[ILUG] Mother of God!

[Stephen Holmes]

At the end of the day Google are listed on the stock exchange - they're
about maximising shareholder value - yah, get me a Ryanair sick bag!

Don't fool yourselves here with some notional moral high ground on
freedom of expression (read: random breath testing etc etc) or hoping
that Bono will jump in to save global liberty and free speech - this is
the world we live in.  False gestures from Yahoo and their ilk on
"freedom of speech" and Googles, "no evil" annoy me. I can get that kind
of crap in the Irish Times every other day....

Facts:
- the Chinese are not stupid or repressed. They know there's a whole
wide world out there, they engage and they absolutely get it.
- If you're in China, get access to a proxy server and get the stuff you
need.  Not all that complex!
- the media can make anything look like the next Armageddon
- Publicly traded companies will always leverage on the back of human
rights organisation because for them, it's cooler than the latest
Raybans.


S.





On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 22:58 +0000, Colm MacCarthaigh  wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 09:00:33PM +0000, Colm Buckley wrote:
> > 	* Chinese user searches on google.cn for "unsafe" terms.
> > 		Only safe pages are returned.
> > 		User is notified that pages have been removed.
> > 		Connection is maintained.
> 
> And more and more users go this route, and the Great firewall gets to
> log more and more of those requests.
> 
> > 	* In addition, user can *still* try their luck on google.com as 
> > 	before.
> > 
> > We have not taken *anything* away from Chinese users.  We have  
> > provided an additional portal to them to make use of should they want  
> > to avoid firewall roulette.
> 
> Google has cooperated with and legitimised the human-rights unfriendly
> actions of the Chinese Government. Google has taken respect away, both
> from itself and for its users. Eventually these actions will almost
> certainly deprive some people of their liberty too.
> 
> I could make the very same argument about kicking; If you were getting
> beaten up by the man, and I step in and give you a light kicking
> instead, sure amn't I saving you a beating? And hey, what harm is it if
> I make a little money for myself while I'm at it, it's all good right?
> I'm totally anti-beating after all, and hell if you want to chance the
> beating - go right ahead.
> 
> Fortunately, morality doesn't work like this. If you kick me; you're in
> the wrong, simple as that. It doesn't matter that you're saving me a
> beating, because that's wrong too. The only way our rights are
> maintained is by constant shared vigilance. 
> 
> When you play any part in denying people rights, no matter what the
> alternatives are, you're part of the problem.
> 
> -- 
> Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net
-- 

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