Why You & Yahoo Should Like This Human Rights Law 217
GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries" and would in most cases prohibit U.S.-based companies from censoring content or turning over users' information to the governments of those countries. Do these companies want GOFA to pass? And is GOFA a good law? I think, yes and yes, but the answers are more complicated than they seem.
With American "collaboration" less in the news, GOFA made less of a splash when it was re-introduced this year, but it is still the subject of spirited debate. Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, and other human rights groups have already signed a statement supporting the July 2006 version of the bill (nearly identical the 2007 version). But blogger-journalist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that by creating a government-maintained list of "Internet censoring countries", the law falls short of calling for support of free speech in all countries (the initial list, for example, includes Iran and China, but leaves out notorious human rights violator and net-censor Saudi Arabia). Danny O'Brien of the EFF backs this position as well, and also argues the organization's long-standing position that "code is speech" and that filtering software should not be subject to export regulations that are proposed in the law.
I agree with MacKinnon that instead of using a list of "Internet restricting countries", we should require the same standards of U.S. companies wherever they do business, or at least, stop playing silly games like leaving Saudi Arabia off of a list of human rights violators because Bush is friends with the ruling family. I agree with the EFF that filtering software should be considered First-Amendment-protected speech like encryption software, and not be included on an export-prohibited "munitions" list. And for reasons listed below, I think that the law won't stop censoring countries from blocking any speech they want. But even with all of these qualifications, I think the law would be a step in the right direction, if only for the rules prohibiting companies from turning over users' personal information to the governments of countries like China and Iran. It's painful to give a pass to countries like Germany that also censor political speech, but I think that the situation is so much worse in places like China that we should do what we can in the short term. And for reasons I'll get into, I think that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco are secretly hoping that a law like GOFA does get passed -- even if they can't come out and say so.
First, what the law does not do: There is still nothing to stop a U.S. company from blocking or removing legal, political content at the request of a foreign government. Section 204 says only that American content-hosting companies and content-filtering companies have to provide the U.S. government with a list of sites that have been removed or blocked at the behest of a censoring country.
Section 205 does say that U.S. companies may not block or remove sites that are operated by the U.S. government, or by any entity that receives grants from the International Broadcasting Bureau to help defeat foreign censorship. Presumably that would include Peacefire, at least during the periods when we're under contract to the IBB to develop the Circumventor software (but before you start calling me Hallibennett, I'm not working for the IBB right now, and it was my own idea to write this). So the American government, while requiring schools to block us in the U.S., would actually be helping to get us un-blocked in China and Iran! But Section 205 only says that a U.S. business may not block or shut down such sites. As far as I can tell, that means if the Cisco engineer on site in China sets up their routers for them, the Cisco engineer can't put VOANews.com on the block list. But then the Chinese official can walk across the room and add it to the list himself, can't he? Which is almost certainly what they'll do, since the routers are in their country.
So, I think the regulations against Internet blocking will be easy for foreign governments to ignore. But where the law could make a difference is in the prohibition against turning over users' personal data to law enforcement in censoring countries. Section 201 says that servers located in a censoring country cannot contain personally identifiable user information (so that the local police cannot simply storm in and seize the data). Section 202 says that American companies can only turn information over to law enforcement of a censoring country if the information is needed "for legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes as determined by the Department of Justice". MacKinnon has criticized this aspect of the law as well -- "If Americans don't want the DOJ to have access to their user information, why should anybody else?" Very true. But, even at the lowest point of public confidence in the Department of Justice, I think most people living outside of fortified compounds stocked with beef jerky and gold bullion, can agree that the U.S. DoJ has more integrity and legitimacy than the government of China, and that such a rule would mean fewer Chinese dissidents going to jail.
What do the affected U.S. companies think of the law? Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco did not respond to requests for comment. A Google PR person replied to say, "We welcome intiatives that expand access to information and protect the rights of users across the globe. At the same time, we remain concerned that legislation in this area can have unintended consequences, so we intend to study any such proposals closely, and work with proponents and others to reach the right outcome." When I replied that the Global Online Freedom Act had been proposed more than a year ago and had been online in its current form since June 2006, presumably enough time to "study such a proposal closely" and take a position on it, he said they would stick with that statement for now. (In his e-mail, he actually put quote marks around the company's statement, which I thought was a nice dry touch.)
