RConversation

links for 2006-05-31

• China: U.S. Is in Wireless 'Conspiracy' - AP :: China Digital Times (CDT) 中国数字时代
  "The agency promoting China's wireless encryption standard has accused a U.S. engineers' group of waging a conspiracy that led a global organization to reject the Chinese system, the country's official news agency said Monday."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch wifi wireless encryption)
• aBitCool: Building Free WiFi Community In China — China Web2.0 Review
  "aBitCool is a company who intends to build a WiFi sharing community in China, just as what FON does in many other countries."
  (tags: china wifi wireless internet FON)
• Good Morning Silicon Valley: You kids just go ahead and entertain yourselves
  "This is the rude awakening awaiting any media company that's still snoozing. Consumers are no longer restricted to consuming. "
  (tags: journalism media webcred)
• What Yahoo/eBay deal means for China e-commerce - MarketWatch
  "Alibaba's Jack Ma suddenly making friends, after years of alternately haranguing and declaring victory over archrival eBay, would be...unlikely. Imagine George W. Bush and Al Gore sharing a pistachio ice cream cone."
  (tags: yahoo! alibaba ebay china chineseinternetresearch)
• Wired News: China, U.S. Spar Over Encryption
  "The agency promoting China's wireless encryption standard has accused a U.S. engineers' group of waging a conspiracy that led a global organization to reject the Chinese system, the country's official news agency said Monday."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch WAPI wireless encryption)

links for 2006-05-29

• welcome | irrepressible.info
  Amnesty International's international campaign for freedom of speech on the internet.
  (tags: internet censorship freespeech humanrights)
• The Observer | UK News | Amnesty: we must free the internet
  "The campaign, which Amnesty has called irrepressible.info, demands freedom of expression over the internet."
  (tags: internet freespeech humanrights)
• China Venture News: VCs Continue Red Hot Investment in China's Web 2.0
  "Web 2.0 is still the investment rage in China. "
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch web2.0)
• EastSouthWestNorth: The Winter of Chinese Print Media
  Roland Soong translates an analysis of the relationship between the Chinese print media and the Internet
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch journalism internet media censorship freespeech)
• China Syndrome
  "China has stalled in a "trapped transition," Pei argues, because its Communist leaders insist on maintaining power and taking a gradual approach to market reforms."
  (tags: china economy politics)
• Ayis overcome discriminatory shuttle bus rules
  "A luxury apartment complex is allowing ayis [housemaids] to sit anywhere they want on its shuttle buses, ending a controversy that bloggers have dubbed Shanghai's "Rosa Parks" incident."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs blogging internet)

links for 2006-05-27

• Ahmed Rashid: A Taliban Comeback?
  "Almost five years after the US invaded Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11, the Taliban appears on a comeback trail"
  (tags: afghanistan taliban pakistan)
• Technorati and Edelman PR to co-develop Asian language blog search tools
  "Technorati will develop for Edelman localized blog search tools in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French. "
  (tags: technorati search translation china korea)
• How to Surf Safely at Cybercafes: Use Their Computer, but Bring Your Own Desktop From Home - New York Times
  "New flash drives from Lexar will come with software that lets you carry a virtual copy of your home computer in your pocket and surf the Web securely through other Windows machines."
  (tags: security anonymity circumvention)
• 2006 中国博客调查 - CNBlog: Blog on Blog
  2006 China Blog Survey
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs blog)

links for 2006-05-26

• Nude bloggers upset China beauty contest - vnunet.com
  'Hedgehog Mumu' won the most votes, but was shut out of the prizes after she posted erotic photos on her blog"
  (tags: blogs china chineseinternetresearch culture porn)
• Amnesty International USA: AIUSA Challenges Yahoo Mgmt. at Annual Mtng.; Calls on Company to Demand Release of Net Dissidents, End China Censorship Involvement
  Amnesty's Anthony Cruz: "The bottom line is that none of these companies operating in China have figured out ways to ensure their customers get all the information and privacy online that they are entitled to."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship yahoo! freespeech humanrights)

links for 2006-05-24

• One Billion Internet Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
  "The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs."
  (tags: internet interesting)
• …My heart’s in Accra » Ethiopia “pioneers” cybercensorship in sub-Saharan Africa
  Ethan Zuckerman analyzes the implications of evidence that the Ethiopian government now seems to be censoring the internet.
  (tags: censorship internet freespeech humanrights)
• One Internet, Indivisible
  Ethan Zuckerman writes that "the single, unified Internet we've grown accustomed to is fragmenting."
  (tags: internet netgovernance netneutraliy netaccess censorship freespeech)
• MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Blogs, Wiki, Google Bomb Used to Free Egyptian Activist | PBS
  Mark Glaser writes a long post about how he got to know Alaa, the cicumstances under which he was detained, and efforts to call attention to his case.
  (tags: freealaa egypt globalvoices freespeech humanrights)

Skype passes the buck on China censorship

On Sunday I challenged Skype's Jaanus Kase to respond to user concerns that Skype's Chinese-language client being marketed by TOM Online censors politically sensitive words in its text chat function. In my original post, I challenged Skype to be more transparent with its Chinese users about the fact that it is censoring, and to disclose what is being blocked, by whose authority and according to what law.

Jaanus responded yesterday here:

Rebecca -- thanks for all your comments and questions. I have not posted a followup on the comments because I don't have any new info to add to what's already been said. Skype has taken a decision to have TOM Online actively manage its business in China, thus you should be addressing these questions to TOM.

