What's green, blue, and yellow on the outside and red in the middle?
Some libruls would have you believe that google is doing somethin' wrong by providing a censored version of their service in China. This is just bunk. Their explanation serves well, but, because I am so annoyed by simplistic views about the situation, I would like to provide an analogy.
Imagine you are a self-published author. A bookstore in =-China orders a book from you. The Chinese government sends the book back, telling you that you need to either
You call your customer, and they say that they want (1), but they also tell you that their local library has a copy of a version that went through (2) if they ever need to check that out(because, I believe, google's .com website will still not be blocked). A bunch of computer nerds start to criticize you, saying that you are compromising a committment you spoke about to "do not evil". Are they right?
Obviously not. If there is a difference between this analogy and the real situation it would be that google is not a book. But that doesn't change anything. The fact that google will provide an explanation of the censored aspects of its service to Chinese users means that you cannot argue that it is abusing its reputation as a provider of objective data. I think people are forgetting that all websites, no matter how important they are to our use of the internet, are the possessions and creative property of their owners.
Imagine you are a self-published author. A bookstore in =-China orders a book from you. The Chinese government sends the book back, telling you that you need to either
(1)take out certain pages before you send it(you can also insert a nice note saying why you had to rip out the pages) , or
(2) sign a release, allowing them to take the pages out for you. They might rip out more pages accidentally or damage the book. This would also cost more, take longer, and reduce the chance that the book got there at all. On the other hand, a few pages that you would have cut out might slip through(the censors are your typical sloppy, lazy, corrupt communist bureaucrats) .
You call your customer, and they say that they want (1), but they also tell you that their local library has a copy of a version that went through (2) if they ever need to check that out(because, I believe, google's .com website will still not be blocked). A bunch of computer nerds start to criticize you, saying that you are compromising a committment you spoke about to "do not evil". Are they right?
Obviously not. If there is a difference between this analogy and the real situation it would be that google is not a book. But that doesn't change anything. The fact that google will provide an explanation of the censored aspects of its service to Chinese users means that you cannot argue that it is abusing its reputation as a provider of objective data. I think people are forgetting that all websites, no matter how important they are to our use of the internet, are the possessions and creative property of their owners.
posted by Austin 5-000 at 9:31 PM
2 Comments:
Sloppy, sloppy Austin...
Looks like you just got served
That sentence was intended to combat the assertion: Because google is an integral part of the way we use the internet and possesses the power and reputation of that role, it should no longer be able to make decisions on its own. That argument would be based on market power and a theory of monopoly.
I argue against it because the reason for the backlash against google is not because it's just some random website, but because google possesses shitloads of power. It's not really a central point, but whatevs.
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