The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that:
If you have been to Istanbul (not Constantinople) you will have noticed the many Internet Cafes, a situation born of high connect charges from home. In 2004 the government of Turkey imposed censorship on these Internet cafes, making them responsible for blocking objectionable content that included pornography and anti-Attaturk writings. The owners of Internet cafes in a small city not far from Istanbul found that the local police would make frequent spot checks and were always able to discover illegal sites that led to high fines, even though the cafés had invested in web filtering solutions to comply with the law. Their solution was simple and elegant. The café owners banded together and invested in the equipment and software needed to filter censored content at a point in the network that could cover them all: their ISP. Then they turned control over to the police. The café owners avoided the fines, the police stopped harassing them, and the letter of the law was enforced.
What if Google were to take the same route? Create a separate control interface to Google search that could be handed over to censors. The result would be:
1. Google would no-longer be in the censorship business. They could focus on their core business and not worry about every new dissident group and what must be continuous demands from the Chinese Communist rulers for imposing more and more granular controls.
2. The ire of Chinese citizens would be more focused than before on those ultimately responsible for restricting their free access to information: their government.
While the moral high ground might be to completely exit the China market you have to admit that Google search , by providing effective access to the world’s information, provides benefits that weigh in favor of staying in China. By decoupling censorship from that benefit Google may have a chance to continue to operate in China while side stepping the moral implications.
A top Chinese minister warned Google Inc. "will have to bear the consequences" if it stops filtering its search results in China, suggesting there is little room for compromise in the high-profile showdown over censorship.Here is an idea for Sergey, Larry, and Eric. It may provide an option that allows them to continue to operate from China while avoiding the onus of censoring Google search results. The idea stems from a village in Turkey.
If you have been to Istanbul (not Constantinople) you will have noticed the many Internet Cafes, a situation born of high connect charges from home. In 2004 the government of Turkey imposed censorship on these Internet cafes, making them responsible for blocking objectionable content that included pornography and anti-Attaturk writings. The owners of Internet cafes in a small city not far from Istanbul found that the local police would make frequent spot checks and were always able to discover illegal sites that led to high fines, even though the cafés had invested in web filtering solutions to comply with the law. Their solution was simple and elegant. The café owners banded together and invested in the equipment and software needed to filter censored content at a point in the network that could cover them all: their ISP. Then they turned control over to the police. The café owners avoided the fines, the police stopped harassing them, and the letter of the law was enforced.
What if Google were to take the same route? Create a separate control interface to Google search that could be handed over to censors. The result would be:
1. Google would no-longer be in the censorship business. They could focus on their core business and not worry about every new dissident group and what must be continuous demands from the Chinese Communist rulers for imposing more and more granular controls.
2. The ire of Chinese citizens would be more focused than before on those ultimately responsible for restricting their free access to information: their government.
While the moral high ground might be to completely exit the China market you have to admit that Google search , by providing effective access to the world’s information, provides benefits that weigh in favor of staying in China. By decoupling censorship from that benefit Google may have a chance to continue to operate in China while side stepping the moral implications.
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