But past statements from the respective companies have indicated they would be amenable to such a law. Bill Gates, never one to be shy about criticizing government regulation that he disagreed with, was asked in a February 2006 interview with the London Times, "Should the US government establish guidelines to regulate how internet companies deal with censorship in countries like China?" and answered, "I think something like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a resounding success in terms of very clearly outlining what companies can't do and other rich countries largely went along with that." At the February 2006 house hearings to discuss American companies' cooperation with overseas censors, representatives from all companies indicated that they actually wanted the government to play a bigger role -- they were vague about what such a role would be, but this was only a month after the first draft of the Global Online Freedom Act had been proposed, the only such law on the table at the time.
At first this might seem paradoxical -- why would companies seem amenable to, even supportive of, laws that would restrict what they can do? But it actually makes sense if you consider their negotiating position with the Chinese government. Currently, the Chinese censors can tell Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google that they either have to either play by the Chinese rules or get out, and the censors know that the companies will comply (without even necessarily feeling guilty about it -- the companies can always say that the Chinese people are better off with a censored version of their services than no access at all).
But if the companies' hands are tied by U.S. law, then they can basically present the Chinese government with a take-it-or-leave-it deal: You can use our e-mail and messenger and blog services, just know that our government won't let us turn over users' personal information if you ever want it. The Chinese censors are presumably coming from the point of view that they'd rather have a controlled Internet, but that it's more important to reap the economic benefits of having the Internet in their country, even if some control is lost (after all, if they didn't believe that, they wouldn't have connected to the Internet in the first place). Hence it's not likely that they'd throw out Yahoo Mail and Google search and MSN Messenger when so many users depend on these and use them for business as well as personal use. (Even if there are Chinese-made alternatives, there would be the huge cost of switching everyone over, and no longer being able to use the old tools to communicate with American companies.) So a law controlling the actions of U.S. companies would very probably allow them to keep doing business in censored countries, while giving them an excuse not to turn over users' data.
But, that might not work if it looks like the companies pushed too hard for the law themselves. If the Chinese see Yahoo fighting tooth and nail to pass a law that restricts what information Yahoo can hand over to China, the Chinese censors could take that as a slap in the face, and punish Yahoo for defying them even after the law is passed that prohibits Yahoo from cooperating. "Oh, you can't give us that information because of the law? This law right here that you lobbied for?"
So, when the general counsel of Yahoo says, "Ultimately, the greatest leverage lies with the U.S. government"; when the Vice President of Google tells Congress, "And certainly also, finally, there is a role for government. We do need your help, and you can help us"; when the associate general counsel of Microsoft testifies, "It is, therefore, the responsibility of governments, with the active leadership of the United States, to seek to reduce or reconcile these differences", I think what we're hearing are subtly encoded messages saying, "Pass this law, or something like it; we just can't look like we wanted it to pass." So, Congress should give them what they want, even if they can't ask for it directly. And at the same time they would be helping users in censored countries all around the world, before the next one gets sent to jail because an American company turned over their information.
Grow a pair (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what we're hearing are subtly encoded messages saying, "Pass this law, or something like it; we just can't look like we wanted it to pass." So, Congress should give them what they want, even if they can't ask for it directly.
Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.
Re:Grow a pair (Score:5, Insightful)
In the USA, officers of a company have a legal obligation to not intentionally harm the company's stock value through policy decisions. It's entirely possible that if the company leadership "grew a pair" and the result was being kicked out of China, the stockholders would file suit.
Capitalism doesn't work the way you suggest. Unless you want to re-write the ground rules to introduce factors other than "what will make us the most money" into the equation, then you're stuck with the current greedy, take-no-prisoners, CYA corporate status quo.
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Re:Grow a pair (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that instituting a policy of responsibility would destroy civilization?
I think it's the only thing that can save it.
Just think, if shareholders didn't just share in dividends, but were required to pay money (probably in the form of loss of shares) as part of any financial punishment levied against a corporation for its wrongdoing, they might actually employ some kind of responsibility in their investments! And then, corporations would be forced to be good citizens if they didn't want to scare off every investor!
Gee, wouldn't that be terrible?
Nice FUD, twink.
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The problem is that there is no law requiring "good corporate behavior" of this type, so there is no way to fine them. I don't think that many shareholders would advocate violations of US law, but there needs to be a law to violate.
