This forum is intended to cater for topics that do not strictly relate to the book "Thiaoouba Prophecy", "She and I", and other closely related material.
Recently I read the following two articles on the web. I thought it could be interesting to share:
Year after year, we see that China is gaining control of Internet content.
How?
One thing that was totally overlooked by the optimistic talk in the U.S. is that the control of the Internet doesn't rest so much with technology, but with the classic methods of press and media control. The person who manages is the person who bears responsibility. The keystone of the censorship system in China is that basically ownership is censorship. If you own something -- Web site editor, newspaper editor, press group owner -- you are responsible for what is there.
There is no grey zone: If you operate this portal, this BBS, you are responsible for what is on it. The key thing is you make the decision. It's not the party that makes the decision. They are not going to scrutinize every BBS. You make the decision, they tell you. Companies responsible to shareholders and staff will, of course, err on the side of caution and self-censorship.
The business interests are so large that you will never stop this. What do you say? Pull out of China? "If we don't sell, someone else will," that's what people respond. And in the case of IT, China is definitely going to get it because of their own companies and the nature of the IT industry.
Even if Yahoo is not there, they will have something else. Iif Google is not there, they will have something else. What is objectionable is the stonewalling that companies do. They don't take any responsibility, admit that there are certain grey areas and that their technology can be used for repression, or mitigate this.
"If we don't sell, someone else will,"
In my very narrow, simple opinion China is simply exploiting "the idea of free market economy" to their liking.
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got.
a censored search engine is better than no search engine.
what's even better is written word on paper which can be physically distributed, read, and kept in a safe place where no technology can harm it. I have a news paper about the supression of Falun Gong in China which was handed to me on a sidewalk in NYC. in it I read they also passed out thousands of copies on the streets of a major Chinese city (I think Hong Kong). they probably risked their lives by doing so, but at least they got the information out there. text on the internet can be erased easily but it would be almost impossible for the government to find and destroy thousands of newspapers.
