Filtering, Chinese Style
China is the best in the world at blocking people from seeing content that the state finds objectionable. One tough question is how Western technology firms - especially those that putatively value freedom of expression and don’t want to be evil - should engage China, or participate in its market. I’ve sounded off on this issue, as have others (Rep. Chris Smith, Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan Gutmann, Hiawatha Bray, Robert Scoble, and many others). There are (at least) two salient questions.
First, what constraints should Western companies observe when offering services in, or to, China? The U.S. limited export of encryption technology for a long time - along with supercomputers such as those made by my former employer, IBM - and our courts once banned publication of a magazine article with technical details about hydrogen bombs. We accept that freedom to trade must at times yield to other concerns.
Second, how credible is the argument that a filtered ‘Net is better than none at all? (Microsoft, among others, has asserted that even a censored blog service aids freedom of expression and democracy in China. I call this the “blogging in our time” argument.) I’m suspicious of the “half a loaf” argument. If we accept that our information environment influences our decisions, then altering that environment is an effective, and often insidious, tactic.
These are hard questions.
Frankly, I hope we as Internet users, and especially those of us trying to figure out the legal and ethical implications of the Internet in repressive places, will engage them vigorously.
Update: I meant to link to this discussion of Google’s role in China that includes Andrew McLaughlin of Google and Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China. (Disclosure: Andrew and I serve on HRIC’s Technical Advisory Board; I know and like both him and Sharon.)
Second Update: This question comes up today in the New York Times as Research In Motion may be facing pressure to alter (or eliminate) the encryption on its (ubiquitous) Blackberries to enable China to monitor messages on its network. The OpenNet Initiative’s experts Jonathan Zittrain and Ron Deibert explain.
Filed under: Filtering, Intermediaries
“Half a loaf” is not necessary, because there are plenty of censored blog services in China. This is truely a bad-faith argument. What Microsoft wants is money, but it says public interest.
I think Microsoft’s argument is that their half of a loaf is bigger than the alternatives (or perhaps it has raisins or something - this analogy is a bit strained now). Their contention seems to be that they filter / censor less than other, domestically-owned blog services, and hence they are the good guys. This is an empirical question (how much less, if at all, does MS filter MSN spaces vs. Bokee or others?) as well as a normative one (is having 10% less filtering really enough to wear the laurels of freedom’s defender)? I’m with you on being suspicious of how neatly this ethical argument lines up with Microsoft’s financial interests.
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