my Computer Quest: Beijing

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24 March, 2010

Google stops China censorship...

WASHINGTON - A day after Google said it would no longer censor its search engine results in China, angering Beijing, Chinese access to websites covering sensitive topics remained blocked Tuesday.

Google announced Monday in a blog post that it had shifted mainland Chinese users of its Google.cn search engine to an uncensored site in the former British colony Hong Kong, drawing anger from Beijing and raising questions about the Web giant's future in the world's biggest online market.

But Tuesday, searches from mainland computers of subjects like "Falun Gong" and "June 4" -- referring to the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989 -- produced the message: "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page."

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A stand builder fixes a Google logo at an exhibition booth

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The same searches on Google.com.hk from computers in Hong Kong displayed full results -- suggesting that China was deploying its "Great Firewall" of web censorship.

While ending censorship in China, the Mountain View, California-based Google said it planned to keep sales, research and development teams in the country of some 384 million Internet users.

Google's decision came a little more than two months after the Internet titan threatened to close its Chinese operations because of censorship and cyberattacks it said originated from China.

China said Google was "totally wrong" to stop censorship and blame Beijing for the cyberattacks that allegedly targeted the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

"Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service," said the official in charge of the Internet bureau of the State Council Information Office.

"We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conduct."

The White House said it was "disappointed" Google could not reach a deal with Beijing and reiterated that US President Barack Obama is "committed to Internet freedom and... opposed to censorship."

Drummond, Google's top lawyer, said "figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard.

"We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services."

Google co-founder Sergey Brin told The New York Times that shifting the Chinese service to Hong Kong was not given a clear-cut stamp of approval by Beijing but "there was a sense that Hong Kong was the right step."

"There's a lot of lack of clarity," he said. "Our hope is that the newly begun Hong Kong service will continue to be available in mainland China."

Drummond said "the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

He said providing uncensored search from Hong Kong is "entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China."

Beijing tightly controls online content, removing information it deems harmful such as pornography and violent content, but also politically sensitive material.

Google launched Google.cn in January 2006 after agreeing to censor websites for content banned under Chinese law. Google.cn is the second-largest search engine in China after Chinese search engine Baidu.com.

Google's decision to end censorship in China was welcomed by human rights and technology groups and US lawmakers.

"It is a remarkable, and welcomed, action and an important boost of encouragement for millions of Chinese human rights activists and political and religious dissidents," said US Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican
from New Jersey.

Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, called it "an important step to challenge the Chinese government's use of censorship to maintain its control over its citizens."

"Google has taken a courageous position against censorship," said Lucie Morillon of Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Leading Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, who spent nearly two decades in prison and now lives in the United States, said he knew China "would not back down."

"But we also knew that Google's motto was 'Don't be evil.' So there was no point on which to compromise," Wei said.

Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, praised what she called Google's "continued effort to enable China's people with unfiltered access to robust sources of information from all over the world."

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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China nixes Google censorship move

Image via Wikipedia

BEIJING - China said Tuesday Google had "violated its written promise" and is "totally wrong" to stop censoring its Chinese language search engine and to blame Beijing for alleged hacker attacks.

The comments came from an official in charge of the Internet bureau of the State Council Information Office, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks," said the official.

"This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicisation of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts," the official added.

Hours earlier Google said it had ended censorship of its Chinese-language search engine Google.cn and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong.

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Google China office in Beijing

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Google also said it intended to continue research and development work in China and to maintain a sales presence there.

Google's lifting of censorship on Google.cn comes a little more than two months after the Mountain View, California-based company said it had been the victim of cyberattacks originating from China.

The White House said it was disappointed that Google could not reach a deal with Beijing.

"We are disappointed that Google and the Chinese government were unable to reach an agreement that would allow Google to continue operating its search services in China on its Google.cn website," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

- AFP /ls

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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18 March, 2010

Google and China: where do we go from here?

Image via Wikipedia

China without Google: 'a lose-lose scenario'

17-March-2010 01:44 PM

JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer

BEIJING. China without Google a prospect that looks increasingly likely could mean no more maps on mobile phones. A free music service that has helped to fight piracy might be in jeopardy. China's fledgling Web outfits would face less pressure to improve, eroding their ability to one day compete abroad.

Chinese news reports say Google Inc. is on the verge of making good on a threat to shutter its China site, Google.cn, because Beijing forces the Internet giant to censor search results. The reports indicated that Google had, in fact, already stopped censoring results, but searches Tuesday for sensitive topics like "Tiananmen massacre" appeared to still return only whitewashed results.

