China to Regulate Internet Map Publishing 279
hackingbear writes "After text, pictures, and videos, China starts regulating Internet map publishing (here is the google translation.) The government believes that Internet maps can represent the state's sovereignty and its political and diplomatic positions in the international community — and consequently, inaccurate maps could harm national interests and dignity, produce bad political influences, reveal national secrets and harm national security, in addition to harming consumer interests. So from now on, publishing maps would require approval and (yet another) license from the state survey bureau. That means Google, Yahoo, etc., need to remove China from the map; or maybe they just pay up some officials and their agents to acquire yet another license. And our newest 80Gbps DPI monsters need to be upgraded to identify maps together with porn."
Can they do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can a country do this? Why are on-line maps different from printed maps? Seems a bit unlikely to me.
As Google maps are satellite based, how inaccurate can they be?
Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering the Dick Cheney had his house obscured... I suppose the answer is yes. Actually with Google maps the US government has a number of areas blacked out for security reasons.
Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The borders go onto the map after the satellite takes the picture. Like, say, the border between China and Tibet.
rj
Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese government objects to maps that depict certain regions as being separate sovereign countries, such as Tibet and Taiwan, which the Chinese government holds are both part of China.
This would be similar to a map being published that showed Alaska as a separate country, or as part of Canada, as opposed to it being part of the USA.
Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
China will be able to pull this off only because Google wants to do business there.
Let this be a reason for those who talk about "do no evil" and "Google" in same sentence (except me
Spot on (Score:4, Insightful)
A much better option than going along with what China wants them to publish. Sometimes the best course is to let jackasses make jackasses of themselves.
rj
Re:...national secrete... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to wall off themselves from the world, then let them. If they don't want to use what a company from another country is doing, fine just block it if you want to (or can) but, quit bitching about everything we free people do outside your fucking borders.
Controlling the truth (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't doing it more, they're just being caught doing it more often.
Re:...national secrete... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What does this mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or Publish China-Politico Maps as a separate option from Free-Tibet Maps. This reminds me of Arab countries cutting Israel out of inflatable globes donated for education (which of course made the inflatable globe uninflatable), except stupider.
Hopefully google will publish one map inside of China, and a more sensible, complete map for the rest of us.
Oh yeah, and unobscure Cheney's house please. Me and a truck full of toilet paper have a data with the trees in his front yeard. (kidding of course, but I better say it lest those humour-free bozos actually label me a terrorist threat and have me "rendered" to Gitmo).
Re:...national secrete... (Score:3, Insightful)
US freedom and liberty gives the Google video truck the right to drive down any public byway and video what they see, 24/7. Other countries can alter what they want the truck to do, and what is public versus private versus secret information at their will.
If mapping is good, then it won't take long before someone figures that out and allows it. But as nations are ostensibly the assertion of the will of their people (less so in some areas), China has the right. Openness is a desirable quality, as people wonder what you're hiding when you're closed, an attitude that is balanced with the need for privacy and the right to be left alone.
The fulcum in the middle of that balance is respect.
I can see the bookmarks now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And google can move abroad (Score:5, Insightful)
And thereby show that the US IS as bad as china and that, yes, other countries DO tell other companies what to do with online maps.
Ugh - Maybe I should just filter out ACs...
Re:There is no border between China and Tibet. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:...national secrete... (Score:3, Insightful)
Poverty and slavery are effectively the same thing, except the slave tends to be better off because he's valuable property and thus can't simply be left to die even if he becomes temporarily redundant. On the otherhand the temporarily redundant laborer in a society without slavery is for all free market purposes, worthless. He can't buy anything (since he has no job) and he can't be bought or traded for commodities since that would require him to be a slave.
The only thing that makes this fact difficult to notice is all the social (humanist) programs we have that help the surplus labour pool (the unemployed) get by until the economy picks up.
I'm not advocating slavery, I'm just saying true free market capitalism is no better.
The point is that on the whole, the vast majority of people DO NOT WANT to suck anyone dry or enslave anyone. That is just a myth propagated by rationalist capitalists and communists to morally justify the fact that they themselves do.
The Authorities in China want to enslave you in order to suck you dry. The Authorites in North America want to suck you dry in order to enslave you. Nothing changes.. Authority wants the same thing. Total and absolute control. The only thing that changes is how Authority goes about aquiring what it seeks and whether any does anything to resist it.
encourage openness...by closing (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't make much sense to me. I think if you spent even 20 minutes reading about Chinese history in the last century you would be far less ignorant of world affairs and specifically Chinese affairs. I am in no way defending totalitarianism or censorship. I just want to point out how rediculous your "solution" sounds.
