Human Rights and a Code of Conduct for China's Web

Ian Lamont writes "Human Rights Watch is preparing a code of conduct that specifies how major Internet service providers and portal operators should deal with Internet censorship in China. An officer for the group expressed concern that the Chinese government is 'setting the standard on control of the Internet' and also singled out international companies working in China for preemptively blocking access in 'anticipation of requests from the government' rather than waiting for orders from Beijing to block access. China has recently blocked YouTube following the posting of videos about the Tibetan protests, but has been unable to completely stop the flow of Tibet-related information in and out of China, thanks in part to bloggers and others using spam tactics to bypass Chinese filters."

corporate consciousness

It's interesting that this should even need to be spelled out. Normally you'd expect companies and the people who run them to have enough of a moral backbone that they don't need external input on things like this.

Because quarterly profits are the only yardstick by which management is rewarded / demoted all other considerations have gone out the window. As long as there is not direct link between ethics and profits I highly doubt any of this will make a difference.

Re:corporate consciousness

It is interesting that although the article talks about China, your comment can be applied internationaly.

Re:corporate consciousness

Because quarterly profits are the only yardstick by which management is rewarded...

It's not just that. Management can be sued by shareholders if it intentionally enters a course of action that decreases profits, even if the action is ethical.

Re:

Normally you'd expect companies and the people who run them to have enough of a moral backbone that they don't need external input on things like this.

That, is the funniest thing I've read all day.

Olympic response

The code is due in the next couple of months and comes in the run up to the Beijing Olympic Games that begin in August.

I am interested in what will happen when the Olympics go the China and the press/visitors/athletes respond to the censorship there. I doubt it would change anything automatically but no doubt will put some pressure on the government since it will be under the scrutiny of the entire world.

Re:Olympic response

This is just my gut instinct speaking but... There will be atleast one, probably several international incidents at the Olympics.

Unless the Chinese government totally changes the way they do things, this is inevitable. There will be people taking advantage of the Olympics to do missionary work. There will be people taking advantage of the Olympics to publisize China's many indescretions.

How will the government respond? Are we going to have dozens of people arrested, imprisoned and/or deported? In a way, I almost hope we do, it would open the worlds eyes to just what is happens there, how restricted freedoms really are.

Re:Olympic response

How will the government respond? Are we going to have dozens of people arrested, imprisoned and/or deported?

The last time the Chinese government responded to a large gathering of popular dissent, which as you say will surely accompany a high profile global event such as the Olympics, they did it with tanks, tear gas, and machine guns [wikipedia.org]. I suspect that not much has changed since then.

Re:Olympic response

The last time the Chinese government responded to a large gathering of popular dissent, which as you say will surely accompany a high profile global event such as the Olympics, they did it with tanks, tear gas, and machine guns [wikipedia.org]. I suspect that not much has changed since then.

The authoritarian nature of the government probably hasn't changed, but quite a few things have- remember, that was 20 years ago. First, the explosion of portable digital devices- digital cameras, digital video cameras, cell phones, Blackberries, and laptops; second, the explosion of networks, including the Internet and the cellular network, to distribute digital data. Given the number of tourists they are expecting, Beijing will be under greater scrutiny than at any time in its history, and there will be no way to stop the videos once they get out. Third, Beijing is now linked to the United States and the rest of the world by trade. That puts the government in a bind: they want to maintain control, but they also want to keep the money rolling in, and a crackdown on any protests could harm trade with the West. We'll see what happens; the government crackdown in Tibet has been pretty effective, but Tibet isn't overrun with Westerners carrying video cameras and laptops.

Re:

My non-crystal ball reading of the Chinese authorities view of Tienanmen incident is that it wasn't supposed to happen. Not even back then. Well probably not due to "human rights" concerns or the casualties, but in any case it was a mishandling of public d

Re:Olympic response

The cat concentration camps [dailymail.co.uk] in Beijing have already gotten some bad responses. They are basically culling cats in the city, and it looks like people are being encouraged to give their pet cats to teams who round up cats in the city. The govt says it is to prevent disease, but civet cats wasn't really the problem with SARS so this is just a campaign to clean up their image, which may actually be doing the opposite.

Re:Olympic response

...it would open the worlds eyes to just what is happens there, how restricted freedoms really are.

But will the world really respond in any meaningful way? I think most people realize how oppressive the Chinese government is. But, they sell cheap goods, so we (US-centric here) won't interfere with them economically. (As a side note, I have a graphic on my wall that they gave me at work - A bald eagle soaring in front of an American flag with the phrase "Proud to be an American" emblazoned on it. I have it turned and circled to display the "MADE IN CHINA" mark on the back.) They can treat their neighbors however they choose and we respond by putting 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers on our cars. Military interaction would, of course, be disastrous.

The only way that the Chinese government would listen to any outside influence would be strong economic sanctions tied to behavioral changes. And we rely on them so thoroughly at this point that sanctions strong enough to be noticed would be suicide...

Any ideas?

