Many many folks who work for Google are horrified that Google agreed to
make a censored version of its search engine. This act is in
direct opposition to a fundamental value of the company, which is to
make the fruits of the web widely available to people. From the
beginning, Google aimed to be the most open and the most independent of
search engines, relying on Page Rank and other objective,
machine-generated rules for bringing the best, most relevant content
forward. Google employees that I know believe in the social as
well as the business mission of the firm.
So our beef on this blog is not with Google folks. In fact, our
idea of "saving Google" is that a decision of this nature by a
company--to go against its fundamental values--tarnishes the message
and mission of a company, and erodes the moral fabric of a
company. Said in more Silicon Valley terms, it distorts the force
of innovation. Innovation is a powerful unifying drive.
When innovation in a company like Google is turned to enabling state
censorship, this can't be easy or good.
Is our beef with Google management? Not really. We know
folks in Google management, and really like them. The problem is
the management decision to support Chinese censorship, which can be
reversed. The problem also is the ham-handed follow-up
rationalization of Google support for censorship as promoting freedom
and democracy. And within this rationalization, the disingenous
focus on improving speed of search results, drawing attention away from
the real reason Google entered China, which is to sell ads.
By the way, I think that the best argument for Google being in China,
one I heard from a senior Google executive months ago, is that by
paying ad sense money to bloggers and other web folk in China, Google
is getting independent financial resources to the most progressive
members of Chinese society.
Unfortunately, this argument has not been aired by Google, because it
would focus attention on the ad side of the Google business.
An otherwise open and straight-forward management is beginning to
communicate in corporateze. This cannot be good for Google, for
Google folks, nor for Google management people.
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Many people are talking about that anti-apartheid campaign against the
government of South Africa as a model for how to deal with information
censorship and imprisonment of Internet activists in China.
Consumer action
The anti-apartheid campaign succeeded in part because of hard-edged,
highly public demands by citizen-consumer that "their" companies stop
supporting the South African Government. The most grassroots of
actions were probably the consumer boycotts and picketing. The most
visible target was Polaroid Corporation, which made instant film used
for id photos in South Africa. The white South African government of
the time made all blacks register and carry with them at all times a
photo id, sort of an internal passport. If the passport were
confiscated, lost, or stolen, a black person simply could not travel
outside of their home.
Thus Polaroid was a highly visible target, with a product that people
could easily understand, and a use that people could clearly see was
supporting apartheid.
Todays campaign against the government of China has parallels to the
anti-apartheid campaign. Why is Google a good company to focus on?
Because most people understand search engines, and value the breadth of
offerings revealed by a good search. It is easy to visualize a
censored search, and understand how a censored search, like censored
news, is a way to distort the reality of a nation.
An ecosystem of protest
The success of the campaign against apartheid did not depend on one
thing. The campaign against apartheid was an ecosystem of
protest, aimed at crippling the apartheid system by denying it the
support of international companies.
The campaign against apartheid was a co-evolving system of
1. Political activists inventing new forms of protest and creative interference,
2. Religious and social activists who visited South Africa and helped maintain the spirits of Nelson Mandela and others in prison and in the resistance,
3. A strong revolutionary movement led by the African
National Congress, and funded by a variety of international supporters,
ranging from wealthy individuals, foundations, and governments,
4. US goverrnment action to prevent certain business practices and to prohibit the export of certain technologies to South Africa,
5. Consumer boycotts against companies such as Polaroid Corporation (more below),
6. Divestiture campaigns to force pension funds and university endowments to divest shares in companies that did business in South Africa,
7. Voluntary agreement among major companies on the
"Sullivan Principles" for doing business in South Africa in a manner
intended to undermine the apartheid system.
The good news, if there is any, is that each person can find a way to
participate in the movement for human rights on the web. There
are many niches that need to be filled. There are many ways to
work together for this vital change.
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Expect that major US technology companies, stung by critics and afraid
of stiff and immediate government action, to attempt to come up with
some sort of voluntary self-monitoring solution. Expect Google to
do so, for sure.
Let us consider possible elements of a voluntary solution that Google might "impose" on itself.
