Google's China Problem 203
Wraithfighter writes "The New York Times has a rather lengthy, but informative, piece on the origins of Google's current Chinese search engine, as well as a very informative look at how censoring is actually done in China. From the article: 'Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question -- the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has discovered, it is just the beginning.'"
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on, very few in Amertica would argue against any limitations on information.
From trade secrets to copyrights to defamation to classified documents to pornography laws, restrictions on information are inherent in our whole legal system. How about court sealed documents? Furthermore, atatcking "propaganda" stations has long been considered a legitmimate aim of our military in waging wars.
Of course there gradations of censorship. The debate has ALWAYS been about which information can be restricted. Pretty much everyone agrees that some should be. Prentending otherwise is unhelpful and it's dishonest.
right, because the US is so great (Score:2, Insightful)
Communisim is not a technicality (Score:3, Insightful)
How do I know that all this talk about giving Chinees the "most freedom that we can" is all bullshit? Because the people saying it are not only censoring, but they are lying. None of them call it like it is, none of them dare say "hey your government is a piece of shit" for fear of offending the Chineese powers that be. Basically, it is a policy of appeasement and to see how it will play out - Chineese history shows very clearly, it will end in disaster.
That about sums it up. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to know the Chinese are as apathetic about their government as we are in the U.S.
Circular hypocrisy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
If the effect of this "filter that is no censorship" is merely cosmetic, then why was Google forced to include it or face being banned from operating in China?
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong Title? (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize that Google is trying to enter a new market, but I wouldn't be surprised if China really wanted Google there too -- on their terms of course.
Re:right, because the US is so great (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. is very good at withholding information. Not to unload too big a can of postmodernist wupp-ass on anyone, but it does so by creating whatever reality it wants. There STILL ARE/WERE WMDs in Iraq in the minds of many people because a chain of The New York Times, Judy Miller, Scooter Liddy, Dick Cheney SAID there were. Why _withhold_ information when you are the country with the Madison Avenue/Hollywood expertise to _create_ whole realities? When you have the mass seeing your reality, any "truths" are just insignificant background chatter.
I guess it was the comparison between apartheid South Africa and the U.S. where this first became glaringly apparent to me. Generally, South Africa dealt with dissent by "slips in the jail shower" and "suicides out the third floor window" -- excuses which are themselves shapings of reality, but crude post-incident excuses. It was only in the very latest years that they discovered the proactive power of advertising. If you aren't sipping KWV brandy in your decorated 10 room split-level in Soweto like the commercial shows you, it's because you're a LOSER. Doesn't have anything to do with politics.
It was their own fault it took them so long to discover advertising as a weapon. They only allowed TV in the '70s. In the U.S., we were born swimming in media and generally don't even recognize its inherent unreality.
Graduated Censorship Does Occur Here (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Communisim is not a technicality (Score:3, Insightful)
But it is. It's just a label, applied to lots of rather different governments really. There's not *that* much that are shared between say 1985 east-germany and present-day China, nevertheless the same label is slapped on both, which doesn't really enligthen anything much.
If anything, it serves to sidetrack the discussion from the real and important problems in China. There are lots of those, and they deserve attention. Attention that you remove if you insist the entire debate should run like this: "China government is Communist. This means they're bad."
Lack of respect for the human rigths is a problem. The few ruling the many without anything resembling a democracy is a problem. Corruption is a problem. All of these problems are, by the way, from an Europen perspective, shared with the USA. (Yes, I'll agree that China is *worse* when it comes to human-rigths violations, however the Amensty international page on USA is also not pleasant reading...)
How do I know that all this talk about giving Chinees the "most freedom that we can" is all bullshit?
I don't know how you "know" that. I strongly suspect it ain't true. It's true without a shadow of a doubt that chinese, particularily those living in the more modern cities have *enormously* much better access to western news and communications today than they did 10 years ago. You're free to consider this real improvement irrelevant and go back to shouting "Communists!" offcourse.
None of them call it like it is, none of them dare say "hey your government is a piece of shit" for fear of offending the Chineese powers that be.
No. Not for that reason. For the reason that realists care about *results*. I generally talk politely to Americans, try to *reasonably* explain what problems I see in their foreign policy. I do this because I consider it more likely to achieve my wanted result than acting like a crazed nutjob and trying to insult as many people as I can. What would be practical *benefits* for say Bush to spend his next meeting with someone chinese saying as many bad words as he can think of ? What would that acomplish ? Would it make the human-rigths situation in China improve ?
Basically, it is a policy of appeasement and to see how it will play out - Chineese history shows very clearly, it will end in disaster.
That's possible. But it's also possible china will continue on the path it's been on for the last decade or two and contine getting more open, continue tolerating more and more free expression, continue basically, in the direction we want them to go.
