A great interview from The World’s Tech Podcast (which is a great tech news podcast from the BBC world service) with Reporters Without Borders, regarding an issue I previously mentioned here, specifically American corporations who are enabling (and therefore supporting) China’s oppressive policies of censorship.
Julien Pain makes an excellent point in rebuttal to the common argument made by the corporations that “we are just complying with the local laws”, and points out that if the local laws dictate that you must allow child labor, or other immoral practices, it is your moral obligation to not abide by those laws, even if it means loosing business.
Podcast description excerpt for the show:
We start with some news from London on the latest round of bombings. We look at two questions: what role does the internet play in spreading jihadist propaganda? How can transportation systems be safer and more resilient? Then, we talk with Reporters without Borders about bloggers the world over. And finally, some Danish university students brew up what they say is the world’s first open-source beer recipe…mmm…open-source beeeer…Check out show notes and more at www.worldstechpodcast.blogspot.com
5 Comments
don’t know much about this but my gut says if you are breaking rules of decency and morality ifor the sake of making money it’s not OK. i don’t care if you are microsoft or mom and pop.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/google-in-china.html
Time for some google bashing???
Yes, lots of people have been bashing Google over this. I can see both sides, but I would tend to favor Google not caving to these demands.
In my opinion, it would be more honorable for them to actively subvert the policies of censorship, but of course they would never do this.
It seems harder for people to bash google the microsoft. Google had such a good rep compared to ms. But now they are doing the same thing as ms and have caved in. I don’t agree with what the communist chinese government is doing. But if google or ms agree to the terms of the chinese then they should abide by their agreement. Or get out and boycott them. Not be half in and out.
(Some bloggers are calling them ‘ sell outs ‘ now just like ms.)
I thought google would have boycotted china for human rights reasons. Maybe they think some greater good and eventual change will be ushered in by google’s presence.
I think the better third option (rather than cooperating or boycotting) would be to claim to cooperate while secretly allowing more freedom than they agreed to in a variety of ways. It might not be the most honest approach, but I think in the end it would be the one that would result in the most good being done.
Their argument right now is that if they do not agree to China’s terms, then China can just block their people from using Google altogether, so Google’s position is that they can at least bring some information into China (even if it is restricted) and that would be better than nothing.
The fact is that if Google did not agree to the terms and refused to cooperate, it would make a good but ineffective statement, still leaving the Chinese people with less access to information.
This is why I would support the third option I mentioned above.