Yahoo Agrees to Censor Chinese Portal

Bonker writes: "This article at Salon indicates that Yahoo, as part of a larger pledge to 'purge the Web of content that China's communist government deems subversive', has agreed to censor 'pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability' from its Chinese portal. Yahoo is one of about 300 other ISPs and websites who have signed the 'Public Pledge on Self-discipline for China Internet Industry'."

So.

What's going to happen when someone realizes the plans on how to build a rocket to get a man into space and in orbit are on a blocked website?

Easy

They'll post a question to "ask /." and we'll happily put list a few dozen mirrors and dozen posts will the full instructions listed "in case the mirrors are /.ed".

Heck, we'll also tell them what's wrong with the plans, wrong instructions on how to correct the mistakes, right instructions on how to correct the wrong corrections, and how to make a beowulf cluster out of them.

Re:Of course they should

And if they wanted to do business in South Africa twenty years ago, they would have had to purge sites claiming blacks should have the same rights as whites, and if they wanted to do business in Nazi Germany, they would have to purge all articles written by Jews.

Would you be okay with that, too? Or would you agree with me that there are some steps a business should not be willing to take?

And if they do agree to this, how does this affect their argument here in the US that they are not liable for customer content because they can't control it?

The shape of things to come

And somewhere, John Ashcroft is moaning with envy...

Yahoo to protect China's state security?

I guess that means the west will never learn that Calgon's detergent was that laundrymat's "ancient Chinese secret".

Self-censorship in the name of business

Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are one of the nation's largest redistributors of magazines and other periodicals... so large, in fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a magazine for a month, it can break a publication financially.

Combine that with the fact that Walmart has always upheld a rather fraudulent reputation that it is interested in the concerns of senior citezens, religious organizations, and 'family-oriented' concerns, and you end up with something pretty scary. Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of content deemed innapropriate. Quite a few of the magazines in the U.S. have to run their covers and editorial content past Walmart for approval before they can go to press.

Re:Self-censorship in the name of business

>>But when the choice is driving an hour plus for an alternate outlet, for a teen, it is practically equivalent to gov't censorship. I'm sorry, but kids need to have an outlet

Yeah but think of the great stories you will get to tell YOUR grandkids - "Why when I was a teenager, I had to drive 1 hour just to BUY an issue of Teen Beat."

"Grandpa, what does 'drive' mean?"

"Dang kids and these new fangled teleportation pads. You don't understand ... it was uphill, both ways, in a Geo Metro. It only had 3 cylinders [fade to mumbling]."

Re:Self-censorship in the name of business

While this situation sucks, it still doesn't approach the evil of government censorship. If Walmart drives your magazine out of business, you can still put your ideas out in other ways. If the government decides your ideas are illegal, then you have no recourse.

That being said, it sounds like this particular example looks (or is being made to look) more like self- than imposed censorship. I would say this move by China is similar to the coerced self-regulation of movies and comics in the US. The threat of legally codified censorship was used to pressure those industries into the standardized rating system and the "comics code" respectively. This is a gray area between purely capitalist "censorship" like the Walmart case and "say that and I will shoot you" style direct legal censorship.

If anything, I'd count this as a step up for Chinese government. They tend to go directly to the jackboots-and-guns stage rather than finessing issues like this, so using "voluntary" compliance here may be a good sign that things are beginning to loosen up over there.

What I don't see

Is how submersive sites are judged.

Looking at the agreement summary, it is OBVIOUS to me Yahoo would sign it. While we like to focus (and we do) on how evil the chinese government can be (and they are), this may not be the best example of that.

What Yahoo seems to have agreed to:
1) Don't host anything illegal to your target audience.
2) Don't promote porn to China.
3) Don't attempt to incite revolution.

I'm sure once you take local laws into context (which their TOS already does, no doubt) it seems to be nothing they haven't already agreed to before.

Go ahead, post pictures to yahoo of hardcore porn where someone uses a bomb as vibrator and explains how to make it. See your browser smoke as they pull the page as fast as they can, even on Yahoo USA.

Ah, Corporate Integrity...

