China Pushes Censorship Amidst Google Threat
China says it's their way or the highway.
This week, headlines were filled with Google's bold statement that it might pull out of China altogether in response to hacker attacks.
"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," said Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.
"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," were the telling words from Drummond.
While the threat of the world's most important internet company pulling its operations from within a country is serious, the Chinese officials have yet to even flinch.
According to Bloomberg, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing in Beijing today that Chinese law prohibits hacking and other forms of online attacks.
Jiang Yu said, "The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet."
While the Chinese spokeswoman did not directly apply that statement to Google, the message appears clear that if Google is unwilling to play by the country's censorship laws, then the internet giant has no place in China.
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I say screw em. A free open source company like Google has no place in an obviously fascist country that censors and restricts everything. If they don't want Google, why should Google want to stay? (minus the obvious 6 billion clicks...)
Is anyone really surprised?
Looks like there is actually a good chance google will abandon china ...
Of course then china will just release it's own search engine that censors every website that doesn't praise the republic.
O RLY?
I'm sure the Chinese gov't spends $$$ on training hackers for the Chinese Cyber Army.
It's ok they don't need Google when they have Bi-ying
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/ [...] osoft.html
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/n [...] t-bing.ars
This whole censorship non-sense is just smoke screen. Google cries censorship but China has 6 billion people with growing incomes. BMW launched it's flagship 7 series in China. Rolls Royce sells more cars in China (including Hong Kong) than any other place. It's clear and evident that the Chinese want a cut of the search engine pie and doesn't want Google to conduct business without any kick backs. Bottom line, Google has much more to lose than China. Google "threatening" to leave... ha ha. That's like threatening a super hot chick that you don't want to boink her. In my book Google as of late acts quite communist itself - very controlling and snooping around everyone's gmail and google services. Talk about big brother.
Google can't go ahead with it, it would take a humongous bite into their sales
Well , Google should get the hell out of there as fast as they can I say, China sounds pissed. If they were dealing with the North Koreans they wouldn't have a building left by now.
People living in the US cry bloody murder whenever the topic of other countries censoring thing is brought up.
I just want to point out that the US censors also. We decide that child pornography is not ok but adult pornography is. It's a matter of degree what we think is censorship worthy and what is not and there is not necessarily a moral high ground to take.
I'm sure there are people in the states that would like some more control on the media their children are exposed to and that's very close to censorship.
China goes too far in this from our point of view but who is to say where we draw the line is the perfect place?
is simple that if you want to deal with the chinese government you have to follow their rule or else go away. why that google keep want to stay in china. if google goes away I bet yahoo will rise.
Fuck China! I wish companies would stop producing there to teach the communists a lesson.
I just hope Google cleaned out their China offices of anything important or valuable. I know of two companies in my industry that had equipment that got "lost" (i.e. seized by the gov't). When the Chinese gov't found out that the companies planned to move operations to another country.
Google is upset because China spies Google better than Google spies China.
If u look better at Google they are nothing more than a spy machine since they scan all the internet sites that's nothing more than spying.
I say screw em. A free open source company like Google has no place in an obviously fascist country that censors and restricts everything. If they don't want Google, why should Google want to stay? (minus the obvious 6 billion clicks...)
Did you just say Fascist? This is how ignorant you are about China, so you shouldn't even be talking.
China has 6 billion people with growing incomes.
China has 1.3 billion people. Not 6 billion.
BTW Google is not a search engine it's a spy engine
BTW Google is not a search engine it's a spy engine
You obviously know nothing about search engine technology.
BMW launched it's flagship 7 series in China. Rolls Royce sells more cars in China (including Hong Kong) than any other place.
Buying high-priced items doesn't make someone better than someone else. If ignorance makes you rich, I'd rather be poor. [citation]
[nom]setoo[/nom]I just want to point out that the US censors also. We decide that child pornography is not ok but adult pornography is. [/citation]
The US is far less censored than other countries (point in case, the article above). Sure, you can't get child porn...but really? Come on. It's child porn for god sakes...that ruins kids' lives - whereas a politically-aligned or intellectual website doesn't. At least US citizens can get get access to whatever political or technical content they want.
@frozenlead - since u deny a truth everything you continue saying it's a lie
Apparently I needed to put /sarcasm on my post above.
When you have companies like Micro$oft eager to enter the Chinese market, and willing to censor, and Baidu already there complying to the governments every wish, Google has made the best decision.
Yeah.. go away and let my Baidu stocks rock.
Why Google suddenly cares about privacy?
Wait, Google can invade other people's privacy, steal and sell for $$$ but Google cries when others invade Google.
@frozenlead - since u deny a truth everything you continue saying it's a lie
...that doesn't even make sense? I've no idea what you're trying to say. You didn't prove/provide proof of what you said. I'm not inclined to believe it. I think you're confusing 'spying' with web crawling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawling
communism != facism. In fact, they're kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum.
... In my book Google as of late acts quite communist itself - very controlling and snooping around everyone's gmail and google services. Talk about big brother.
