China Says Google Pledged To Obey Censorship Demands 177
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CmdrTaco
from the information-wants-to-be-filtered dept.
from the information-wants-to-be-filtered dept.
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.
Easier to just say... (Score:1, Insightful)
that Google has milked all the positive PR out of standing up to China (covered by major news networks) and is prepared for the small amount of negative PR by selling out (Slashdot).
Tiananmen Square (Score:5, Insightful)
The photo of the student confronting tanks isn't a national security risk.
So they won't have to filter that.
Are there any sources other than PRC bureaucrats? (Score:1, Insightful)
The only source cited in the article is "Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecoms Development Department." I wouldn't put it past the Chinese government to lie about what Google is doing.
Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what China says (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't trust one word of what comes from China's propagandists. Does anyone know of any press release from Google about this?
Re:Tiananmen Square (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently the part where the phrase is being used as a euphemism for oppression.
Re:do evil (Score:5, Insightful)
So much for do no evil.
To be fair, when I search for the (WARNING, graphic images) taboo words on the HK site they take me to from Google.cn [google.com.hk], I find the "social stability" threatening images linked to by Google.
If bowing to China is making the user take a single additional click from the google.cn landing page and bringing them right to unfiltered internet searches, that's some pretty lame bowing. I guess if both parties are happy and the Chinese people can very easily get to unfiltered search then I'm happy. Or does Google's Hong Kong search work differently inside China? If it works the same way as I see, I don't know how you could consider that evil. I perceive that Google has succeeded in granting the people of greater China with unfiltered search if they can tolerate an additional mouse click. This is assuming the Great Firewall of China or some government monitoring agency isn't watching these Google.cn -> Google.hk transactions.
How is attempting to bring unfiltered search to the people of China evil?
Re:Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that has ended is automatic redirects, but that doesn't do anything for the Google haters, so they will say that Google has completely caved without bothering to find out what's really going on. Here's a hint haters: Xinhua is the LAST PLACE you ever want to look to find out what's really going on.
Re:do evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tiananmen Square (Score:5, Insightful)
A flight attendant confronted Freeman [about her fighting children], who then responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor. The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman's arrest and conviction [three months jailtime] for a federal felony defined as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act, the controversial federal law enacted after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
That's reminiscent of what happened to Professor Gates. He gets angry about being mistreated, and suddenly he finds himself in jail.
Apparently we no longer have free speech in the United Soviets of America. An airline should have power to remove unruly passengers, but never to arrest them.
Re:Tiananmen Square (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Should a government have the right to censor based upon the expected reactions from the public?
Never. The ultimate authority if the People, which is above all governments. When government seeks to censor photos or news articles, it flips that arrangement and becomes the Master while the people are demoted to children to be "cared for" and "protected." That's a reversion to pre-Enlightenment Middle Ages thinking.
Re:Tiananmen Square (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Of course you can.
For starters, "your nation" is an ambiguous term. If I'm a terrorist from Belgium* living as a permanent resident or even citizen of the US, what is "[my] country?" What if I am living there with the express intent of harming the country, much as the 9/11 terrorists were?
Even if I'm purely from the US, born and raised, that's not to say that I can't be against it. I'm pretty tired of a lot of the crap that goes on here, for example. Personally it would make me much more likely to move elsewhere than seek to destroy it or kill people, but that doesn't mean I couldn't be somebody who takes that tact.
Maybe I'm against a standing army so I want to kill all the soldiers I see, even though I love my country itself. Maybe I even think I'm doing what's best for it. Few people would argue that committing murder as a demand for the dismantling of our military doesn't run contrary to national security.
The US political system has gotten old, but if I go around advocating killing all of our politicians they're going to charge me as a terrorist acting against national security -- and I would deserve it.
All of these are just examples of the multitude of hard-to-argue-against ways I can be "against security of [my] nation (and [myself])." There are plenty more, in addition to all sorts of rather insane possibilities and ones that are much more debatable. I could make a good case, I think, for the Tienanmen Square photos being against national security, for example. It could cause severe unrest, it could cause violence, it could cause the (attempted) overthrow of the government. As a US citizen who does not support what they did, does not support their covering up what they did and does not support that sort of censorship in general that would be a great thing, but I am also compelled to admit that from the perspective of the Chinese government, rebellion goes against national security.
The term is absolutely abused, and with 9/11 in our rear-view mirrors it may just be the most overused excuse today -- but that doesn't mean it is never valid explanation. It may or may not also be a valid reason for whatever happened.
* Yeah yeah. I'm intentionally not picking some Middle Eastern country.