When companies like Yahoo! look across the Pacific at a large group of people fed bullshit & held under the thumb of an oppressive dictatorship and all they can think of is how they can buddy up to the gov't in order to get a crack at these "new consumers", I'd say that we have larger corporate ethics problems than Enron, kids.

Yahoo! Where your civil liberties are what your government tells us they are.

Re:Ah, Corporate Integrity...

This is exactly my point. Yahoo should accept being banned from China's network instead of sanitizing its content as the Chinese government dictates. Yahoo should, indeed to keep its integrity must, pull its operation out of China if this is what's demanded of them. Participation in such an agreement inevitably puts the blood of Chinese political prisoners on the hands of Yahoo's board, and it's repellent.

There's a word for what you propose: appeasement. It's the acceptance of a dictate while maintaining the hope that they won't ask any more of you, that they'll be satisfied and you'll somehow be able to work under the new system. It failed to work in the late 30's, and it won't work in this analogous situation. No option? There's always an option, and the proper one here is to not collaborate with tyranny.

You're right though about our own government; it's composed of politicians who'd rather appease a large economic market than oppose oppression where it plainly exists, and I'm sure Yahoo takes some of its cues from them. None of that makes their behavior acceptable though.

So, let me get this straight...

...Yahoo, an widely used index of web sites in general, has agreed to take down any links to sites that the government of China asks them to, no questions asked? No burden of proof needed, or system of challenging decisions made?

From on point of view, this seems a pretty dumb decision on the part of Yahoo. But on the other hand, if Yahoo just agrees to the contract to get the support of the Chinese government, then happens to drag it's feet and "forget" to censor things, it's a nice beaurocratic turn around until the Chinese government catches on and cancells the agreement, by which time more Chinese citizens will have taken a liking to Yahoo.

So, depending on how it's used and "enforced", this might yet be a good thing. :^)

Ryan Fenton

yeah...but what about...

What I'm really concerned about is how this decision will effect those Yahoo commercials?

"Hey...where'd you get such great information on Shanghai?"
"...Yahoo..."

"How'd you know it was going to rain today?"
"...Yahoo..."

"Hey...where'd you get that Ayn Rand essay?"
"...Google..."

And in run the secret police...

Do You Yahoo? Not Anymore...

The new game

As a child of the cold war I love it when I get reminded of the good ol' days. China learned what the USSR never did. You can't make headway declaring "We will bury you!" from the podium of the UN. China knows, or believes, that the way to control America is through the pursestrings. As long as China continues to hold cash in front of American companies, there will always be a vocal lobby in Washington that will scream down any mention of the word ChiComm, and any punishment for China on its human rights record.
America doesn't stand up for its ideals anymore unless there is no other recourse. It's sick and twisted, but business as usual.
This article only reminds us that our government..err, companies are doing things that we wish they wouldn't. We shouldn't be outraged, we should be mobilized.

Precedent for this kind of behaviour from yahoo

In Australia [wired.com], apparently.

When it's France, however, the folks from Yahoo stand up and defend [sfgate.com] their right to independent content. Strange dualism going on there, wouldn't you say.

It also seems that all you need to get yahoo to pull certain content or messages is a few irate e-mails [bbc.co.uk]... Heck, even the Saudis have asked yahoo to regulate itself according to its government's preferences. /me scratches head.

Where's the surprise?

They've always been like this.

fix your own house first.

Why are people so quick to criticize China and so quick to forget America's abuses of "human rights" and "democracy"? This is a country trying to take care of 1 billion people. 1 billion people, can you imagine us doing that? We have 20 guys who decided to crash some planes, and the administration has already curtailed civil rights significantly.

Despite what you may think, the government of the United States is not open to all opinions, and it is hardly a place where rational people are in control. Take a look at this link [slique.net] to see what the requirements are for people entering the US. They're not exactly being welcomed in a freedom-of-speech, tolerating sort of way, now are they?

People seem to love picking on China because it's got the label "Communist" in it's name. I never ceased to be surprised at how much stupidity the word "communism" evokes among supposedly educated, rational people. How about all those countries who are our friends, yet commit far worse human rights abuses? Good for China, that it learned the lesson, "if you make products that people want, they could give a crap about human rights".

If you want to criticize others, I suggest that you first do some cleaning of your own house.