Justifications for complying to Chinese net censorship
OfflineLet's at least try to give these justifications due consideration. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo which were again named for working with China to police the internet try to justify their actions like this:
The argument they put forward, in various ways, was that the choice faced by foreign companies in China was either to comply with domestic legislation, or to leave the country, and that remaining in the country has the beneficial effect of offering Chinese internet users increased access to information and internet services.
Does the good really outway the bad in this case? Would Chinese really be better off if these companies never entered the market by refusing to comply with censorship? Could they say that it's better they get some access to these services than nothing?
Or maybe there was a way for these companies to provide access without complying, by any chance, but the big three just didn't try hard enough?
What's your take on it?
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This way the Chinese government wins in my opinion.
If the companies decied not to comply and are banned from China, the citizens of China might get annoyed, as well as the goverment.
The people want access to the rest of the world (there is a 'westerisation' of the middle-class iirc) thus they might apply pressure, revolt etc. on the government, maybe to the extent as to overthrow the govenment (though I see this unlikly due to the power of the Chinese Red Army).
The government wants companies to come to China to invest in it's booming enonomy, helps trade with countries like the USA etc.
By accepting the Chinese Terms and Conditions, they only help the Chinese government, not the people of China, not themselves as companies (bad press etc.).
But by refusing to comply, they don't unprove the situation for the Chinese government or people, but may bring round change in the thinking of the government, it also doesn't create bad publicity.
Eitherway the people don't have freedom - I think it is better for the government to also suffer too in the non-complience than they to reap benefits in the compliance.
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Good point. As far as I can tell every government wants foreign investors in their country. So if gian corporations like MS, Google and Yahoo refused to invest in Chinese market due to censorship government may indeed think twice about what it is doing, no matter how stubborn they may be.
Otherwise they loose potential big investors. However, Google, Yahoo and MS just took the quicker and easier road. I guess they're happy "pragmatists" now.
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Yes, they have lost out in doing that, by their names being linked with censorship etc. and they may have been able to get some interesting things out of the Chinese government if the government wanted them enough...
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I think those companies are wrong to do business there in this way, however if you look at it in a more practical way, maybe it's okay yahoo and google are doing this.
We know MS doesn't have ethics, so they would do business in China no matter what. Without yahoo and google in the same market, it would be a MS monopoly. I don't know about yahoo, but at least google does try to minimize the harm (informing the user there are undisplayed search results, so the user won't think the information doesn't exist at all).
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