What's your solution by the way ? Invade tomorrow ?
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats a new one.
They are omitting results due to local laws. If this is optimizing, why don't they omit every single search result in America that would break local laws here?
Re:Communism is a technicality (Score:2, Insightful)
I know this is a tech forum, but please don't forget companies like MacDonalds and KFC, which are really (negativelty) effecting the health of the population. Get rid of them first, since they can't possibly do any good to anyone.
(IMO)
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose I search for "rumsfeld secretary of defense " and I get a nice set of results but at the bottom of the search page it says "some of your search results have been omitted in compliance with local laws".
Now is it;
1. Faked pictures/fan-fic stories about Donald Rumsfeld that clearly (or maybe not so clearly) break one of the multiple local decency laws.
or
2. Legitimate criticism of a high-ranking official highlighting his various professional flaws worthy of public discussion.
For me the whole Google/China thing comes down to the question - Do you trust a company and a government to think for you?
Side-by-Side Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
http://images.google.com/ [google.com]
http://www.google.cn/imghp?hl=zh-CN&tab=wi&q= [google.cn]
Search for "Tiananmen" on both sites and notice the *significant* difference in content returned by each.
Re:Is communism bad in theory or only in practice? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very easy: The politicians, psychopaths, gangsters, opportunist and other power crazed animals that created regimes called communist across the world mostly made the live of the people of said courntries miserable. For this reason, communism has a really bad name. On top of that, it's a rather impractical philosophy which tends to ignore the way most current societies work, thus creating very quickly big gaps between theory and implementation.
A good part of the allure of communism was that it tried to distance itself as far as possible from capitalism and the atrocities that were commited in it's name in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. But once people subscribed to this philosophy came to power, being the crooks they were, they just went on and committed the same kind of atrocites or worse.
In some countries (eg France, Italy), the communist parties are just are respected as other parties and they don't seem to be really doing worse only because of their philosophy. This could also be because those parties adopted a pragmatic line that doesn't seem to offend their voters.
In the end, it all boils down how a the members of those movements behave and their philosophical motivation ist just window dressing. Satanists caring for sick people to give them more time to sin and damn them to hell are a lot preferrable to devout christians torching gynecological clinics in the name of a rightous and loving god.
Re:Communisim is not a technicality (Score:3, Insightful)
I was saying China seems to be going in the rigth direction, and has for a number of years. This is a trend we should encourage and support. We want China to *continue* becoming more open, less corrupted, better living-conditions, more freedoms. We acomplish this best (I think!) by;
Cooperating with them.
AND making it clear what kind if improvements we'd most like to see.
Rather than by scaling back the deabte to the point where it's black/white, good/bad, we heroes/China "piece of shit".
I agree we should continue to point out human-rigths abuses and the missing democracy. I just think we can do so more constructively than: You all suck !
Re:right, because the US is so great (Score:2, Insightful)
Did the president of the largest nation in the world visit your home? The bigger question is, why was "a head of state" involved in any private interests at all.
The big lie, the one that gets foisted on the citizens, is that the US is a democracy. This could not be further from the truth, the interests of the people are last in consideration, and the interests of maintaining the power structure come first. What do you imagine that they were discussing then the people of New-Orleans were being washed away? Do you imagine that they set any of this other crap aside to deal with a huge human crisis?
There is no real security for the ordinary citizen, but there is security for those in power, that is why they were not on any of the low security 9/11 planes.
It's just America's China problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
But by removing the blocked pages from Google's index completely, it's as if they never existed. In fact, blocking them no longer matters, because most people will never realize they exist in the first place.
Fundamentally, it's the difference between being handed a history book that's been filled with black marker lines covering stuff that's "redacted," and being given a history book that's been totally rewritten to only show one point of view. In the first case, you're at least painfully aware that you're getting a one-sided viewpoint, in the latter case you're not.
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:3, Insightful)
Blocking the results ensures that chinese people can use Google.
It is not teribly difficult for a chinese citizen to bypass the firewall, but guess what? It is also fairly easy for a chinese person to bypass the google censorship too!
Those who cannot figure out how to bypass the google censorship would likely have trouble bypassing the Great Firewall. Therefore the censored results are all that they have a use for.
Re:right, because the US is so great (Score:4, Insightful)
Or how much of the revolution was just mob violence at anyone who tried to regulate the economy including the burning of multiple warehouses and private residences because they were involved in British attempts to regulate the illegal rum trade.
Or how Thomas Jefferson, contrary to what Swordfish would tell you, never actually executed a man for treason on the Whitehouse lawn, he did have a man accused of treason and basically run out of town using his political power simply because the two of them didn't get along.
