Google loses a censorship battle to China but the war for civil rights continues on.
Google and China battle over censorship again, for now China is the winner. The censorship battle between the search engine giant, China and the world has been going on since 2006 when Google first introduced its censored search engine at google.cn. Censorship laws in China require that search engines filter their results to remove websites that have been banned by the countries legal system. Failure to obey these rules can result in the Chinese government revoking a company’s Internet Content Provider license.
In March 2010 Google and other US tech companies reported that the Chinese government was associated with cyber-attacks against their businesses. Shortly after this announcement, in a defiant act, Google redirected all of their web traffic from the Google China search engine to the Google Hong Kong search engine. Google Hong Kong is not required to censor search results. A week later China banned all Google websites including those from China, Japan and Australia. Google’s business in China no longer existed. The following day, the Chinese government lifted the ban. A couple months later in June, after talks with the Chinese government, Google finally ceded and ended the redirect to the Hong Kong search engine and censorship in China returned. For the moment Google has given into China’s demands.
The Google/China interaction has been followed by civil rights activists, technologist and corporate managers for years. The censorship of data from the Chinese people is immoral and wrong. Google argues that it is obligated to provide services to the people of China while abiding by the laws of the country. Google feels that it would be wrong to break the rules of the country in which it operates in. Not following the laws of China would result in their website being shut down and negatively impacting their users in the country. Google believes it is more important to satisfy their customers basic needs that to help improve their civil rights.
The problem with Google’s actions is that it sets an example for other corporations that it is ok to make moral exceptions in order to maintain business. Giving in to China’s demands will lead way to other companies following suit. China will feel empowered by winning this battle over a major US corporation and will be more likely to make demands of other US corporations operating within its borders.
Google should not have fallen to the demands of the Chinese government. By rejecting their demands, Google’s business may have been shut down in China but it would have led to other companies following suit. If more companies resisted China and failed to obey their immoral laws the country may choose to reconsider its civil rights issues. Any time change is made for the advancement of civil rights it is done so by people that resists the status quo and fight the immoral laws put in place by government.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/16435/google_china%23comment-200684
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