You misunderstand the division of responsibility. (Score:2)
- Incorporation sets up a barrier between corporate debts and the investors' personal resources, so that investors can invest with confidence that nothing more than what they invested is at risk. This barrier may only be "pierced" if the investor and company engaged in a criminal conspiracy and the investment was part of it.
- Corporate officers are responsible for keeping the corporation running inside the rules and maximizing
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BS and FUD.
If any company left the US, then there's a nice crispy spot in the market just waiting to be filled by a new enterpreneur, who had previously been prevented from entering the market by the dominant hegemony.
I think it would be a great thing if all the current large multinationals pulled out. Good riddance to bad rubbish. There's plenty of other Americans with the knowh
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Just a minor change to the law that makes it so companies cannot be sued by shareholders for merely upholding good moral standards: Company gets kicked out of China for refusi
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The fact is, our financial system depends on an amoral corporate structure (which is different from an immoral structure). Yes, we could create a new system that tries to be built on moral responsibility on the part of investors, but history has shown that such a system is less stable and less likely
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Just like it was laughably unlikely that Enron, Worldcom, and Arthur Anderson would simultaneously collapse?
The problem is that in reality the majority of sharehol
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If you know that giving your starving brother money will result in him buying drugs instead of food, it is immoral to give him money. Come up with a diff
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Or, perhaps, it will solve the problem of having a starving brother. I mean, if he's so far gone that he'll forgo needed nourishment for his drugs, giving him that last dose may push him over the edge. Problem solved.
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The board of directors has a fiduciary duty to look after the interests of the corporation. These interests are typically financial but if the corporate charter has goals other than profit, such as "do no evil", the directors can be liable for failing to uphold them.
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Every time someone states that Milton Friedman quote as a law, the trader loses his license.
parent is incorrect (Score:2)
They have a legal responsibility to act in the manner directed to them by the majority of voting shareholders
That is actually incorrect.
Directors must act in the best interests of the company as a whole. They are in some circumstances actually in breach of their duties if they act according to the will of the majority but to the detriment of the minority of shareholders, or to the detriment of the company as an independent entity. To act blindly according to directions of the majority would (depending on the nature of the decision) amount to an impermissible fettering of discretion. This is one of the reasons
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Show me the law.
There is, to my knowledge, no such law. What officers of a company have is a fiduciary duty [wikipedia.org] to increase stockholder value according to the terms of the stockholder's purchase of stock. This includes, and is almos
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That's ridiculous. Creating a tool does not make the manufacturer liable for its misuse. But even if it did, it's a bit of a double standard to condemn them for providing tools used by a non-ally government to do the same things our own government is allegedly doing. Congress should be reinforcing prote
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The officers of a company are not obligated to worry about stock values. They are obligated to act in the interest of the stockholders. If the stockholders value stock value above all else, then the officers of the company must act in a way which maximizes stock value. However, stockholders may hold core ethical values (e.g. environmentalism) above profit, in which case the officers of the company must act accordingly.
Yes, on the surface, it looks like capitalism fav
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That section would be a small paragraph out of a larger document that defined the goals of the company. I wouldn't be surprised if the stock holders voted for it.
Corporate Citizenship (Score:2)
For those on the left and right, it is a moral dilemma of huge proportions. The left doesn't want to legislate morality because they want free sex, porn on every corner, and unfettered access to abortion. The right doesn't want mo
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The executive's responsibility to keep the company profitable does not supersede human ethics. I love how this argument gets dragged out every time a company gets in hot water over aiding the Chinese, ect. Making money is not th
FCPA, anyone? (Score:2)
What, I wonder, is your opinion of the FCPA [wikipedia.org] — law, which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials? Gr
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However it decreases the freedom of the country as a whole to make its own laws on subjects their culture might disagree with the US on. Imagine the EU decided to make it illegal for companies to do business in areas where capital punishment exists. Different people, different cultures, different laws. By attempting to interfe
Re:Grow a pair (Score:4, Interesting)
No one is asking anyone to violate any nation's sovereignty and no one is taking away the right to run a business as one sees fit. American companies just want to have their cake and eat it too, make profit outside the USA doing while doing things not legal within our borders. I personally think that if an American company runs manufacturing facilities outside the USA they should still be bound by USA pollution standards, because it's all the same air and water.
This would only apply to Google if the law PASSED, I realize this.
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I'm not disagreeing with your logic, but reframing something we currently take for granted. Should U.S. incorporated companies have to pay minimium wage to overseas employees?
