MS, Google, Yahoo, and …?
p2p news / p2pnet: Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are in the news a lot, lately, but not because of sterling corporate achievements. Rather, they’re actively helping China’s Communist leaders stifle free speech in the country, and worse.
But there’s an entity which is conspicuously missing from these attacks, writes Victor Keegan in the Guardian Unlimited.
"China protests loudly, and rightly so, when minor textile products are excluded from entry into the US," he says. "Yet when the fastest growing product of all – information – is excluded from China by its government there is hardly a squeak from the White House.
"China is now a member of the World Trade Organisation and should be brought to task for erecting non-tariff barriers to trade. The only noise coming from Washington is from members of the Congressional Human Rights caucus, which has criticised four US firms for putting profits before American principles of free speech. They are, in alphabetical order, Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
"The companies, surprise, surprise, did not even bother to attend the hearing. They justify their myopic actions by claiming that what they are doing enables far wider access to independent sources of information for hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere."
Keegan points out Google has rightly taken most of the flak, "even though its submission to the will of the Chinese government was more subtle than the others".
Why?
Because everyone thought, "or at least hoped," Google would be a, "different kind of company," and unless it can, "sublimate its emerging arrogance it will soon become one of them rather than one of us," adds Keegan in the Guardian.
"That would be a true corporate tragedy."
Also See:
Guardian Unlimited – Gagging for IT, February 2, 2006
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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It’s a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