Privacy: It is comparatively easy for Google and other
similar companies to voluntarily protect privacy. They do not
have to do anything affirmative--but rather they have to NOT give out
personal information. Passivity and bureacracy work.
Companies could simply set up some sort of independent process that
nations would have to deal with in order to get access to personal
records. The process could perhaps be US court-based, along the
lines of what is required to get a search warrant against a US
citizen. Of course, ironically, the US government of late has not
been good about respecting privacy, so there would be juicy ironies in
such a solution. But it could work.
Censorship: Companies like Google have a bigger problem
with censorship, because in order to stop it they must assure that
content gets to its end users, and this requires proactive and
affirmative efforts. It also requires gaining support from ISPs
and others who are independently in position to filter content.
The best outcome might be an alliance among the big three companies to insist on an open, free web
in any nation in which they do business. The big three would need
to be prepared to exit China if they must continue to be
censored. And the big three would need the US government to
pressure China to accept that unfiltered content provided by these
companies.
This would be an alliance of the newly strong, strong enough in unity
of shared values that they could insist that China open up the web to
its citizens.
The world is currently invisibly split between nations where the web is
open, and those where it is closed. Under a highly public
agreement, the world would then be knowingly and visibly split into the
open and the closed web. Citizens around the world would know if
their content was being filtered. And citizens of free nations
would be aware of those that are not.
The worst outcome might be termed a "layered" solution, where China and other authoritarian nations are free to filter and stop content from web sites, but Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft won't self-censor.
This would leave Google and its compatriots free to do business in
China and other dictatorships, and absolve them of responsibility for
censorship. They would be willing to proclaim that they deliver
the entire web to China and other nations, and the governments of those
nations are free to allow in what they want. Of course, the
reality is that Google and others would be guilty of playing key roles
in a value chain that delivers a filtered, scrubbed,
politically-correct web experience. The would provide the raw
material to be screened, cleansed, and shipped on--in part--to China's
citizens.
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Excerpt from the Washington Post
After Flowering as Forum, Wikipedia Is Blocked Again
By Philip
P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 20,
2006; A01
BEIJING
-- When access to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, was
disrupted across China last October, a lanky chemical engineer named Shi Zhao
called his Internet service provider to complain. A technician confirmed what
Shi already suspected: Someone in the government had ordered the site blocked
again.
Who and
why were mysteries, Shi recalled, but the technician promised to pass his
complaint on to higher authorities if he put it in writing.
"Wikipedia
isn't a Web site for spreading reactionary speech or a pure political
commentary site," Shi, 33, wrote a few days later. Yes, it contained
entries on sensitive subjects such as Taiwan and the 1989
Tiananmen Square massacre, but users made sure its articles were objective,
he said, and blocking it would only make it harder for people in China to
delete "harmful" content.
Shi was
hopeful the government would agree. When the site was blocked in 2004, he had
submitted a similar letter, and access had been quickly restored. Since then,
the Chinese-language edition of Wikipedia had grown, broadening its appeal not
only as a reference tool but also as a forum where people across China
and the Chinese diaspora could gather, share knowledge and discuss even the
most divisive subjects.
But
today, four months after Shi submitted his letter, Wikipedia remains blocked.
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Xiao Qiang was a leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests,
and was a founder of Human Rights In China. He is currently a McArthur
Fellow.
Statement by Xiao
Qiang
Director,
China Internet Project, The Graduate School
of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley
February 15, 2006
House
International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Africa,
Global Human Rights and International Operations
Mr. Chairman,
respectful members of the subcommittee,
My name is Xiao Qiang.
I am the director of China Internet Project at the Graduate School of Journalism,
University of California
at Berkeley. In the twelve preceding years I also served
as Executive Director of Human Rights in China, and have testified in front
of this subcommittee many times. I
applaud your strong leadership on human rights in U.S. foreign policy. Three years ago, I decided to assume a new challenge and have
been exploring the digital communication revolution and how it has affected China’s ongoing
social and political transformation. It
is my privilege to testify in front of this subcommittee again.
