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Microsoft og Yahoo! - diktaturets stik-i-rend-drenge?
MSN Spaces er Microsofts svar på Googles Blogger, en gratis tjeneste, hvor enhver kan oprette sin egen weblog.
Denne tjeneste er populær mange steder, bl.a. i Kina, hvor man ikke må sige hvad som helst og slet ikke kritisere landets kommunistiske regime.
Dette tager Microsoft sig også af: Man har folk til at holde et vågent øje, og skulle nogle af de kinesiske blogs finde på at sige noget, der kunne genere de høje herrer i Beijing, griber man ind og bortcensurerer de formastelige blogs.
Senest er det gået ud over en åbenmundet journalist, der bloggede under navnet Michael Anti, som vi f.eks. læser hos Rebecca McKinnon:
Dette giver mindelser om en anden sag for blot få måneder siden, hvor det kom frem, at Yahoo! havde angivet en kinesisk journalist, der havde forsøgt at orientere omverdenen om myndighedernes håndtering af 15-årsdagen for massakren på Tienanmen-pladsen i Beijing.Anti is one of China's edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.) His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China. (For all the gory details on the current press crackdown click here, here, here, and here.)
Xeni Jardin opsummerer sagen i LA Times:
... reporters at a Hunan province newspaper listened as their editorial director read a statement from the Communist Party's Propaganda Department about the upcoming 15-year commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It warned that dissidents may use the Internet to spread "damaging information."Disse to sager afslører et stort problem ved Internettets centralisering - ved ophobningen af en stadigt større del af vores kommunikationsinfrastruktur hos nogle få firmaer, der drives uden hensyn til andet end størst mulig profit.
One reporter used an anonymous Yahoo e-mail account to ask a colleague in New York to post a report about the statement on pro-democracy website Minzhu Tongxun (Democracy Newsletter).
But as the 37-year-old married reporter behind the numeric pseudonym "198964" learned, he shouldn't have assumed that Yahoo defends press freedom. When Chinese security agents asked executives at Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) to identify the man, they did so.
(...)
Mr. "198964," whose real name is Shi Tao, is serving a 10-year jail sentence for "divulging state secrets abroad."
Hvis prisen for at komme ind på det kinesiske marked er at angive og censurere sine kunder - hvordan skal vi så nogensinde kunne regne med, at firmaer som Microsoft, Yahoo! eller Google ikke er præcis lige så villig til at ofre vore egne demokratiske rettigheder også?
Rebecca McKinnon opsummerer det smukt:
In my view, this issue goes far beyond China. The behavior of companies like Microsoft, Yahoo! and others - and their eager willingness to comply with Chinese government demands - shows a fundamental lack of respect for users and our fundamental human rights. Globally.Og nej, firmaets flirt med diktaturet i Kina viser med al ønskelig tydelighed, at det kan vi ikke.Microsoft, Yahoo! and others are helping to institutionalize and legitimize the integration of censorship into the global IT business model.
Do not count on these companies to protect your human rights, if those rights are threatened by the over-stretching hand of any government anywhere on the planet.
If these American technology companies have so few moral qualms about giving in to Chinese government demands to hand over Chinese user data or censor Chinese people's content, can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an over-zealous government agency in our own country? Can we trust that they're not already doing so?
Morale: Brug kryptering, og forlad dig ikke 100% på monolitiske monopoler som Microsoft og Yahoo!.
Via BoingBoing.