2 Votes
The clarification between roles
That doesn’t make too much sense to me. I understand all the “the right thing to do is to stop censoring in China and advocate human rights”, but that’s for social and political figures to do. Google is a business, and it should do what businesses do, that is to earn money “legally”. Furthermore, Google is not a company originated in China, so by going to China and start their business branch, they agree to follow that country’s law. If that country doesn’t allow you to search certain elements of the internet, then you filter the searches. It’s not like just because you aren’t a citizen but a company, you don’t have to follow their laws. I just don’t get why other people don’t get this part. It’s very simple: There’s a country you want to go to and start a business, you go there, agreed to follow their laws and do your business. Then in the middle of it, you decided that based on your own personal belief, you don’t have to follow the laws anymore.
-EOS
RE: The clarification between roles by Occams
I agree. If Google wants to sell advertising in China then it has to abide by the local laws, and apparently that means censoring if requested by the Government.
The web is international and I don’t see why Chinese cannot search using an engine that is not based in China, and is therefore not censored.
I think the censorship policy of the Chinese government cannot be efective for much longer anyway. The people are becoming better educated and more technologicaly savvy. If they want to know something then they will be able to find out.
There are some sites I would like to censor: mostly they concern the sexual abuse of children. I don’t see how anyone can support maintaining access to that material if it encourages the production of more kiddie porn.