Let me start with a personal story – one of the most
unforgettable experiences in my years as a human rights activist. In
November 1992, an oceanographer in Seattle
called my office at Human Rights in China
after finding a bottle that had been drifting across the Pacific
Ocean for eleven years. A
leaflet inside contained information about Wei Jingsheng, then China’s most
prominent political prisoner, who had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison
in 1979. Until the contents of the bottle arrived on my desk in New York, the world had
not heard anything about Wei since his sentencing.
Fourteen years
later, we need not rely on fortuitous messages in bottles to receive news from
inside the People’s Republic of China.
The country is continually opening to the outside world, with an exploding internet population of over 110 million, and a booming high tech
industry. China is now a member of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and will host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. But what has not changed is the one party
authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Today’s China
has no fewer political prisoners than fourteen years ago, including an
increasing number of individuals who express themselves online.
Although the
Chinese authorities acknowledge that China needs the economic benefits
the Internet brings, they also fear the political fallout from the free flow of
information. Since the Internet first reached the country, the government has
used an effective multi-layered strategy to control online content and monitor
online activities at every level of Internet service and content.
Over the last
two and a half years, my China Internet Project in Berkeley
has been researching and monitoring the censorship mechanisms in the People’s
Republic of China. I gave my written and oral testimony to the U.S.-China
Economic and Security Review Commission
in April 2005 on this subject, in which I outlined four layers of Chinese
Internet control: law, technology, propaganda and self-censorship. I will not elaborate on these contents
further in this hearing.
Mr. Chairman,
let me now address the central question of this hearing: the role of U.S. information technology companies in China’s
censorship mechanism. It has become
painfully clear to the American public in recent months that some of this
country’s leading information technology companies, including Google, Yahoo!,
Microsoft and Cisco, who are here today,
have, to differing degrees, aided
or complied with China’s internet censorship policies, in order to gain a
presence in the lucrative China
market. We are all familiar with the
individual cases, which have been widely reported in the media, so I will not
go into detail. More
important than the individual cases is the fact that the problems faced by a
few U.S. information
technology companies today in China
have a real impact on their industry as a whole, not to mention the global condition of human
freedom and dignity.
The challenge
in front of us, Mr. Chairman, is to find a way to help these information
technology companies work in concert, perhaps with some of the world’s great
research universities, to establish a set of guiding principles for the entire
information and communication technology industry. These principles, or
standards and practices, should transcend individual companies’ own
relationship to any given market. In other words, to seek collective ways
to find the ability to resist demands for information or technology that
violate fundamental human rights .
These
standards and practices should support and respect the protection of universal
human rights. They should also reflect specific beliefs of the industry such as
open access to communication networks, promotion of free speech, and protection
of the security and privacy of information. They should be subscribed to by the
information technology companies on a voluntary basis.
These
standards and practices should serve not only as a catalyst and compass for
corporate responsibility, but also as a buffer for companies operating in a
political environment where freedom of expression is restricted. Such
defense mechanisms should include all possible means, from transparency to
non-collaboration and even resistance, to help these companies avoid aiding in
or colluding with human rights abuses.
Having a set
of standards and practices is not enough, however. It will only be effective if
processes are simultaneously set up to actively promote, implement, and monitor
the standards. The information technology industry should also make the
implementation of these standards and practices transparent and provide information
which demonstrates publicly their commitment and adherence to them. Congress,
the media, company shareholders, universities, non-governmental organizations,
and the public all have an important role to play in helping the corporations
be accountable to these standards.
Developing
such standards and practices will not be easy, and it is a process in which
academic institutions can have an important facilitating role. Three university
institutions—The China
Internet Project of the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California
at Berkeley; the Berkman Center
for Internet & Society at
Harvard Law
School; and the Oxford Internet
Institute in the United Kingdom—will
initiate a set of public meetings and
private workshops with interested information technology companies in the
coming months. Our challenge is to find ways in which rigorous research and
writing can constructively address this problem. We want to work together with
industry leaders and other academic researchers and
programs to develop a set of lasting standards which are credible, consistent, and effective.