If you want to go a little further down, Abraham Lincoln publicly stated that he had no intrest in slavery either way, it was none of his business. He engaged int eh civil war to hold together the Union and nothing else. His later decision to emancipate the slaves in the area under martial law was commendable, but it wasn't part of his agenda, nor was he able to emancipate the slaves in territory that had remained in the Union as it wasn't under his war-powers control. I have the utmost of respect for the founders of our nation which I believe to be one if, if not the greatest in the world, but these men were far from saints and it's soemthing that people like to overlook.
Re:Remember that Censorship does exist at home too (Score:3, Insightful)
To me at least this implies that somehow Europe is above making excuse to cover their asses when oil is concerned. I was merely illustrating that they're just as two-faced as the rest of the world, even if they wont admit it.
The rest of your comment I can't even reply to, because it's a collection of statements that lack "coherence". Coherence is what strings statements together into an "argument". I'll do my best anyway.
You know, the terrorist attack in Madrid?
Yes
What did they do?
The terrorists?(As implied by the fact that they're the only subject you've mentioned) They bombed trains.
Withdraw.
Oh you ment the Spanish, yes, they did, though they continue to fight a war with Basque that has been going for decades, pacifists they aren't. You're also apparently trying to make the point that backing down is what people should do, I'm sure you've got some harsh words for the U.K., and Japan, who depsite being victims of a terrorist strike and repeated kidnappings have not backed down.
You know 9/11?
Yep.
What did they do?
The Terrorists? The Spanish?
Invade.
I assume you mean Americans. Yes they did, your point? Even if we work on your assumption, the Iraqi war was 100% for oil, and just run with it. The American invasions convinced Libya to give up their weapons progran, fostered political reform in Sryria, overthrew the Taliban, who if nothing else are guilty of destroying the priceless history carved into the sides of the Afgan mountains, and topled the regime of Saddam Hussein. Whether it was worth its price in blood, and whther the governments of those nations with be able to solidfy and prosper is another story and up for debate, but regardless of motives no one can claim that it's been all bad.
I am just waiting for the next thing that happen to you and, man, am I going to laugh.
I don't see what I have to do with any of this, considering you don't know thing one about me other than that I'm aware that Germany and France, the largest opponents of the Invasion of Iraq were two of the three largest importers of Iraqi oil. Furthermore, why you would laugh at the suffering of anyone, me, Americans, hell the moon people, is beyond me.
What goes around, comes around.
Someone who laughes at the misfortune of others should take that to heart.
Re:the tank man (Score:2, Insightful)
Most relevant to this discussion of censorship is the sixth part of the documentary. They start the segment by asking four students at the Beijing university to look at the infamous image of the man stopping a column of tanks in Tienanmen square. None recognize the image at all, and only one understands enough to connect it to the incident of 1989. It's as if it never happened for anyone younger than a certain age. By controlling information, the Chinese government has managed to control history.
Re:Google/China Relationship (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:right, because the US is so great (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think revolution is the solution. What has revolution brought us that reform could not? We end up with the same institutions, the same corruption, just with a different set of leaders.
Re:Communisim is not a technicality (Score:1, Insightful)
But then again, these words are used in many inconsistent ways..
Re:Communisim is not a technicality (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you could set the standard for Europeans everywhere (heh) and utilize some cases we aren't already sick to death of hearing about as your next example?
Part of the problem in Europe is the fragmentation. Most people don't really consider themselves Europeans, the way quite a few in North-America consider themselves Americans. Most people are much more likely to consider themselves Norwegian, Danisch, Italian or German than they are to consider themselves "Europeans".
This, to some degree, makes sense too, especially for those countries in Europe that aren't part of the European Union. A Norwegian voter has no more direct influence on the situation in say Spain than does an American voter.
Remember, people aren't automatically intrinsically gifted with knowledge of each and every world event - one way of gifting us with that knowledge is by letting the knowledge slip casually, thus prompting some of us to go feed the keywords into search engines, and some of us to ask "what" (sans punctuation, of course), thus prompting a +1 Informative copy-and-pasting of the first page ganked from a Googling of the keywords. :-P
I know that. Lots of people outside the USA try very hard to make Americans gaze a little farther than their own belly-button. But the problem exists *inside* of USA too. What is the reason that US news spend less than half the proportion of time on foreign affairs in relation to most European news ?
Part of the problem is geographical. USA is a long way from anywhere, except Mexico and Canada. (Ok, so I'm exxagerating, but you get the idea) I really believe there's no substitute for seeing and experiencing with your own eyes. Yet very few Americans have spent even a half-year living somewhere else than the USA. A quite large group has never even visited other countries, except for maybe Canada.