Microsoft May “Consider China Presence”
The BBC has reported (Hat tip: Boing Boing) Microsoft’s senior policy counsel Fred Tipson as saying that Microsoft might have to consider pulling out of repressive countries like China.
“Things are getting bad… and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,” he told a conference in Athens.
“We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it’s unacceptable to do business there.”
Google was recently criticised because they were seen to be helping the Chinese government censor search results. (Compare the searches for “Tiananmen Square massacre” on google.co.nz and google.cn.) Google argued that having any presence in China was better than having none if freedom of information was the goal. Critics suggested that helping China censor the web didn’t sit very well with Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto.
Microsoft may be responding to criticism from Amnesty International, which last week highlighted the circumstances of several jailed bloggers (Hat tip: NZ Herald). Along with Yahoo, Microsoft has been attacked for shutting down blogs run by people the Chinese government wants silenced.
The Internet has tremendous potential to bring information from the outside world to people living under repressive regimes and it’s very encouraging to see companies with muscle, like Microsoft, using their position to encourage change in places like China. Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft need to decide how much persecution makes it unacceptable to do business there. Is the goal of free speech in China better served by providing a censored service, in the hopes that people demand more of their own government, or by refusing to provide any service at all?
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Well, per se Google and Microsoft aren’t denying anyone liberty, because they are unable to provide hosting for those bloggers whether they have a China presence or not, but it does seem an overly cruel bait-and-switch.
Were they concerned only with freedom they would pull out immediately, because they would not want to assist an evil regime, and because pulling out, as opposed to not entering China in the first place, will probably cause more desire for change.
Of course, they are concerned with profit, which is always in conflict with liberty when governments get involved, but it is only a matter of degree as to what government restrictions one accepts - should they stop operations in the United State because of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act and the like?
An interesting parallel to the Libz policy of supporting any increase in liberty and opposing any decrease - what will this mean in practice?