If you want to be a U.S. company, there are rules. (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite true; the primary obligation of a company is to the laws of the country that it is incorporated in, which is the closest you can get to where a fictitious, legal entity "resides." After that, then they have some responsibility to the laws of the country where they would also like to do business, but only if those laws don't conflict with their home country's.
If you don't want to follow U.S. laws, you just have to not be inco
Corporate/Government Pair (Score:2)
It takes balls for corporations to ask the government to regulate them, rather than the absolutely st
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Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.
More accurate translation: Make it so that all U.S. companies are forced to play by the same rules, so that the companies that opt to support human rights don't lose revenue to the companies that opt not to.
can you get any higher? (Score:2)
slashdot never fails to amaze me in terms of finding out there is always somebody who is capable of climbing to an even higher moral highground, no matter where the rest of the world stand.
Maybe the author is simply speculating on what those companies are thinking, but wouldn't this still be a lot be
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If these companies didn't do what they did China would just block all of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo.... From their country so the people will be left with Less Information then they would now, Also many of these American Companies wouldn't have the extra buisness.
What about in other countries that say the companies need to block "Bad Things", in which many I do personally find distaistful, Such as Racism, Sexuality, Violance,... Companies are woring on the Gray Line of what
Uhhuh (Score:3, Insightful)
Ambien
The companies protested that they had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were troubled by their own actions
Until they got the check and the good PR.
And is GOFA a good law?
No it's not. Such a law won't stop anything from happen, it'll merely move it out of the hands of US companies. I don't think that's a good thing.
Re:Uhhuh (Score:4, Interesting)
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But all contracts have a "separability clause" that says that anything in the contract that violates the law is automatically declared void without effecting the rest of the contract. So the contract payments et al remain in effect, while the agreement to be evil goes away.
Ingenious, really.
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Ingenious, really.
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I thought they slept on big piles of money.
Make internet technology a munition then (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a joke; they're all hypocrites, they all worship the almighty dollar over human liberty. Every company listed literally is falling over themselves to access new markets.
If you want to trade with countries like this, at least have the balls to owe up to what you're doing. You obviously don't feel THAT bad. I'm sure someone rotting away in jail because of your reporting feels much worse.
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Literally? How does an intangible company literally fall over? I think you might mean figuratively.
Sorry to be a pedant, but people do this all the time now and it's been starting to (figuratively) get my goat. 'Literal' has a specific meaning, and when people start using it when the opposite is the case, it just becomes pointless.
I'm sure someone will say that 'literally' is today being used to simple provide emphasis, whic
Well, we can start compiling the list already (Score:2, Troll)
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Korea
Korea... let me guess, you're american?
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GOFA would create a U.S.-government-designated list of "Internet restricting countries"
* United States
* China
* Korea
There's no such country now as "Korea", so I argue that this doesn't meet the qualification to be modded insightful . The original poster should explain whether he means the DPRNK (Democratic People's Republic of North Korea), the ROK (Republic Of Korea - that is, South Korea) or both.
Old News (Score:2)
When in China...
You basically have three choices:
1) Ignore the market and leave it to the competition if there is any.
2) Conform to the local rules to gain invaluable early adopters and possibly change things once you are in a position with leveredge.
3) Try to bend the market to your will. Call this the confrontational approach.
Of the three I'd submit that #2 has the best chance of success in the long term.
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Act like a Visigoth and burn it down?
Seriously, sometimes you can act like a barbarian and force your way in with the correct leverage battering ram. As you know the RIAA/MPAA has no qualms getting the DoJ and various other governmental agencies put pressure on Chinese authorities to comply with copyrights.
Why can't other businesses do the same with more altruistic purposes?
Sadly, maybe human rights doesn't earn stock holders or lobbyists enough money?
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I like this better as it puts civil rights in the hands of people, not corporations or governments. Somewhere in history this was shown to be better for us.
Like that will stop them (Score:3, Insightful)
At which point the Chinese government will erect the Great Firewall of China (adding in their buddy North Korea for good measure), and then force their citizens to use government-sponsored computers, routers, network connections, mail clients, etc. And then Chinese censors will be able to have the data anytime they want it. China has all the capability needed to do this, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
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But I suspect they would have enough technical acumen (accumulated and stolen) to cut off/severely limit traffic from the outside and impose their will on their own people. After all, even if their technology is not top-of-the-line, as long as they mandate its use, it will be top-of-the-line for China. Given no access vs. government-sponsored access, I think the Chinese would be pragmatic about it. However, as now, there would be a dissident community inside China trying to break through the restrictions.