Acting 'communist' do you even understand the words you use? Look up the word communist and see what it says, now go and realise what complete nonsense your statement actually is. The Big Brother syndrome is not linked to communism any more than it is capitalism. Gods i hate people who just trot out the same brainwashed 'communism is bad m'kay' without understanding what they are actually talking about. Shame you had to ruin your post with such ill informed twaddle, because apart from that you make a good point.
okay, azetec, if google is a spy engine, then all search engines are spy engines
I just feel sad. Soon the internet in China will become a massive LAN. Feel sorry for Chinese people, they can't decide what they want and what they DON'T want for themselves.
I posted this to cnet earlier....
Have you guys lost your ability of critical thinking? You are pretty much taking Google's words completely at face value.
Just when does cyberattacks become a news again? Why is cyberattacks from any country is still a news for that matter? Is it because in your mind China is the only country doing cyberattacks (i.e. your whatever country is clean)? Or is it because in your mind China is the only country not supposed to do so?
And with such a "government-sponsored" "coordinated" "highly sophisticated" attack the only thing that Google gave up are two account names and their dates of opening the account? My goodness. If that is the case then Google should be in a triumphant mood of celebration of their mighty security instead of playing cry-baby. Blah-wah-wah, China hacked me and I feel hurt and I am angry. Oh please, give me a break.
And what does it have anything to do with content censoring anyway? Google enters into the market fully aware of this and have been tolerating their time for many years. What changed? What pushed it over the edge to do such a sudden high-profiled outcry of censorship? I don't remember reading any new political problem that's worth censoring. However, I remembered in the recent months China has been doing a massive and forceful crackdown on internet porns. And I remembered the government told the engines to filter out the porns. Ah-huh, so that's it. The dots connected. It doesn't require too many brain cells to deduce that Google has become a major porn search engine in China, and its business is hurt tremendously due to the new porn censorship rule laid out by the government. But instead of admit being a looser which will be detrimental to its stock, Google spinned the whole thing on moral grounds - citing only the political censorship which has been there for eons and the everyday-life cyberattacks. This is not only for protecting its stock price but also makes whoever stayed put very costly to fill the void it left behind. Google lacks any basic decency as a corporate citizen, every move of it is mere business calculation.
Baidu was brought down briefly by external circumstances right before Google's drama. Certainly a warning to China if it does not give in to Google's demand and beg it to stay then Google and its co-conspirators (try guess who) has the power to bring down China's main search engine and thus its internet as well. And so many of you are still perpetuating the don't-be-evil crap for a company that in the not-too-distant-past saw no evil in doing unauthorized scanning of copyrighted work. You gotta be kidding me.
Google is starting to embrace the characteristics of a looser. But more revealingly and pitifully, Google is dirty and is a con. This whole fiasco is just a calculated move. It is loosing in China anyway and so it decided to do a risky gamble - if it can stay, it will certainly gain market share because it can spin that China has agreed at least partially to its terms; and if it must leave, it can still count on the support of the gullible public thus protecting its stock price.
It's all business, nothing more and nothing less. And anyone who believes in Google's (or any big corporation's) sense of morality should be kept away from sharp objects and his or her own money.
I think the real and dangerous issue here is the chinese gov't hacked google.
This can't be good to any company doing business in china. The chinese gov't can steal any sensitive/confidential info from the company and use the info in anyway they wanted.
This is very unethical. Then again, since when the chinese gov't has any moral.
Chinese people need to grow up and look past the Government. The Chinese Government's ideas are very primitive imo. A more caring and lively society I think would overrun that dictatorship pretty fast. Then again most of the world seems pretty mean, egotistical,and materialistic ie. human. I'm not religious, but China needs a Jesus like mentality. Change the country by changing themselves, not others (like dictators and companies).
Chinese people need to grow up and look past the Government. The Chinese Government's ideas are very primitive imo. A more caring and lively society I think would overrun that dictatorship pretty fast. Then again most of the world seems pretty mean, egotistical,and materialistic ie. human. I'm not religious, but China needs a Jesus like mentality. Change the country by changing themselves, not others (like dictators and companies).
oh man you guys are so wonderful, so much freedom that you fucked your economy up so bad and guess what, you fags have to BEG China, yeah, the one of which you guys "talk shit about" every other day for money.
Kiss my ass bitch.
I just feel sad. Soon the internet in China will become a massive LAN. Feel sorry for Chinese people, they can't decide what they want and what they DON'T want for themselves.
You make it sound like ur o-holy USA never spied anyone ?
Get ur facts straight b4 you talk. Thank you moron.
The funny part is that right after Google stops censoring Google.cn they block a URL to a racist Encyclopedia Dramatica article on Google.com.au after a complaint to a Human Rights organisation that has no real power.
Big bark, little bite. That is Google.
communism != facism. In fact, they're kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum.
They are not same, but not opposite either. Communists do use teror, they do both jail or shoot people that dont like to be silent sheep in corner. In past 6 decades there was millions of people killed, tortured, put in jail or sent to gulags in siberia in europe just becase they were brave/stupid enough to tell what they dont like to hear. They say communism is government of people, but its actually just few people on top that have all power. This is also one of reasons people in europe got finally fed up enough to start revolution in 90's that just luckily didnt end with army using weapons against it own people except few incidents as it started and went just too strong to fast and whole world was watching. There were few attempts before, but they didnt went that well.
There is huge difference in communist idea and reality.