Chinese, U.S. Condemn Censorship 238
More reactions both at home and abroad to the censorship issue. picaro writes "According to the BBC, 'party elders' in China released an open letter decrying the current state of censorship in China, and suggesting that 'history demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance.'" LWATCDR writes "The US government is upset over restrictions of freedom of speech on the Internet. The United States, has 'very serious concerns' about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally, and in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China."
Re:hm (Score:5, Informative)
There is a difference between protecting privacy and censorship. Privacy protection involves stopping the dissemination of personal information. On the other hand, censorship involves stopping the dissemination of public information.
For example, protecting my medical records, making it inaccessible to others without my permission, is protecting my privacy. Stopping news report of an earth quake, for another example, would be censorship.
Cheers.
B.Pascal
Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland all tied for 1st place.
The USA ranked 44th. (Fell more than 20 places)
China ranked 159th.
Re:Let Me Get This Straight: (Score:4, Informative)
Sad.
Re:hm (Score:3, Informative)
Not really. Censorship means preventing the originator of the information from publishing it. Protecting privacy means enabling the originator of the information to keep it private, that is, not to publish it if he or she does not wish to. The one case in which protection of privacy and censorship come together is when party A wants to publish information about party B. There is then a potential conflict between A's freedom of speech and B's right to privacy.
In US law, and generally in the law of countries that protect freedom of speech and of the press, the protection of party B is addressed by means other than censorship, that is, either by laws preventing the release of confidential information in the first place (so that, e.g., your doctor is forbidden to release your medical information to a journalist without your permission, so in principle the journalist will never be in a position to publish it) or through the ability to sue someone who libels you or violates a non-disclosure agreement or its statutory equivalent.
So, yes, in certain circumstances there is a conflict between freedom of speech and privacy and protection of privacy and censorship therefore come to have similar goals, but this is true only in certain circumstances involving personal information and may, and is in many countries, addressed by means other than censorship.
A few answers (Score:3, Informative)
And a few answers (Score:3, Informative)
1) A government for a country of that size is NOT monolithic. For example, it would be foolish to say that everyone in the US government is in favor of having troops in Iraq: there are a lot of Senators who are not happy at all. Likewise, the Chinese government has various factions. Because there is only one political party in China, political differences are expressed in the form of intra-party factionalism (whereas in the West, it is normally expressed in the form of different parties, though there are also a lot of intra-party factionalism as well). A lot of this in-fighting also happens privately, so many are not aware of it and the casual observer would think that the government was a Borg collective of identical viewpoints when it really is not.
2) This letter was written by what NPR news describes to be the "liberal wing" of the party and can be considered to be more or less a dissident voice. Such opinions are not new in China, and if you ever go there, you will notice that a lot of people will express these views (the Chinese are not stupid), except that they will express them privately, and you never hear about it in the media. I was personally very surprised that this letter of published. These folks are sufficiently power and well-connected that they are able to dissent like this.
3) I think that their target audience is the Chinese people and the rest of the government. You have to understand that the whole appeal of the Chinese Revolution is that the old government was corrupt and abusive, and there are many Chinese have not forgotten that and who are well aware of the irony that China threw out a bad government and replaced it with another bad one.
So I would not view this as some sort of public press release (that was earlier today, when they justified censorship on grounds of "pornography", which is bullshit). The earlier announcement today would be like Bush telling the UN why we need troops in Iraq. This letter would be like the Democrats grumbling about Bush putting those troops in Iraq.
Re:hm (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to go slighly off topic, and to do some lecturing myself, but I find it incredibly sad that we've (rather, the influence of the MPAA/RIAA and similar) have created a society that actual believes your statement above. That the absurdity of owning an idea as if it were tangible property is not apparent to everyone, but rather embraced by many if not the majority, almost brings me to tears over the future of civilized society. The really sad part is that this concept of private ownership goes well beyond existing IP laws. People don't actually "own" IP; the laws allow a limited (in time and extent) right of denial for copying, distributing, or implementing the IP depending on it's form. This limited monopoly is not an inherent right of ownership, but rather an incentive to publicize the IP so that others can learn from it and use it in the long run, thus benefiting society.
To quote Thomas Jefferson [red-bean.com]: