...
And anyone hopping in and calling me inhuman - Single cases are tragedies, but unfortunately at planetwide scale it's all math. In the last 50 years, the population of the world has roughly tripled - from 2 billion to 6 billion. In another 50 years, that would mean up to 18 billion, and sadly I don't think this planet can take it...
Re:Not the "end", a continuation (Score:3, Interesting)
In abstract, I agree with the idea that a sovergen nation should be able to have it's own laws. Basically, if a bunch of people want to get together and live under whatever waky laws they can come up with like wood should smell different on wednesdays or it's a capitol crime to drink water from a seventeen inch purple curly straw or whatever.
The problem is, I think this only works if all of the people living under the rule of that country are doing so voluntarily. If I want to drink water from a seventeen inch purple curly straw, then I should be able to move to an area were that's allowed.
Along those lines, I should also be able to be informed of other countries, other laws, etc, so that I can go someplace else.
The problem is that, in china, I don't think that either is the case. People can't very well up and move to another country easily, and because of the censorship they don't really know much about where they could move to.
And who's to say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the US gov't is doing the same thing, just on a more subtle and un-obvious way.
Just because we think we live in an open and free society doesn't mean that we're not fed as much propaganda as the rest of the world - it just means it's not so blatant.
My favorite example is CNN.com - if you visit the page often enough, you'll occasionally see a major headline story show up, and two minutes later it's gone... with NO word about that story ever again (anywhere on CNN.com). Searching overseas news sources will often bring up the whole story, but not always.
Obviously, someone censors these things after they appear - in a country where freedom of the press is supposedly paramount, this is a very scary thing.
MadCow.
Re:Stop blaming companies (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stop blaming companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes I would hold it against them. If it is legal for a corporation to kill retarded people and sell their kidneys for profit, I would also hold it against companies who did that.
"Agreed, they work terrible hours, get no rights, and get paid very little - but if they didn't do the work, they would not get paid AT ALL."
If the children didn't do the work, their parents would get paid more (due to the lower supply of labor) and the children could spend their time getting an education, so they could earn even more in the long run.
Good ole censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." - Justice Potter Stewart, US Supreme Court
Re:Not the "end", a continuation (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Belarus, a place gradually moving from moderate dictatorship to totalitarism. We have all the censorship in traditional media, and now there are moves to control the net access as well: forums impose self-censorship in fear of being shut down, gay sites get blocked, and opposition resources abroad suppressed during large political events.
So I beg to disagree. Unless you don't give a damn about Human Rights in general, Internet censorhip is ammoral and harmful.
Re:Ironically, it's Capitalism's Fault (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at it this way. Technology always finds a way. You just can't stop the avalanche of information. We may not be giving the Chinese access to the highest quality information, but at least we're still peppering them with little bits here and there. It may not be overt, but it still seeps into the unconscious. That's much better than nothing.
You should still be pissed of at Google, et al. for rolling over, but be thankful that they've still got their foot in the door. The world is grey.
A picture is worth a 1000 words (Score:5, Interesting)
...and a few chuckles
Re:Stop blaming companies (Score:2, Interesting)
But you are correct about what drives a corporation. Unlike many on
"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profit":
http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarian
Re:Okay, blame companies - but do it intelligently (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, from what I understand, France has a law that holds executives personally responsible for the wrongdoings of their companies - this was enacted after the Elf scandal [corpwatch.org]. We should do the same thing here, as well as suspend (or revoke in really egregious cases) the company's privilege to do business.
Re:Stop blaming companies (Score:2, Interesting)
That's true, but let's be practical. Google, Microsoft and Cisco can be held accountable by the US government. The idea of communism cannot. If the US can block all trade with Cuba, it can also block trade with China if that trade undermines the civil, political and human rights of the Chinese people. I understand that China is an important trading partner, not to mention a nuclear power - a complete trade blockade is out of the question - but ethical restrictions on trade can and should be established.
China wants the Internet censored, if all the Corps in the Free World banned togeather and said no, China would roll thier own solution.
Fine, let them try.
Re:Companies in prison. (Score:4, Interesting)