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.
Reverse Filter for the rest of the world please (Score:5, Interesting)
So if google is filtering "material deemed a threat to national security or social stability" from within China. Can we on the outside set it up so we can only browse the material that would be filtered within China. I think it would be educational to browse a volume of material that was "deemed a threat to national security or social stability" of China, it might also be a source of much amusement.
Re:Can we mod the story "-1, propaganda" please? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I'm More Worried About Google's Censorship Here (Score:1, Interesting)
Recent example of Google's "editing" when General Petraeus was nominated by Obama to replace McChrystal In Afghanistan, Moveon.org removed their General Betrayus ad from their site, and google cleared the cache of the same item...
Re:Not quite the case: Google HK still uncensored (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the point - the point is the censoring is done by China, not Google.
Besides, yes, it's *much* better to have a blocked page than for the results to have simply disappear: at least people *know* they are being censored.
Re:do evil (Score:3, Interesting)
It also shows the kind of bargaining power Google has.
I have to agree. China has huge numbers of people and manufacturing might. Google can process and utilize amounts of data that are unfathomable to a typical person. China is a couple decades late to the power struggle. It's all about data now.