17/09/2005

Web censorship in China

This article (German) provides an interesting insight into the censorship & suppression that internet users are subject to in China. Since it is quite likely that free communication & access to information will be the straw that breaks the communist party's back, this behaviour is rather rational on their part, although its sustainability is questionable fortunately.

However, I am surprised that nobody calls for apartheid-like sanctions against western firms that actively support the Chinese regime in its censorship endeavour. The article explicitely names Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo and Google. The latter seems to be particularly vulnerable to criticism because this kind of activity appears to be in breach of at least two of their corporate ten commandments: 4. Democracy on the web works and 6. You can make money without doing evil. From the explanatory comments, it's quite obvious that those "things" are to be interpreted in a rather narrow, technical sense, but then why choose such sloppy phraseology in the first place? At the very least, this exposes the firm to ridicule.

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