As to this Google matter and charges that it shows dirty pictures let us start with a comment sent in by a reader to Danwei.
Putting aside whether or not this software just screens pornography I can see that despite the cry on many bbs, there’s large parent groups who do support censorship of online content. I doubt they would support political censorship but they definitely would support censorship of porn and violent content.
Does Google show you dirty pictures? If you type in ‘erotic’ as a search term you get about 68,200,000 sites to look at and, yes, some of them are fairly reasonably described as not for children. And very near the top is Google vido showing erotic massage.
The Chinese government said it had told Google to suspend foreign searches and a feature that automatically suggests multiple search results once typing commences in the search window.
This came along just as there was a storm of outrage among Chinese internet users over Beijing’s order that every new PC sold in the country be equipped with censorship software. In fact, there may have been a misunderstanding there. The government insists it meant that the software had to be offered with every computer. Not already loaded in.
Google confirms it has met government representatives ‘to discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foreign language searches’.
The company said it was undertaking a thorough review of its service and believed it had addressed most of the problems.
The Financial Times UK reported that Edward Yu, chief executive of Analysys, an internet research company in Beijing, said, ‘If these restrictions are kept up for more than a few days, they will have a huge impact on Google’s business in China.
‘Traffic will drop quickly because users will find it extremely cumbersome to search without automated keywords and will feel they cannot find results they are looking for, such as foreign travel and shopping information.’
Danwei.org, an English-language Chinese news blog based in Hong Kong, notes that Chinese Internet users blame this latest crackdown on Google as ‘a reaction against the PR and media disaster of the Green Dam.’
Green Dam is the name of Internet-filtering software that the Chinese government has said must come with all computers (with or on is not quite clear but the balance of opinion is ‘with’) sold in the country as of July 1.
Now the situation is getting tenser as the US has complained officially to China over its strict new internet censorship rules.
The development is a rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years. US technology companies see it as a back-door way of keeping them out of the Chinese market.
Ian Kelly, a State department spokesman, said, ‘We view with concern any attempt to restrict the free flow of information. Efforts to filter internet content are incompatible with China’s aspirations to build a modern, information-based economy and society.
‘We are concerned about Green Dam both in terms of its potential impact on trade and the serious technical issues raised by the use of the software. We have asked the Chinese to engage in a dialogue on how to address these concerns.’
The Financial Times reported that US technology companies have lobbied hard with the State and Commerce departments, and the US trade representative since the Green Dam order.
Solid Oak, a California software company, has sent ‘cease and desist’ letters warning PC companies not to use the Green Dam software which, it says, uses code copied from its own filtering product. However, looking at the history of Solid Oak shows that this is not a company on strong moral ground and it is doubtful that such a case would stand up in court.
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