Congress Looks to Require Companies to Resist Chinese Net Censorship

I've been quiet on this subject, although it's been bugging me for some time. It really bothers me when a U.S. company bows to another countries' requirements for Internet censorship, and the most obvious example is China.

Representative Christopher Smith, Republican, New Jersey, and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Human Rights, isn't pleased with it either. Next month he plans to hold a hearing with representatives from the U.S. State Department, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco and Reporters Without Borders having the opportunity to speak.

Last week Microsoft shut down a popular Chinese blog written by Zhao Jing, also known as Michael Anti. This was widely criticized around the world, and Robert Scoble, Microsoft's own in-house blogger, said he was "depressed" by the news and offered Anti the opportunity to blog via his site.

Scoble wrote:

"Guys over at MSN: Sorry, I don't agree with your being used as a state-run thug," he said. "It's one thing to pull a list of words out of a blog using an algorithm. It's another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger's work."

(Scoble was referring to the story from last year when Microsoft admitted censoring the words freedom and democracy from the Chinese MSN portal.)

All this, plus the story about Yahoo! contributing to the jailing of a Chinese journalist ... well, this has all really disappointed me ... and I'm sure I can find plenty of other stories if I look hard.

What's disappointing in this? (Here's where I'll lose a lot of people, I'm sure). The attitude of a lot of people. For example, Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at the free-market Pacific Research Institute says "If Yahoo isn't doing business in China, someone else will" and "It's putting American businesses at a disadvantage in the world marketplace." Look at the Pacific Research Institute website. It says "The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is a free-market think tank providing practical solutions for the issues that affect the daily lives of all individuals." Wow, reading that, you'd think they actually cared about human rights. I mean, really, "If Yahoo isn't doing business in China, someone else will." That smacks of something a drug dealer might say. "Well, if I'm not selling drugs on that corner, someone else will." You get the drift.

Bottom line for me: the U.S. used to stand for something ... it used to be that we tried to set a standard for the rest of the world. So Yahoo! doesn't make some money. It will make plenty more. Shouldn't we take a stand somewhere? And not just on human rights, don't get me started on the environment.

So I hope Smith gets somewhere with this. Reporters Without Borders called for American companies to establish a voluntary code of conduct to resist censorship demands. Short of that, they said Congress should pass a law enforcing such a code. According to the Boston Globe (via TMCNet):

Smith said such a law is probably the only way to stop US firms from cooperating with overseas censorship. He said that no US company should ever comply with China's political censorship policies, even if it means they lose the right to do business in China.

I say: go for it, Smith.

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