Internet companies caught between Chinese rules and U.S. demands for free speech BEIJING -- Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and other U.S. Internet companies under fire for assisting in China's censorship efforts are insisting they must obey Beijing or risk limiting access to their most promising market.Some people seem to be worried about what they are doing in China in terms of free speech. I'm not worried about that.
Rather, I'm worried about what we are doing in the United States about freedom.
I'm also worried about what we are doing in the United States in terms of educational opportunities for our youngsters too. Our youth are going to be falling further and further behind the world. Our youth are not getting rich exposures to technology and logic and online community efforts.
We've got a long, long way to go, when one considers where we are at home. We need to put our shoulder to the tasks at hand here -- with our kids -- and get better grips, or grips at all, on tech issues for the sake of our future.
Finally, we have a big challenge ahead in terms of understanding ways to deploy and leverage open-source computer software. We need to get government and the rest of the public sectors to be more favorable to open-source options and tools.
It's (i.e., CHINA) been a particularly delicate balancing act for Yahoo and Google because they don't want to alienate their core U.S. audience, whose loyalty helps attract the advertising that generates most of their current profits.While China's opportunities are delicate in the balance -- in the US we are square on our bottoms.
Lawmakers plan to question the way U.S. Internet companies have been doing business in China during scheduled hearings Wednesday.Shame on the US Lawmakers then. Those that we elect need to focus upon what they are doing for freedom here. They can hold some chats -- fine. But don't put the net and techie guys to the test and have them do the dirty work of diplomacy in some underhanded way.
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Internet companies caught between Chinese rules and U.S. demands for free speech
Sunday, February 19, 2006
By Joe McDonald, The Associated Press
BEIJING -- Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and other U.S. Internet companies under fire for assisting in China's censorship efforts are insisting they must obey Beijing or risk limiting access to their most promising market.
As the companies faced congressional hearings in Washington last week about their role in aiding the communist regime, they are appealing to the U.S. government for help, saying no private business can resist China on its own.
Yet analysts say that even if Washington stepped in to enforce free-speech standards, perhaps by forcing U.S. companies to withdraw their Internet services or equipment from China, the impact would likely be blunted as entrepreneurs from China and other countries move in to fill the void in the rapidly growing market.
Google, Yahoo and other high-tech stalwarts like Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have been steadily expanding in China, believing it will emerge as an Internet gold mine during the next decade. China already has the world's second-largest Internet population, behind the United States, with more than 100 million people online.
Yahoo already spent $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce site, while Google and Microsoft have been investing heavily in the country.
Meeting the demands of China's government has imposed intangible costs on U.S. Internet companies as they fend off complaints about censoring online search results and shutting down Web logs with sensitive content -- actions that critics say violate American principles.
It's been a particularly delicate balancing act for Yahoo and Google because they don't want to alienate their core U.S. audience, whose loyalty helps attract the advertising that generates most of their current profits.
Google's corporate mantra, "Don't Be Evil," lost some of its resonance last month when it started a Chinese version of its popular search engine that doesn't provide links to content deemed unacceptable by the government.
Earlier, Microsoft shut down, at Beijing's request, a popular Chinese blog that touches on sensitive topics such as press freedoms. (Microsoft has since vowed to try to still make such blogs available elsewhere in the future even if one country bans it.)
And Yahoo is accused of providing information that led to the jailing of two of its Chinese e-mail users.
"All U.S. and international firms operating in China face the same dilemma of complying with laws that lack transparency and that can have disturbing consequences inconsistent with our own beliefs," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said in a statement in which she also sought U.S. government help.
In a statement posted on Google's online journal, senior policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin urged the U.S. government to "treat censorship as a barrier to trade" and to bring up such concerns as part of bilateral diplomatic talks.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday took a step in the direction favored by Yahoo and Google by creating a Global Internet Freedom Task Force.
Activists complain that U.S. Internet companies have already gone beyond their legal obligations in China by selling its government the tools and providing know-how used to monitor Web use, track users and block access to foreign sites run by dissidents and human rights groups.
Julien Pain, who heads Internet research for the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, called on the U.S. Commerce Department to monitor the American companies' contracts with China, "to make sure they don't collaborate on these kinds of human rights abuses."
Lawmakers plan to question the way U.S. Internet companies have been doing business in China during scheduled hearings Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, has complained that the Internet companies "caved in to Beijing for the sake of profits."
Besides Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco, activists have also criticized Sun Microsystems Inc. and Canada's Nortel Corp., which makes switching equipment that connects Internet users.
Mr. Pain noted that Washington, by funding operations like Radio Free Asia, has sponsored the development of software to help Chinese Web surfers see blocked sites and avoid government efforts to track e-mail.
"It's surreal. They are wasting taxpayers' money on coming up with technology to counteract filtering provided by U.S. companies," Mr. Pain said.
China encourages Internet use for education and business, but the government also runs what is widely regarded as the world's most sweeping and successful effort to control the Internet. Thousands are believed involved in efforts to scan the Web and impose filters that block access to material deemed subversive or obscene. Companies that host Web logs are required to ensure their customers obey censorship rules.
On Tuesday, China defended its access controls.
"With the development of the Internet, there has been some harmful and illegal content," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regular briefing.
While China currently relies on foreign-made routers and other high-tech gear, the country has its own fast-growing producer of telecom equipment, Huawei Inc., that analysts say could soon make acceptable substitutes.
U.S. high-tech companies in other industries have seen their business affected by similar political tussles. For instance, China turned to European suppliers of some satellite technology after Washington restricted exports on security grounds.
David Wolf, managing director of a Beijing consulting firm, Wolf Group Asia, said such realities leave Washington and U.S. tech companies with few options.
"It's hard for anything that will come out of Capitol Hill to make speech any freer in China," he said.
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