A Google spokesman, Scott Rubin, denied censorship had stopped and would not confirm whether Google.cn might close.

The extent of a possible pullout from China is unclear. But on top of a local search site that Google says it may close, services that might be affected range from advertising support for Chinese companies to online entertainment.

"If Google leaves, it's a lose-lose scenario, instead of Google loses and others gain," said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

Google says it is in talks with Beijing following its Jan. 12 announcement that it no longer wants to comply with Beijing's extensive Web controls. But China's industry minister insisted Friday the company must obey Chinese law, which appears to leave few options other than closing Google.cn, which has about 35 percent of China's search market.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said last week something would happen soon, but Rubin, speaking by phone from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, said no action had yet been taken.

Such a step could have repercussions for major Chinese companies as well as local Web surfers. It would deliver a windfall to local rival Baidu Inc., China's major search engine, with 60 percent of the market. But other companies rely on Google for search, maps and other services and might be forced to find alternatives.

China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest phone company by subscribers, with 527 million accounts, uses Google for mobile search and maps. Baidu offers mobile search, but China Mobile passed up a partnership with it earlier after they failed to agree on terms, according to industry analysts. Millions of mobile customers might lose access to Google's Chinese-language map service.

A key issue is whether Beijing, angry and embarrassed by Google's public defiance, would allow the company to continue running other operations, including advertising and a fledgling mobile phone businesses in China if Google.cn closes.

China promotes Internet use for business and education but bars access to sites run by human rights and political activists and some news outlets. Officials who defend China's controls by pointing to countries that bar content such as child pornography are stung that Google has drawn attention to how much more pervasive Chinese limits are.

Chinese Web surfers are blocked from seeing Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and major blog-hosting services abroad and a Google pullout would leave them increasingly isolated.

Google hopes to keep operating its Beijing research and development center, advertising sales offices and mobile phone business, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking. But the person said the company won't do that if it believes its decision to stop censoring search results will jeopardize employees in China. Industry analysts estimate Google has a work force of 700 in China.

The government says Chinese mobile phone carriers will be allowed to use Google's Android operating system but there has been no word on whether efforts to sell its own phones in China might be affected. Google postponed the launch of two phones with a major Chinese carrier due to the dispute.

Uncertainty also surrounds Google's China music portal, a free, advertising-supported service launched last year in partnership with four global music companies and 14 independent labels. Industry analysts say it has helped to undercut China's rampant music piracy by offering an alternative to unlicensed copying.

"Without that, are we back to, `Piracy wins'?" said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd., a technology market research firm.

The music service is run by Top100.cn, a company part-owned by Google, but can be accessed only through Google.cn. Top100.cn's executive chairman, Erik Zhang, said it is preparing for the possibility that Google.cn might close but said his company has not been told whether that will happen. He declined to give other details.

The biggest impact of a Google departure could lie behind the scenes, where Chinese companies, many of them small entrepreneurs, rely on its AdWords advertising service, Gmail e-mail and documents services.

Those might be disrupted if Beijing turns up Internet filters to block access to Google's sites abroad. Its U.S. site has a Chinese-language search engine but is already inaccessible due to government filters.

In an uncomfortable irony for Beijing, Google might suffer little commercial loss from a pullout while China's own companies are hurt.

The bulk of Google's estimated $300 million in 2009 revenues in China came from export-oriented companies that would need to keep advertising on its sites abroad even if Google.cn closes, according to Yu.

"We believe the majority of revenue would still be kept on, with keyword purchases listed on Google.com instead of Google.cn," he said.

The loss of competitive pressure from Google also might slow Chinese development in search and other Internet services, Yu said.

"This is definitely a bad thing for Chinese companies that want to go abroad in the future," he said.

The industry minister, Li Yizhong, said Friday that China's Internet industry would develop without Google. But even some Chinese industry leaders who normally toe the government line in public are warning that controls on Internet companies and media are handicapping their growth.

Beijing has steadily tightened controls over Internet content and foreign investment in the industry. Video sharing sites must have state-owned media outlets as partners. People in the industry say it is getting harder to register privately financed sites.

"Without full and fair market competition, there will be no quality, no excellence, no employment opportunities, no stability and no real rise of China," said the chairman of major Chinese portal Sohu Inc., Charles Zhang, in a speech in February, according to a report on Sohu's Web site.

"How do we do this practically?" Zhang said. "The problem is complicated, but the fundamental point is to limit the power of the government." - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

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01 July, 2009

China backs down from requirement for Web filter

07/01/2009 | 07:32 AM

BEIJING - In a rare reversal, China's government gave in to domestic and international pressure and backed down Tuesday from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have Internet-filtering software.

