

Stance by China to Limit Google Is Risk by Beijing - roundsquare
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/world/asia/24china.html?ref=global-home

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dca
The only thing scarier than the censorship and reasons for it (i.e. human
rights issues, corruption, etc...), is how powerful China would be if they
ever straightened up.

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grandalf
Not to make your high horse uncomfortable, but consider:

\- In the US there are millions of so-called "illegals" who can't call the
police if assaulted or abused for fear of deportation. This is a major human
rights issue... if it happened in another country we'd call it apartheid.

\- In the US there is extensive corruption. Consider Rod Blagojevich's blunder
but realize that one doesn't do that sort of thing unless it's part of the
status quo.

\- The treatment of prison inmates in the US is atrocious. Being incarcerated
is a near guarantee of regular rape and assault at the hands of other inmates.
Guards do not stop this behavior. This is worse than any gulag.

edit: I love the US but I think it's fair to point out some of is flaws. I'm
shocked that this comment gets modded down, are there a lot of Pat Buchanan
acolytes on HN?

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grandalf
Puh-lease! Considering that the US Government has tried to shut down WikiLeaks
and that Google censors some content (such as, for example, a depiction of two
17.5 year olds having sex), I think it's far more useful to look at China as
being a bit more inclined to censor but not really much different than the US.

After all, the US Government censors information about the Kennedy
assassination for no good reason... it's utterly hypocritical for any
Amnerican to criticize the Chinese government without first criticizing the US
government for censoring the Kennedy stuff and for trying to shut down
WikiLeaks.

edit: I can't believe how many social conservatives appear to be downvoting
this. Do you really have a problem with 17.5 year olds having consensual sex?

~~~
poutine
Complete and total nonsense. While the US Government has severe issues it is
not by any stretch equivalent to the Chinese Government in its repression of
human rights and freedoms and censorship of the Internet.

~~~
grandalf
Censorship is censorship. It's either bad or it's not. If Google truly cares
about the issue of censorship it should act consistently, not just try to find
an area in which opposition to censorship is unanimous among people in the US
and make a big stink about how bold it is being.

This is a business decision. Try posting a video of a naked 17.5 year old
person on youtube and see how long it takes before it is taken down. Try
posting a video slide show of sensitive wikileaks docs and see how long the
video stays up.

Your argument also falls apart in terms of the humanitarian argument. Search
increases freedom and thus is helpful to humanitarian goals. If Google makes a
decision that results in less search, the decision results in less freedom.

Similarly, if you are running late to an event and you drive 100 MPH on the
highway and you get pulled over for speeding, you might actually get there
later than if you'd just driven the speed limit. If you want to optimize
within the law you don't speed. Google is doing the equivalent of going 100
MPH and then blaming the cop.

~~~
orangecat

        The Sophisticate:  "The world isn't black and white.  No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray.  Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."
        The Zetet:  "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade.  You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view..."
          -- Marc Stiegler, David's Sling
    

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/>

~~~
grandalf
I love this quote. I think most people apply the Sophisticate's error to China
by supposing that since both the US and China are different shades of gray,
they may then decide arbitrarily to critique China... similarly:

 _We saw it manifested in yesterday's post - the one who believed that odds of
two to the power of seven hundred and fifty millon to one, against, meant
"there was still a chance". All probabilities, to him, were simply "uncertain"
and that meant he was licensed to ignore them if he pleased._

If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the
US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are
not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse
ones.

~~~
orangecat
_If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in
the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you
are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse
ones._

You are however "licensed" to focus more on China, on the grounds that their
abuses are orders of magnitude worse.

~~~
grandalf
I challenge that assertion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082>

