A few follow up items of news for the last post about Google selling out to Chinese demands. I’ll keep it brief since due to one thing and another it was nearly 5 a.m. when I went to bed last night and I was up for work at 8:30 a.m.
The BBC is running a follow up article on the move, written by one of their technology analysts Bill Thompson. He feels that the decision to censor results isn’t such a bad thing, since Google will actively inform the user that certain results have been restricted. If the government does the filtering there is no hint that anything is amiss.
Censorship also goes on all over the world in other countries,
“In some countries the controls are obvious and oppressive - everyone who wants to use the internet in Cuba must register with the government, bloggers in Iran are gaoled and their websites are blocked, and governments from Saudi Arabia to Singapore decide which websites their citizens can see. In other countries it’s a bit more subtle. Search for Falun Gong using Yahoo! in China and you’ll find that the results list is rather sparse and consists mostly of government-sponsored sites which oppose the group.”
Bill Gates has also put a comment in on the Google decision which was published by The Times.
He said
“the Internet is contributing to Chinese political engagement as access to the outside world is preventing more censorship”
However Irene Khan, the secretary-general of Amnesty International said when writing for The Times that Google had“reinforced the trend in the IT industry of kowtowing to Chinese demands of censorship”
She said “Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with details leading to the arrest and sentencing of a journalist; Microsoft has barred a blog critical of the government and launched a portal blocking the use of words such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Now Google has weeded out websites that China does not like.”
I still personally feel it is a bad thing, and Google could have done more
Cheers
Loading ...
