Chinese censorship aided by US tech companies
June 13, 2005 by Mike Wendland
It’s amazing to me how the rest of the Internet world is so silent and accepting of China’s fear over words like “democracy” and “human rights.” In a greedy rush to make money there, the biggest tech companies in the U.S. are cooperating with the paranoid Chinese Internet police in blocking those words from Chinese search sites.
China’s totalitarian government thinks it can prevent people from striving for freedom by banning politically sensitive speech. Microsoft joins Yahoo!, Google in censoring China’s web.
It is so sad, and so inevitably futile. You can’t stop people from wanting to be free. And money-hungry outfits like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google ought to be widely condemned by all of us for their cooperation with such repressive tactics.
You’re right Mike. Microsoft and friends should be toasted for helping China try to stiffle freedom.
Microsoft et al. have the right to sell their services to China, but we as American consumers also have the right to criticize them for doing so.
Corporations have no responsibilities except to their shareholders. If it means supporting totalitarian governments in order to gain access to their markets, then so be it.
Most companies just don’t care about anything but profits, as evidenced by conglomerates posting multi-billion dollar profits while laying off workers and outsourcing to lower wage countries… all under the guise of “competition.”
Do yourself a favor and rent “The Corporation” from your local video store (I know that Blockbuster stocks this title). It’s a little dry in parts and runs about 15 mins longer than it should.. but I tell you that this documentary should be mandatory required viewing for all high schoolers.
not just microsoft,google,and yahoo. There are big government officials in Washington and big America’s cooperates also helping China maintain their comunism government. Yes, our Senators,congressmen, they all have big stock shares in these cooperates. As long as these cooperates pooring jobs and money into China, the Chinese government will stay alive forever, and develope more deadly weapons and bigger military. One day they will be our biggest thread, even bigger than the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Got anything else to say? Our government officials in this country are the real corrupted humans. Yup, that is right.