China Says Google Pledged To Obey Censorship Demands 177
bonhomme_de_neige writes "China renewed Google's internet license after it pledged to obey censorship laws and stop automatically switching mainland users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site, an official said. Google promised to 'obey Chinese law' and avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability, said Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecoms Development Department, at a news conference."
Update: 07/21 21:56 GMT by S : Changed headline to reflect that this is mainly just China trying to paint a better picture of the outcome. In a comment on the linked article, a Google representative said, "This piece suggests that Google has 'bowed' to censorship. That is not correct. We have been very clear about our committment [sic] to not censor our products for users in China. The products we have kept on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google. Other products, like web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship." If you go to google.cn, you can see the prominent link to the Hong Kong version of the site.
RTFA and it's comments (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite the case: Google HK still uncensored (Score:5, Informative)
Trolling.. (Score:1, Informative)
Google did not censorship anything. The only change they did is: instead of automatically redirecting to .hk domain now the users have to click the big picture on the page to be redirected.
Wasn't there a similar article on /. before?
Re:do evil (Score:5, Informative)
Bowing to censorship my ass! If that's bowing to censorship, then more of us need to do the same!
Re:do evil (Score:1, Informative)
Are you IN China, getting filtered?
No.
So your results are meaningless.
Re:Tiananmen Square (Score:5, Informative)
Example: the story of a mom (ironically named Freeman) who was arrested, convicted and lost her kids in the interest of national security [latimes.com]. She surely must have been a terrorist... right???
The only thing different about China is the blatant censorship, most western nations try to be more subtle with their censoring... but it still happens (and guess which two words are always the reason).
Completely Wrong (Score:1, Informative)
The summary is stupid (as in has no basis in reality at all). Has the author even gone to google.cn? It simply present an image of the first page (no search input form), and clicking it immediately redirects to Google Hong Kong, which is not censored. And yet all of you will now decry how evil Google is. It's amazing that they actually beat China and are in fact allowed to do a full uncensored search.
Re:RTFA and it's comments (Score:2, Informative)
Major news outlets have some pretty specific standards, unlike ./ which will basically post any BS summary even if it has sh*t to do with The Fine Article. Major news outlets (AP) report only information that is passed to them through specific channels which are vetted and carefully positioned to avoid public censure. Although this results in a lot of mind-control and bias, and the news is by no means 'true', it is much, much more reliable as a 'one stop' news source than Slashdot (let's face it, people don't RTFA and just start spouting off at the mouth based on the headlines, in the same exact way that people do when they read a headline from a major news source). So, that's why NBC won't report on Google 'bowing to censorship demands' because that's a misleading headline. TFA doesn't indicate that unequivocally (in fact in the specifics it seems Google has done a pretty good job of keeping their integrity here), and NBC only reports misleading headlines and false news stories if directed to do so by a global security authority.
Having said that, all news has its place and its best to form an opinion based on a range of sources, and in my opinion Slashdot's strength is not in the accuracy of the reporting or headlines, but in the fact that it brings relevant links and information to a discerning reader who can then draw his own conclusions. As someone once said of the internet, it makes smart people smarter, and dumb people dumber.
Can we mod the story "-1, propaganda" please? (Score:1, Informative)
I don't defend Google often, but in this case the story is willfully misleading. Google China is no longer offering web search and links to Google Hong Kong instead. It used to redirect, now the users have to click once. Yes, Google obeys the censorship laws, but it does so by not offering the service from China at all.
Re:do evil (Score:3, Informative)
Just visit the google.cn page will ya? The whole thing's a bit button that takes you to an uncensored site.
Seriously. It's not even hidden: it says "google.com.hk" in enormous letters right on it. The only other links go to the music, translation, and product links.
But, this is Slashdot, where it is rare to RTFA or, heaven forbid, try to experience the thing.
Aside: it's kind of funny to read the various headlines [left-right.us] about this. Some say that China "approved" the Google request; others say China "compromised"; others say the two "make nice" with each other; others call it a "miracle"; still others say Google blew it. A crazy range of opinion there.
Re:Publicity stunt? (Score:3, Informative)
Read the article. Then actually visit google.cn [google.cn]. Google managed to find a loophole in it all: they still offer uncensored searching (via their site in Hong Kong) and there is no site search capability on their China-based site. It comes down to a remarkably silly technicality that, somehow, China decided to approve.
I'm More Worried About Google's Censorship Here (Score:1, Informative)
Why are people so concerned about Google censoring search results in China while being seemingly unconcerned about them censoring search results in the west? We see regular examples of porn sites being removed from the index, searches related to Islam being filtered and other content such as the Michelle Obama image being deemed unstable by our Google overlords. What's more worrying is what you don't hear about and we can only guess at just how far Google's censorship of the web extends.
Google likes to maintain the public image that it's all for free speech while in private it seeks to dictate exactly what web users should and should not see. Before people start whining about censorship in China I think it's important that we sort out the growing issues of censorship in the west.
Re:Easier to just say... (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, this is a dupe.
Re:Didn't they do this once already? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, from Beijing:
surfing to http://google.cn/ [google.cn] will show you something that looks like google's homepage, only, it's just an image of the homepage. Clicking on it will lead you to google.com.hk. (the version in simplified Chinese characters)
What changed a couple of weeks back is that they do not redirect you automatically, you just end up on this landing page.
Interesting to note: passing a query directly to google.cn (from the search box in firefox), will just execute the query on google.com.hk
Re:Didn't they do this once already? (Score:3, Informative)
Google.cn is *not* censored! It's just a link to the uncensored HK version!
http://www.google.cn/ [google.cn]
The only thing they "caved in" is they changed an automatic redirect to a full page link! How is that evil in any way? "Oh no, people must click once to be redirected! The horror, the horror!"
Re:That's what China says (Score:3, Informative)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/update-on-china.html [blogspot.com]
Re:Wow, big surprise (Score:4, Informative)
They are NOT censoring. *All* the search are still done in the UNCENSORED HK version. All they did was turn a automatic redirect into a full page link, effectively a loophole to comply with the letter of the law but not with the intent of the Chinese government.
Re:do evil (Score:3, Informative)
I'm reading Slashdot from China at the moment.
That link causes an immediate connection reset from the ISP (Chrome: Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error.)
This happens every time something forbidden is accessed, and the entire domain will be inaccessible from this IP address for about 10 minutes
Google may not be censoring itself but when the censorship happens at the ISP level there's nothing they can do.