Just hours before the rule was to have taken effect, the government said it would postpone the requirement for the "Green Dam" software. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it made the decision partly because some PC markets were having difficulty meeting the deadline. It did not say whether the plan might be revived.

The change of course averted a possible scuffle with Washington. Top US officials had protested the plan after it was imposed abruptly in May, calling it a barrier to trade. Angry Web users circulated online petitions protesting Green Dam, while industry groups warned the software might create computer security problems.

The controversy reflected the conflict between the communist government's desire to control information and China's high-tech ambitions. The country has an increasingly informed, vocal public and tighter links to companies that create urgently needed jobs and tax revenue.

The decision was a "victory for China's civil society," said Li Fangping, a Beijing lawyer who had demanded a public hearing on the plan.

"Many citizens worked together and voiced their opposition to the forced installation of this filtering software and forced the government to at least think more deeply about it," Li said. "We hope now that they will go ahead and completely drop this order."

News of the announcement spread in China quickly via Twitter and the Chinese mini-blogging site Fanfou. Some bloggers said they expect the government to look for a way to carry out Green Dam that attracts less attention.

"They are using the word `delay,' instead of saying they stopped the plan," said Wen Yunchao, a Chinese blogger who has been among the most vocal critics of Green Dam. "I think that it's possible that at some point in the future the government could still enforce their policy and install software on personal computers that filters the information people are able to look at. So, I am calling this an intermediary victory."

China's communist government encourages Internet use for education and business, and the country has the biggest population of Web users, with more than 298 million. But authorities try to block access to material deemed obscene or subversive, and Beijing operates the world's most sweeping system of Internet filtering. US companies such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. have cooperated in way or another with government requests to tamp down criticism.

The Green Dam software would raise China's controls to a new level by putting a filter inside each PC. Chinese authorities said it would be needed to shield children from violent and obscene material online.

Analysts who have reviewed the program say it also contains code to filter material the government considers politically objectionable. Separately, a California company claimed Green Dam contained stolen programming code.

Chinese Web surfers ridiculed Green Dam by saying it would block access to photos of animals and other innocuous subjects. State media reported extensively on the complaints, a rare move. Chinese media usually uncritically support government policy.

Green Dam already is in use in Internet cafes in China and has been installed since the start of this year in PCs sold under a government program that subsidizes appliance sales in the countryside.

China accounted for 14 percent of the 63.5 million PCs shipped worldwide in the first quarter, according to the research group IDC. Beijing-based Lenovo makes the most computers for China, capturing nearly 27 percent of the market in the first three months of the year. It is followed by Hewlett-Packard Co., whose laptops and desktops make up about 14 percent of shipments.

Other large PC makers such as Toshiba Corp. and Taiwan's Acer Inc. said they were ready to provide Green Dam on disks beginning Wednesday. Worldwide industry leaders HP and Dell Inc. had declined to discuss their plans, possibly waiting for a diplomatic settlement.

Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn said the PC maker was happy with the Green Dam delay. He would not say what Dell had done to prepare for China's deadline.

"We respect the Chinese government's stated goal of protecting children by filtering access to pornography through the Internet," Blackburn said in a statement.

Representatives from US-based technology groups, including the Information Technology Industry Council and the Software & Information Industry Association, were in Beijing trying to stop Green Dam.

"We welcome the delay in implementation of the Green Dam mandate, and we look forward to working closely with the US government to find market-based solutions that enable consumer choice and protect children on the Internet," said John Neuffer, vice president for global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents companies including Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Apple, Inc.

The Green Dam initiative coincided with a tightening of government controls on Internet use. Last week, China's Health Ministry ordered health-related Web sites that carry research on sexually oriented topics to allow access only to medical professionals.
Also last week, the government issued new rules on "virtual currency" used by some game Web sites, saying it cannot be used to purchase real goods.

On Green Dam, the industry ministry sounded a conciliatory note. It promised to "solicit opinions from all parties" in an effort to improve its work.

"I think the cost of the move from trade friction and generally a public relations black eye was becoming pretty clear to the government," said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing research firm. Postponing the filtering rule "gets them out of the scrutiny of the international media and business." - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

26 June, 2009

Google briefly cut off in China

Posted: 25 June 2009 1350 hrs

BEIJING: Google's main English-language website was inaccessible for more than two hours in China, state media reported, as Beijing continued to pressure the Internet giant to eliminate pornography.

The outage occurred Wednesday night, the China Daily newspaper said, adding that its Chinese-language website google.cn was unaffected.