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I highly doubt that they could actually do that.
If they had that capability, they wouldn't
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Au contrair. Given the Chinese penchant for copying what works, why wouldn't they let them in?
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Look for "Great Firewall" it is another name for the "Golden Shield Project", which has been policy in China since 1998.
Does this outlaw MPAA/RIAA strong-arming? (Score:3, Informative)
How they sleep (Score:5, Funny)
I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok
Doing internet business in communist and other countries which have oppressive regimes and following their local laws rather than US law (free speech, censorship, etc) is bad.
Pouring billions of dollars into their economy via manufacturing and giving them "preferred trading status" while following their local laws rather than US law (wage minimums, working conditions, etc) is good (See: China).
Makes perfect sense if you're a politician I suppose.
- Roach
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1) We spend billions of dollars and kill millions to fight terrorism and oppressive dictators in various countries, "because its the right thing".
2) We make drugs illegal and drug dealers import them from said countries instead of growing them here & taxing the crap out of them, and we manufacture billions of $$ of weapons and when they're not top-of-the-line anymore or we just have too many, we sell them to random places and they end up in the same said countries. I'd imagine all that
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Half of America doesnt believe in the minimum wage or government oversight on business at all. So it's no surprise at all that we don't champion those rights abroad.
Hell, America was one of the biggest impediments (and still is) to including social issues like wages and access to services in the universal declaration of human rights.
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If that's the case why isn't the same assumption made regarding rights?
You're saying we assume that a developing nation won't have our standards for work conditions, etc
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I think the idea is doing business in oppressive countries isn't intrinsically bad, but actually acting to help with the oppression [bbc.co.uk] is bad.
To use an emotive example, if I sold a million dollars worth of paper clips to nazi germany, that would be OK, but if I sold a million dollars
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Is it not "acting to help with the oppression" by using (and profiting) from sweat-shop labor without any action (or even interest) toward insisting that the conditions be improved? I don't see this as any different from the issue at hand (IT companies operating under local law).
I just don't buy the whole "dump buckets of money on them and suddenly they'll convert to capitalism" theory. I'm more of a realist that thinks the momen
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Where along the way did the working conditions improve or conversion to democracy occur? They simply wanted more money for what they were doing, and I doubt it went to the workers.
Last time I looked neither Korea nor Pakistan has a ro
the game (Score:2, Interesting)
Same Lame Blame Game
"There is nothing we can do to help you because our US government prevents us from doing that". Now their ass is covered and someone takes the heat for them. They want to take no risk or responsibility. Nothing new about this. Profit without liability.
A small correction (Score:2)
There, fixed that for ya.
So umm (Score:2)
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I've not been able to v
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I'm assuming this is supposed to be an attack on the US. If it is, you do realize that the constitution and our government was actually set up so that majority rule wasn't how everything was handled. There are a lot of ways that our government works to protect the rights of the minority over the opposition of the majority. So just because greater than 50% of constituents think it's bad po
Good old government (Score:5, Insightful)
They start bloody military conflicts where thousands are killed and maimed, trample on The Constitution, run up $8 trillion in national debt for future generations to pay off, etc. etc. and then have the AUDACITY to suggest that some corporate execs should be overwhelmed with guilt about filtering search results and shutting down web pages?
Re:Good old government (Score:5, Insightful)
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Certainly not in principle.
I won't go into the Yahoo! case, because, as one other post correctly pointed out, it shouldn't even be in the same category as the others. Let's focus on the actions of Google (since we couldn't get a fair trial for MS here). I'm not willing to concede that they actually did something "wrong" in their dealings with China, but for the sake of argument, I'll pretend it was som
GOFA meant well, but... (Score:2)
Nick
How to contact your people in Congress (Score:2, Informative)
You can get your 5+4 ZIP Code:
http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/ [usps.com]
And then find those who work for you in D.C. and your State capital:
http://www.congressweb.com/ [congressweb.com]
Cheers,
Tony
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And...?
You can't just label something and go "case rested." If you do realize blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, then you should also realize that not all kinds of "censorship" are bad, otherwise y
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No, it should be "We should respect the right of other peoples to form their laws around their own moral values." I don't really think in a country where its government censors all the publications, public speeches, and Internet traffic the people actually would have any right to form their own laws.
