US Tech Firms Lame Excuse on China Business
By Tom Foremski - February 2, 2007
U.S. Tech Companies Urge Washington to Confront China on Internet Censorship
WASHINGTON (AP) -- American technology giants urged the U.S. government Tuesday to do more to confront China and other countries about Internet censorship.
Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. also defended themselves against accusations that they have helped governments such as China's crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets.
Andrew McLaughlin, senior counsel for Google, told a State Department-sponsored conference on Internet freedom that his company is trying to use its presence in countries that are restrictive to provide communication options, such as e-mail and blogs, for people who may not have other ways to talk to each other freely.
Give me a break. What a flimsy excuse for GOOG's China business.
What's so noble about providing email and blogs in China? There are plenty of providers of such services.
And communicating freely in China is not to be encouraged because these US companies will turn you over to the Chinese authorities in a Silicon Valley nanosecond, if asked.
They want the US government to take on China on Internet censorship. Usually tech companies want to keep the government out of anything to do with anything. It's easier to pass the buck than act in an ethical manner.
Do No Evil? How about Do Some Good. I know that some of the the employees of YHOO, GOOG and MSFT feel that way, and maybe the rest too. How about the management?
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Comments (6)
Yes Tom ... it starts with the management and the responsibility rests with the management.
Perhaps the US Government should start by enforcing a policy that US-based companies align their intenational business practice with US law … and hold the management responsible… much like the enforcement of US tax laws.
This should be easier and will have an immediate effect.
Somelawyers may wish to comment.
Posted: February 3, 2007 7:42 PM
look at it from the other end. Google, Yahoo, etc leaving china does no one any good except chinese companies who are more than happy to have less competition in the largest single internet market in the world.
The iron curtain mentality won't work here.
Any idea that a boycott by these companies will somehow pressure the chinese government into changing is a joke. The pressure has to come from another direction.
And the idea that a US company should do business in a foreign country but ignore whichever laws of that country that we disagree with is also rather unrealistic (absurd?) How would we feel if european companies did the same in the US? forget about your Patriot act or your DMCA.
Think about it practically too- who would want to work for Yahoo in China after the first employees are locked up for refusing to comply with a court ordered warrant?
Posted: February 4, 2007 9:45 PM
xiaoka: I'm not saying they should leave China I'm saying they should behave ethically. And that means don't collect information about your Chinese users that could harm them. It's a simple as that. Collect behavioral data but not individually identifiable data.
I'm amazed that these companies came up with such a miserable excuse for being in China. Your point is better expressed than theirs...
Posted: February 4, 2007 10:27 PM
There's another side of it that no one has mentioned. The very presence of American business in China means that American ideas will have the chance to proliferate. As people get ideas about what freedom is, change can begin to happen in China. What the U.S. military can't conquer, perhaps corporations like Wal-Mart and Google will.
What does that mean for the ethics of these corporations? Nothing. Their ethic seems to be the bottom dollar, period. I think that's what Tom is really speaking against.
Posted: February 6, 2007 6:52 AM
It seems that there is a double standard at play. GOOG and YHOO others fight attmpts by US agencies to hand over information about their users yet in China, and elsewhere, they are happy to do it without a whimper.
Posted: February 6, 2007 8:56 AM
They don't really fight against handing over data to US law enforcement. Really there was only the famous case of Google resisting a DOJ subpoena for millions of search terms. They had good reason to fight that, mostly because of the trade secret risk.
Day in and day out, however, they routinely respond to law enforcement subpoenas. I wrote recently about how a Nigerian kite staking scheme was busted because of Yahoo user data turned over to the feds.
They have a fair point in that they can't be in a position of making a decision about what requests they will choose to obey and which they won't.
But as you say no one forces them to collect this data in the first place and because they do, they have to turn it over or face the consequences. Knowing this, they continue to collect the data. It is this that is unconscionable, especially because it is so unnecessary.
Posted: February 7, 2007 12:48 PM