Mr. Chairman,
respectful members of the sub-committee,
In the last
century, we witnessed numerous atrocities and destruction, but also the
prevailing tide of human solidarity in the struggle for freedom. One of the
glorious battles was fought in South Africa,
where the international community, including many U.S. corporations, stood behind the
South African people’s struggle against apartheid. During that period, a great American citizen,
Leon Sullivan, authored the Sullivan Principles to help the U.S. business
community exercise their collective strength to defend fundamental values of
human dignity.
Today, a
similar struggle is unfolding over the Internet, including in countries such as
my homeland, China,
where the authoritarian government is battling to hold back the tide of free
expression. Ultimately, freedom will
prevail as our planet becomes ever more interconnected and interdependent. I believe that once again, American corporations have an opportunity to
be on the right side of the history.
Thank you Mr.
Chairman.
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An excellent article in the current Newsweek online, MSNBC:
China has also proved that censorship pays: it has developed a
successful model for how government and business can collaborate to
censor a nation's Internet activities. This model could be applied in
any country. If we're not careful, we may wake up one day to discover
that what a person can see and do on the Web will be radically
different depending on which country he or she lives in: the Internet
will become "The Internets." And U.S. tech firms won't have much of
value left to sell if the Internet ceases to be the wonderful,
world-connecting thing it is today. They must find a way to make their
money in China without checking their values at the border. Morality
aside, the long-term survival of their industry depends on it.
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Reporters Without Borders says it well in this statement:
China - United States
25 January 2006
Google launches censored version of its search-engine
Reporters Without Borders today accused the Internet’s biggest search-engine, Google,
of “hypocrisy” for its plan to launch a censured version of its product
in China, meaning that the country’s Internet users would only be able
to look up material approved of by the government and nothing about
Tibet or democracy and human rights in China.
“The launch of Google.cn
is a black day for freedom of expression in China,” the worldwide press
freedom organisation said. “The firm defends the rights of US Internet
users before the US government but fails to defend its Chinese users
against theirs.
“Google’s
statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy
in view of its strategy in China. Like its competitors, the company
says it has no choice and must obey Chinese laws, but this is a tired
argument. Freedom of expression isn’t a minor principle that can be
pushed aside when dealing with a dictatorship. It’s a principle
recognised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and features in
the Chinese national constitution itself.
“US firms are now bending to the same
censorship rules as their Chinese competitors but they continue to
justify themselves by saying their presence has a long-term benefit.
Yet the Internet in China is becoming more and more isolated from the
outside world and freedom of expression there is shrinking. These
firms’ lofty predictions about the future of a free and limitless
Internet conveniently hide their unacceptable moral errors,”
The point that I find the most compelling: The Internet is NOT
getting freer in China. On the contrary, the Chinese
Internet--like those in other dictatorships--is walled off from the
rest of the world. The reason that Google self-censorship is so
important to the Chinese government is that the search engines provide
almost the only glimpses of the outside--and if the government can
shape the view coming through the only windows, it can effectively
shape its citizens' view of the world.
We in the United States do not understand the significance of
censorship, because we live with almost none of it, and thus our
baseline world view is quite comprehensive compared to the average
citizen of urban China. Thus if we were faced with a censored
Internet, we would largely understand what we were missing.
The average Chinese is just now attempting to develop his or her view
of the outside world. He or she is likely to support the Chinese
government, and to vastly under-rate its powers of propoganda.
Thus when the average Chinese faces an Internet that is largely shaped
to conform with the government point of view, he or she figures that
this point of view has been validated.
Google argues that if 90% of the content about democracy is censored in
China, the average Chinese will piece together a solid alternative to
his or her government's point of view, by drawing on the 10% that gets
through. This is very unlikely. Much more likely that the
alternatives, having been limited to the fringe, will be seen as
cranky, minority positions. The world as seen by most Chinese
will be the 90% point of view.
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Many thanks to Search Engine Watch!
Seach Engine Watch has some of the best current news on Google self-censorship and China. Things seem to be heating up for Google in China.
From Reuters, by way of SEW:
The China Business Times, a business paper with a sometimes nationalist
slant, blasted Google for even telling users that links are censored.