American companies exporting censorware

It's not just ISPs and sites who can be faulted for co-operating with foreign censors. Much of the censorware used by such governments is developed in America. A great step would be to introduce legislation to expose which companies are selling censorware to foreign governments. This a tool of oppression, and exports should be scrutinized like weapons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/opinion/09jardin.html [nytimes.com]

like the geneva convention?

like the geneva convention stopped atrocities in war? please

human rights watch writing a code of conduct won't convince china of anything. it won't change its ways. if american companies didn't help them, they'd get someone else to help them, or do it themselves

what's more important to you? helping human rights in china? or shaming american companies? the shaming of american companies should be put aside in pursuit of the larger more noble goal: getting free imformation to chinese citizens

how do you do that? writing a code of conduct? preventing china from using your expertise to build their firewall?

no and no

you defeat the great firewall of china with better guerilla apps. anyone who care about this issue should forget about shaming codes of conduct or shushing american companies that helped the technocrats in beijing

instead what you do is you build proxy servers, ip obfuscators, p2p web traffic redirectors, content caching, etc., etc.: you wage war with the great firewall with china, you smuggle content around it, you render all of the technocrat's efforts to screen what chinese citizens see fruitless and pointless and a joke

that's where you put your effort

shaming colluding american companies or writing well-intentioned but pointless codes of conduct means nothing. results mean something

get to writing those guerilla apps if you really care about this issue. shaming american companies or writing ivory tower codes of conduct is pointless if you really want to help regular chinese escape their hermetically sealed tomb of sanitized braindead propaganda

they'll never do that

walling yourself off from the world makes your country go into decline. all countries need an exchange of ideas with the outer world to prosper. the grumpy old men in beijing are controlling bastards, but they aren't stupid

even if only the elite chinese ge

Start in the USA first

Can we get a code of conduct here in the USA about ISPs not blocking content? And, can we get Comcast to sign it?

Re:

Wouldn't it be more important to get Comcast to follow it?

Instead of a "code of conduct" for the ISPs

Let's create a workaround and eliminate the need for for them entirely. That would be much more likely to bring about the desired result.

Re:first post

ok seriously why are why having the Olympics there again?

Re:

ok seriously why are why having the Olympics there again?

They bought the rights to do it.

Re:Hypocritical maybe?

I guess the day the world can't come to the conclusion that oppression is not unethical, is the day that humanity will lose all form of justice. I understand this isn't just about Tibet, but the overall censorship of China's web. However, when a country is censoring its own atrocities from its people it is a global problem.

No one cares of course, China's disregard for environmental and humane concerns of its own people give the rest of the world the cheapest goods.

Re:

If the Chinese government chooses to block YouTube, or any site which publishes articles critical of the government, that is their right. Every government, whether you like it or not, has the right to dictate the rules within its boundaries.

Wrong. Govern

Re:

Wrong. Governments are only valid if they rule with the consent of the people. Otherwise, they can and must be destroyed.

What crack are you on? There are dozens of governments around the world which do not rule with the consent of the people, includi

Re:It's their country

If the Chinese government chooses to block YouTube, or any site which publishes articles critical of the government, that is their right. Every government, whether you like it or not, has the right to dictate the rules within its boundaries.

Rights? Governments have no rights. Rights are inherent to the person and not the state. They can neither be granted nor taken away by the state.

That said, Governments do have sovereignty which I agree that China has. However, the Chinese government does not have the right to torture, murder, or repress the freedom of its citizens. It is wrong and the practice should stop.

Now I will admit, I have a very relativistic western view on the matter, but I don't see how you can say that killing protesters even if they are violent is OK.

Even in the LA riots in the states we didn't have soldiers shooting people indiscriminately without attempts to use non-lethal methods.

At the same time, I will agree that its not our business to go into China forcefully with our military and force them to stop (or any nation for that matter) but it doesn't mean we shouldn't ignore the fact they do such a thing.

Re:

No entity has inherent rights. Only the ability to assert his/her/its will.

Even something so basic as having the right to live is meaningless unless they can stop those that decide they don't have that right.

The reality is that moral arguments, the weight

Re:It's their country

It is a mistake to assume that governments still have unlimited leeway to do whatever they want within their borders. That is why we have human rights: to protect individual citizens against their states, and that's why organisations like Human Rights Watch can express opinions on the human rights situation in all countries, including China. In the past sixty years, these rights have grown from what you would probably call utopian ideals into actual legal rights in international law, so much so that the originally non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights [unhchr.ch], which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, is now considered to be an expression of customary international law. If a notion of customary law is too vague for you, the fact still remains that the great majority of states have signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ohchr.org], which guarantees the freedom of speech in Article 19, which includes the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds". This right can only be restricted in accordance with the provisions of that article. China has signed up to this treaty, although it still has to ratify it. However, as a matter of treaty law it has to refrain from acts which would be incompatible with the purpose of the treaty there's quite a strong argument that arbitrary censorship violates it.

I will be the first to admit that there are all kinds of shortcomings in the protection of human rights through international treaties, but the only point that I want to make here is that you are incorrect when you state that every government "has the right to dictate the rules within its boundaries". That right is no longer absolute, and in large part this is the result of governments providing the stick they are beaten with themselves by signing human rights treaties. It took only sixty years to get where we are now, so the utopian society you mention may be less than a thousand years away.