A Google China spokesperson could not immediately be reached by AFP.

However, the company's China public relations firm confirmed that Google had received complaints from Internet users.

"Google did receive reports from users yesterday that google.com was not accessible for some time. But we have no further comment on that," said a spokeswoman with Ogilvy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official China Daily said a Google spokesman confirmed the service cut in comments to the newspaper but would not speculate on the cause.

The paper said the outage also cut off access to Gmail, Google's email service.

Google's sites in both languages appeared to be working normally on Thursday.

Google promised last week to work harder to eliminate pornography from its Chinese Web searches after a government Internet watchdog accused the firm of continuing to allow such results.

China has vowed to crack down on Internet content that it deems unhealthy, which has included pornography and information critical of authorities, a censorship system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Computer makers were notified by the government recently that all personal computers sold from July 1 must be shipped with anti-pornography software, a move that has led to widespread censorship fears both inside and outside China.

China has the world's largest online population at nearly 300 million Web users and the country's Communist Party rulers have struggled to control a proliferation of online content in recent years.

- AFP/yt

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Not Yahoo!'s job to 'fix China', says CEO

Image via CrunchBase

Posted: 26 June 2009 0646 hrs

Pedestrians walk past a Yahoo! billboard in Beijing. (file pic)

WASHINGTON: Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz staunchly defended the Internet company's business practices in China on Thursday and said it was "not our job to fix the Chinese government".

Bartz, appearing at her first shareholders meeting since taking over the Sunnyvale, California-based company in January, said Yahoo! respects human rights.

"We actually hosted a business and human rights summit for high tech companies a month or so ago," she said. "Yahoo! has gone overboard on this point to really be sympathetic, serious and so forth.

"We have done a lot," she said.

"The board does its best, the company does its best to run a good business, to look out for our population around the world, both the people who work for us and the people who come to visit us," she said. "That's our commitment."

Bartz added that Yahoo! "was not incorporated to fix China".

"It was incorporated to give people a free flow of information," she said.

A number of US companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo!, have been hauled before the US Congress in recent years and accused of complicity in building what has been called the "Great Firewall of China".

Yahoo! was thrust into the forefront of the online rights issue after the company helped Chinese police identify cyber dissidents whose supposed crime was expressing their views online.

Alluding to the case, Bartz said: "Ten years ago the company made a mistake, and you can't hold us up as the bad boy forever.

"We have worked better, harder, faster than most companies to respect human rights and to try and make a difference," she said.

"But it is not our job to fix the Chinese government, it's that simple.

"We will respect human rights, we will do what's right, but we're not going to take on every government in the world as our mandate," she said. "That's not the mandate that the shareholders gave us."

Yahoo!, other technology giants and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct last year aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

China exercises strict control over the Internet, blocking sites linked to Chinese dissidents, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Tibetan government-in-exile and those with information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

China and Google are currently engaged in a dispute, with Beijing accusing the Internet giant of providing links to pornography in its Web searches.

And the United States called on China on Wednesday to drop a new requirement for all computers to carry Internet filtering software.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said China may be violating World Trade Organisation obligations by requiring that all computers sold in the country from July 1 have the "Green Dam" program.

Beijing said the software will filter out pornography, protecting young people within the world's largest online population.

- AFP/so

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

03 June, 2009

China blocks websites ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

The use of technology to gather and unite the masses…

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Time is GMT + 8 hours

Posted: 3-Jun-2009 11:19 hrs

People surf the Internet in Jinan, in eastern China's Shandong province. China is blocking access to Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, and its Hotmail email service, the company said, two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

"China's decision to block these sites today represents the latest salvo in a relentless campaign to erase the past," executive director Jennifer Windsor said in a statement.

"China is blocking sites like Twitter and Flickr because they provide a means for people to circumvent government control and mobilize dissent."

China's foreign correspondents' association on Tuesday condemned moves by authorities in Beijing to block reporting in the run-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) said it had received at least three reports of authorities blocking reporting at Tiananmen Square and intimidating journalists or their sources.

The country's communist leadership sent soldiers to forcibly clear the square and surrounding areas on the night of June 3-4, 1989, ending seven weeks of protests calling for political reforms.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in the crackdown, which remains a taboo subject in China. — AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

my Computer Quest

24 March, 2010

Google stops China censorship...

China nixes Google censorship move

18 March, 2010

Google and China: where do we go from here?

01 July, 2009

China backs down from requirement for Web filter

26 June, 2009

Google briefly cut off in China

Not Yahoo!'s job to 'fix China', says CEO

03 June, 2009

China blocks websites ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

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