IP: more on Yahoo agrees to Chinese censorship

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Dana Blankenhorn" <danablankenhorn () mindspring com>
Reply-To: "Dana Blankenhorn" <danablankenhorn () mindspring com>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:04:58 -0400
To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Re: Yahoo agrees to Chinese censorship

The article totally ignores the success of International Data Corp., acting
as though Yahoo is operating in a vacuum.

IDC is privately-held, it publishes computer magazines and engages in market
research. IDC has been heavily involved in China for several years. IDC
dominates the huge, growing market for Chinese computer magazines. China is
a huge profit-center for IDC and (this is most important) IDC obeys the
Chinese law. (Because it has done this, IDC is in the best position of any
of its rivals to dominate the U.S. computer media once that industry makes a
comeback.)

Yahoo is not doing this blindly. Obedience to local law is the price of
market entry. Market entry can be enormously profitable at a time when
profits elsewhere are very hard to come by.

Personally I disagree with Yahoo, and IDC. Personally I find China's ability
to combine censorship, oppression and capitalism as frightening as Al Qaeda.
But let's not be blind to realities here. And it seems that the Post's
coverage is willfully blind to them.

China means profits. Participating in the Chinese "opportunity" means
colluding with the Tienanmien murderers. It's a price capitalism willingly
plays. That's the reality.

Dana Blankenhorn   http://www.a-clue.com
@Have Modem, Will Travel  dana () a-clue com
Ph: 404-373-7634   fax: 404-378-0794


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
To: ip <ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com>
Date: Monday, August 19, 2002 2:35 PM
Subject: IP: Yahoo agrees to Chinese censorship


> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34015-2002Aug18.html
>
>
> washingtonpost.com
>
> Yahoo's China Concession
>
>
>
> Monday, August 19, 2002; Page A12
>
>
> TWO YEARS ago, when cyberprophets were riding high, a group of anti-Nazi
> activists in France had the temerity to sue Yahoo. The suit complained that
> French Web surfers could buy Nazi paraphernalia on Yahoo's Web site and
that
> this violated the anti-Nazi laws that were supposed to bind French
citizens.
> > From its Silicon Valley headquarters, Yahoo let out a high-tech guffaw.
The
> Internet is borderless; national regulation can't apply; if it did, Web
> companies would suddenly have to respect the law of every country whose
> citizens might browse their Web sites. "It is very difficult to do business
> if you have to wake up every day and say, okay, whose laws do I follow?"
> said Heather Killen, Yahoo's senior vice president of international
> operations.
>
> Things have changed out there in the valley. The aspiration to a borderless
> Internet has fizzled along with technology stock prices. Commercial Web
> sites are eagerly recreating real-space national boundaries in cyberspace,
> so that they run Japanese ads for people who log on in Japan and German
ones
> for Germans. National regulators are tightening control, asserting their
> right to tax e-commerce sites in their countries and the right to "wiretap"
> e-mail with suspected criminal connections. For the most part, this is
good:
> There's no reason why societies that choose to ban child pornography in
real
> space should decide that the same material in cyberspace is fine, or why
> bricks-and-mortar stores should pay sales taxes while clicks-and-mortar
> stores escape them. But this principle can sometimes go too far. It's
ironic
> that the latest company to cross the line is none other than Yahoo.
>
> Yahoo has recently signed a voluntary pledge to purge its Chinese Web site
> of material that China's communist dictatorship might deem subversive.
Yahoo
> promises to avoid "producing, posting or disseminating pernicious
> information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social
> stability." It pledges to monitor information posted by users on its site
> and to "remove the harmful information promptly." It even undertakes to
> avoid offering links to sites whose content might not be "healthy." In sum,
> Yahoo is promising to become part of the regime's strategy: Allow the
> Internet to spread so that China reaps its commercial potential, but
prevent
> it from nurturing free expression.
>
> Yahoo says that it is obliged to follow local law and that the voluntary
> pledge does not add much to what Chinese law requires anyway. It points out
> that the French suit targeted Yahoo's American Web site, which is different
> from China's policy of squeezing Chinese-based Internet operations. But
both
> cases involve countries trying to enforce domestic law, and it's strange
> that Yahoo cooperates more eagerly with China's dictators than it does with
> a European democracy. If the firm actually does the things the pledge
> implies, it may become complicit in the oppression of Chinese whose crime
is
> to have a political idea or to espouse an unpopular religion.
>
> Internet cafes in China already are required to report clients' visits to
> subversive sites, and Chinese who have copied material from these sites
have
> been hit with long prison sentences. Does Yahoo, a firm whose cheeky name
> evokes the wacky freedom of the Internet, really want to be a part of this?
>
>
>
> For archives see:
> http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/


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