Nothing personal, but I think applying moral relativism to some fundamental human right issues is both hiding o
Summary of the summary? (Score:2)
U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countries (Score:2)
I deploy China's censorship as much as the next guy, and would
Re:U.S. on the list of Internet restricting countr (Score:2)
Our forefathers believed that all men on t
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"Restricting" isn't a binary condition (Score:2)
Proud To Be An American (Score:2)
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The reason there's a list of countries ... (Score:2)
(emphasis added)
... yet, we have the attorney general trying
Think about it -- a law which says a company isn't allowed to keep personally identifiable information, and isn't allowed to give it to the government
Useless Without International Sanctions (Score:3, Interesting)
This law still presents the danger of similar bad consequences. To the extent that foreign companies can still censor material we may see companies like Google who reluctantly censor material at government request replaced with foreign companies eager to please censoring government to curry favor. The net effect of this might be to create a second economy in censor friendly IT information. The last thing we want is to have a Chinese company position itself as a more censor-friendly alternative to google to all the oppressive regimes around the world.
So I'm unsure about the goodness of this bill. It may be on net positive or it may not.
What I would surely support would be an international treaty, signed by as many free societies as possible, that agrees to impose penalties on ANY company that colludes with government censorship. If the Chinese alternative to google can't avail itself of EU/US financial markets, get ad money from companies operating in these environments or otherwise access the free world it would prevent a censor friendly company from rising to offer an alternative to the free speech friendly services. Even better it would provide the best kind of pressure, internal demands by corporations who want to make money, on places like China to relax their censoring laws so their companies can compete in the world market.
Not to mention the fact that an international treaty like this would be more resistant to things like the US-Saudi friendship.
Oh well, here goes my karma (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, AT&T is turning over phone records to our fricken' government without either a warrant or a subpeona, legislation like the Patriot Act and CALEA is trampling over 200 years of civil rights, and detainees are rotting in Guantanamo Bay while Alberto Gonzales is saying that there is no guaranteed right to habeas corpus in the Constitution.
Give me a break--it must take some serious cojones to point the finger at China while doing as much as possible to emulate them right here in the good ole U.S. of A. <shakes head in disgust>
In Illinois... (Score:3, Informative)
This is not the case for other businesses. Most businesses in Illinois are open on Sunday; of course, they don't have to be open any day, and some business owners choose to keep their stores closed on Sunday.
But car dealerships must stay closed. I've been told that the dealerships all got together and asked the state legislature to pass a law enforcing this. Why would they ask for a law restricting their behavior? Probably because they wanted Sundays off, and knew that if other dealers opened on Sunday they'd have to open as well to stay competitive. If the law was removed and a single dealership in an area opened on Sunday it would only be a matter of time before they all opened. So the net result of the law is bad for working consumers looking to buy cars, who now have only one day out of their weekend to do it.
Tech companies' support of this law is exactly the same. They want to be protected against companies that would gladly do things that they don't want to do. But the net result of the law from the perspective of the government passing it, less choices for censoring governments, is probably a net positive for people in those countries (at least as our government sees it). It won't work totally; in fact, it might wind up like Illinois' ban on fireworks sales, leading to giant fireworks stores right across the Indiana and Wisconsin borders, totally outside the state's legislative arm.
The Solution to Authoritarianism? Authoritarianism (Score:3, Insightful)
The key to fighting totalitarianism, is to give the government totalitarian control so it can fight totalitarianism!
China has the same sort of laws already (Score:2)
Working for a company that is doing business online, and is entering the Chinese market, I can confirm that China has laws that prohibits personal information on their citizens
Why shouldn't companies obey the law? (Score:2)
That is, why would the US Congress get to say "ignore these laws that we don't like in China"
It's not our place to impose our views on another country!
Shades of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Score:2)
Turning over identifies and filtering content ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Microsoft was attacked for removing pages from MSN Spaces China at the behest of the government"
"Google was being criticized for removing political sites from search results displayed to China"
"Cisco was accused of helping to enable Chinese filtering of the Web"
This is a poor list. Turning over identifies and removing/filtering content are vastly different activities. You trivialize the former by lumping it in with the later.
Re: (Score:2)
One form of control is no better or worse than the other.
I jwould assert that you are wrong... (Score:2)
Removing information is bad but in no way causes the human suffering that turning people over to be arrested causes. Your remark is rather stunning...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Too many isms are bad for you.