My response here:

Thanks very much Jaanus. However, given that the censorship is happening under Skype's brand name, don't you think that Skype should be taking responsibility for how censorship of your tool is being carried out? Otherwise if you don't want to take responsibility for TOM's practices, shouldn't the tool just be called TOM in order that users are clear about which company truly has control over their conversations??

Am I being unreasonable?

Note that Skype is now part of eBay... I wonder what their socially conscious founder Pierre Omidyar might think about a member of the eBay family delegating political censorship to a local partner and then not taking responsibility for any details of what is being done?

links for 2006-05-23

• Holding the watchdog blogs to account - The Net - Times Online
  "Bloggers wield increasing power against established institutions, but not all are practising what they preach."
  (tags: blogs blogging WEBCRED journalism globalvoices gv-press media wemedia)
• AsiaMedia :: China's faustian bargain -- for some
  James F. Paradise takes on two new documentaries about China's past and future, and it's unspoken social contract
  (tags: china politics freespeech humanrights)

links for 2006-05-22

• EastSouthWestNorth: Blogs and Newspapers
  Roland Soong reacts to HK-Taiwan newspaper magnate Jimmy Lai's essay on the relationship between blogs and newspapers.
  (tags: blogs journalism WEBCRED wemedia trust)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Blogs Are Critical Pals Of Newspapers
  Newspaper magnate Jimmy Lai concludes in his essay on blogs and newspapers: "Blogs are newspapers' critical pals but not the enemy."
  (tags: blogs journalism blogs&journalism news hongkong)
• Great Firewall of China | The World | The Australian
  "Trying to keep pace with the country's growing army of internet users, Beijing is cracking down on websites and emails as never before"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship freespeech humanrights journalism)

Skype ignores users concerned about China censorship

Last week Skype's Jaanus Kase posted an interview with Kevin (surname not given) from Skype's new Chinese partner, Tom Online. It's a fairly lightweight and content-free interview for the most part (one question: "what's the weather like in China?"). The conversation makes no mention of the fact that Tom's chat censorship system is being used on the new Chinese Skype client marketed by Tom. Jaanus wrote a post last month defending Skype's censorship cave-in. I blogged about it and posted a comment, raising a number of questions. Jaanus has chosen to ignore me and a long thread of other commenters, including Chinese blog pioneer and businessman Isaac Mao who wrote:

As the long term skype user maybe one of the ealiest users(or ever fans) in China. I don't think the excuse from skype the company can stand.

First of all, I don't understand why Skype selected Tom as local partner. It's neither the best portal site nor even have fairly good tracking record to serve local internet users. From business view, I don't think Tom played good job to promote skype in China. Instead, blogosphere and prominent users played the role. They should be rewarded, not TOM.

Sencondly, Skype don't need neccessarily need Tom to operate business in China. Skype itself can do the job well since user s help skype spreading anywhere. I don't know or even can't image any government enforces a software to do text filtering unless they do self-policing first. Skype is misled by Tom, the useless partner. Basically Skype is different from Google or Yahoo online service, it's standalone software.

Geeks in China ever regard Skype as the hero to play important role to conduct secure communication. They are very disappointed now to see Skype join the evil business list. Sigh!

The cooperation is definitely reducing the reputation of Skype in this country. It will also pushing users away. Please re-consider the decision(cooperating with ToM and anti-freedom). I suppose Skype the company is becoming a responsible business, why not rethink it?

Jaanus, you can ignore me if you want, I'm just an American who spent a lot of my adult life and part of my childhood in China. What the heck do I know. But Isaac really knows what he is talking about, and he speaks for a large community of Chinese internet users. If I were an internet services company looking to do the right thing in the Chinese market and gain credibility and trust with Chinese users, I'd ignore him at my peril.

Got questions and views you'd like to share with Jaanus??  Head on over here and let him know. Maybe eventually he will see fit to stop ignoring us.

links for 2006-05-21

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Dan Gillmor answers your concerns
  "Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, responds to e-mails from readers about the emerging threat to in-depth journalism as the advertising newspapers use to keep themselves solvent moves to the net."
  (tags: webcred wemedia journalism blogs blogs&journalism)
• Is Nationalism Destroying the Internet? - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
  "The Web changed the world. Politics is now changing it back. ...Clearly the Internet must move beyond its U.S.-centric roots, but it's just as clear that it shouldn't look like the United Nations, or like China, or like a for-profit enterprise."
  (tags: internet netgovernance censorship politics wsis ICANN root)
• Finding their niche in a changing China / Author tells how young people adjust to turbocharged economy
  Peter Hessler's new book, "Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present,'' views China through the lives of individuals.
  (tags: china)
• EU regulation attacked as censorship | The Register
  "Libertarians have got a bee in their bonnet over European Commission proposals to regulate commercial audio and video broadcasts over the internet and mobile phones."
  (tags: censorship europe freespeech)
• New America Media: Beijing Magazine Pushes Boundaries of Censorship
  "An editor of an influential business magazine in Beijing discusses how she successfully navigates barriers of censorship in China."
  (tags: china censorship freespeech journalism)
• Entertainment firms see 3G as mobile phone cash cow
  "NEW entertainment applications such as blogs and cartoon videos via mobile phones won't take off in China until data transfer speeds improve with the advent of next-generation networks..."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch mobile 3G blogs)
• Google Watch : Google Rings Up More Cell Phone Partners, Options
  Google has a deal with Japanese mobile operator KDDI and is in talks with China Mobile.
  (tags: google mobile chineseinternetresearch censorship cellphones)