If you actually load up wikipedia and read for 20 minutes you might find out about the enormous amounts of strife China as a nation has endured over the last 150 years. Then you would see how it has only been 30 years since the end of the Cultural revolution, and just how much the nation has turned around in the blink of an eye.
Now you advocate destroying 30 years of progress? You want 1.3 billion people to go back to living in abject poverty (even though hundreds of millions are still in abject poverty). All because they draw their maps a little differently from the way we do? You would rather force them into submission than help them grow?
Fuck China? Fuck you.
Re:They want it both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, they (along with India) are rapidly sucking up resources we need...mainly, oil.
We are having to compete with them on this, and I think this will soon get nasty. China holds so much of our debt (US), that they will likely start using this as leverage against us in oil concerns.
Frankly, I'd like to get off China's 'teet' with regard to the resources I think you're alluding to...cheap labor.
I'm quite worried about not having any more manufacturing in the US any longer. That is a national security issues if I've ever heard one. It matters not if we have all the energy needs we need...if our suppliers of goods cut us off...we're toast.
As another poster mentioned...I'd gladly start paying 10%-20% more for most of my goods if they were made/raised in the US. I'd much rather pay a bit of a premium to support the local manufacturer and local food grower. I'm lucky that I live in LA, where we get such an abundance of fresh seafood from the Gulf....but, when I travel the US, I'm shocked to see how muchh seafood and other animal protein foods are coming in from China, or other countries, rather than our own, where we often have higher quality, and regulations on anti-biotics, drugs and pesticides that can be used.
But...that's a whole other rant....
Re:Can they do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:...national secrete... (Score:3, Insightful)
By spamming?
Are you sure Chinese care about your content? Remember, you must publish it in Chinese.
Are you sure Chinese care?
Are you sure they care?
Go ahead.
Wet dreams. This never worked on a country with more than 1 billion people. BTW, do you ever realize how much US assets in China?
You are very smart at this point, but if their people rise up and overthrow your government...
BTW, when you guys are discussing wet dreams, Chinese are fighting a fscking earth quake, I hope you realize what you care and what Chinese care, and what is the distance between them. And if you want to have Chinese listen to you, what you should do.
You forget the sarcastic label, right?
Re:...national secrete... (Score:3, Insightful)
Revisit and understand history not only of China, but other nations including our own. This is not to justify actions that various Chinese governments have taken, rather to put them into perspective. I've been to China on several occasions, and while there is oppression, and lack of freedom, there's also a very fragile society that's coming out of dogmatic totalitarianism of the 1950's and 1960's. Before that time, China was a series of fiefdoms, not unlike Russia, or even Italy.... not to mention the Middle East.
Your primitive contrasts will only fuel a futile exasperation at what happens in the world, rather than giving yourself an honest opportunity to change it for the better. Read, chill, act.
Re:...national secrete... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the most western-biased, culturally insensitive comment I've read in a LONG time. Where do you get off telling another culture what it's goals are, and how they should act? For all our talk of freedom, the west TORTUREs people, and lies about it. We have CORRUPTION, just like everywhere else, except that we HIDE it better than most.
Sure, China has a bad human rights record. Sure, it has a record of censorship. It also has a record of trying to protect it's people from things that might be harmful to the fabric of its society and its individuals, like any parent is praised for doing.
We, on the other hand, have so-called free speech, yet can get arrested and sent to guantanamo for the stupidest of reasons; if one of us happens to look like an arab, we might end up missing flights, questioned, if not arrested. We have KIDS SHOOTING EACH OTHER IN SCHOOLS where they're supposed to be learning to cope with the adult world.
China is NOT right. But let's get one thing very straight: WE'RE NOT RIGHT EITHER. No one has all the answers, least of all insensitive, narrow minded people who assume that every other culture is wrong.
Re:...national secrete... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the Chinese censor the Internet. This is one of the smaller of their displeasing behaviors. Censorship is almost always a bad thing, except when the sensibilities of children are at stake.
The slumbering dragon slowly awakes after many years of dark ages. Their rulers are inexperienced, and their political system isn't as evolved as others. There are worse, and many of them, just not as large as China. We're impatient to watch them grow up. I'd like to see a free Tibet..... press freedoms, and freedom of movement, and freedom from involuntary servitude, and better environmental management. These things will come, hopefully soon. Trying to eradicate China in toto is silly, however. Instead, consider befriending and allying democratic and sensible efforts towards a freer and open society. It takes one person at a time.