"Does a business operating in China need to constantly tell customers that
it's abiding by the laws of the land?" it said, adding that Google had
"incited" a debate about censorship.
The paper likened Google to "an uninvited guest" telling a dinner host "the
dishes don't suit his taste, but he's willing to eat them as a show of respect
to the host".
Search Engine Watch also has this very helpful summary of recent links on Google self-censorship.
For more on Google's controversial entry into China, see these past articles
from us:
Want to comment or discuss? Please visit the
Google
Agrees To Chinese Censorship thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.
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Several of us have been quite disturbed by Google going into China, and
so we have decided to blog about it.
Google is censoring out content like "Democracy" from the Chinese version of its search engine.
Why is this a problem?
Because Google is one of the only companies in the world that can meaningfully stand up to the
Chinese government.
Google is a strong company, with stakeholders who would support a strong stand for democracy and human rights.
Google has something the Chinese government wants: access
to business users, and a platform for business advertising. What
the Chinese government wants is to use the web to facilitate its
economic efficiency and growth, while denying freedom of speech and
human rights to its people. Google could have insisted that the
price for its economic platform was openness to the web as a social
platform.
Instead Google invested substantial resources in modifying its platform
to create a censored view of the world, custom-made for the Chinese
government. Innovation in censorship technology is not, in my
view, a good thing for Google to invest in. Innovation in
severing the relationship between capitalism and democracy is not a
good thing. On the contrary, democracy naturally promotes
economic development, and economic development organically promotes
democracy. To have growth without democracy is an unnatural
act. Growth without democracy is requires artificial boundaries
and walls of the type the Chinese government is prepared to invest
billions to maintain. These billions are an almost irresistable
temptation to unscrupulous technology companies. Thus the selling
out of Google.
Imagine if the CEO of Google had said the
following:
We are a billion dollar company, we have billions in the bank, and we have pledged to "not do evil."
We are unique in having a group of customers, employees and stockholders who care about our responsibility as a corporation.
We genuinely believe that sometimes a company must make a short-term
sacrifice in order to be true to its long-term values. We are
convinced such sacrifices are often good business, because in the long
term customers prefer to do business with companies they believe in,
employees are loyal to firms they believe in, and data shows that the
stock prices of companies with strong values tend to exceed those
without.
However, even if we have to take a sacrifice that will not be rewarded,
we are thankful for what our nation has given us, and we want to give
back something of significance to our country and our world.
As Hillel said, "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
So we have decided not to go into China until the Chinese government
ends Internet censorship and frees those who have already been arrested
for speaking freely on the web.
Moreover, we ask other technology companies who are our peers--Yahoo,
Microsoft and Cisco in particular--to join with us in actively
promoting an open, free, democracy-enabling worldwide Internet.
We ask that these companies and others stop helping the Chinese
government to censor the Internet and intimidate, arrest and imprison
those who would speak freely.
Unfortunately, Google did not say this.
Instead, Google agreed to
censor its content as a condition of being allowed by the Chinese government to extend Google's advertising business into China.
We know many customers, employees, and stockholders who
are profoundly disappointed in Google.
Google has now lauched an aggressive public relations campaign to deflect criticism.
The campaign is built around two arguments, both questionable.
The first argument is that Google went into China to provide its customers with
faster search results. The real reason that Google went into China is to sell
billions of
dollars in online advertising to millions of Chinese companies.
The
truth is that the only way to do the advertising business in China is to get a license from the Chinese
government, and locate the business within China. Google did not
sell out in order to speed searches. Google sold out in order
to extend its advertising business into the world's largest potential
market.
The second argument is that by providing a censored search service in
China, Google is promoting openness and democracy, because the filters
it uses are "leaky" and lots of banned information gets past.
The reality is that the Chinese government wants Google's service in
order to promote Chinese international trade, and--to some extent--to
keep its people happy and focused on material advancement.
The realilty is that after almost a decade of the Internet in China,
the Chinese government is stronger, and its control on its citizens
firm. The Chinese government is remarkably effective at selling
propoganda to its own people, and appears to be becoming more rather
than less adapt at controlling information.
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