RConversation

links for 2007-10-31

• Campaign Coverage That Is Raw and Fresh - New York Times
  "Ms. Huffington said that the biggest lesson she has learned so far is that “a lot of citizen journalists need journalistic guidance.”"
  (tags: citizenmedia citizenjournalism internet journalism2.0 journalism blogging newmedia)
• EastSouthWestNorth: # Hong Kong District Council Election Debate Is A Cult Hit (10/31/2007)
  "The RTHK taped debate (黃大仙區議會竹園北選區) between Angel Leung and Andrew To has become a cult classic hit at the Hong Kong Internet forums." ..
  (tags: hongkong politics districtcouncil jmschku elections)
• Support RESTORE Act To Require Court Supervision of Surveillance
  "The government was caught red-handed, wiretapping Americans without a court order for more than 5 years, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. This summer, it pushed the Protect America Act through Congress, which lets the wa
  (tags: surveillance u.s.a. law freespeech humanrights)

Ghettoization of the Chinese Internet?

Yesterday, amidst reports and rumors that Facebook will soon enter China, I lamented that Facebook's new domestic Chinese version will have to censor their users' content as heavily as all the other domestic Chinese social networking services, blog-hosting services, and other user-generated content service providers.  Thus Facebook won't be able to seamlessly integrate their Chinese service into the international Facebook network, which is a shame given that Facebook is full of Chinese speakers. 

I argued that this is part of the ghettoization of the mainland Chinese Internet, thanks to the Chinese government's censorship and filtering practices.

As further evidence of this ghettoization, Shanghaiist and others pointed me to several links that I missed over the past few days while buried in some other work. They all relate to research by Hong Kong City University professor Jonathan Zhu, who finds that only six percent of hyperlinks on mainland Chinese websites link to overseas websites:

• Thomas Crampton: China's Internet rarely links to foreign websites
• Tobias Escher: The Internet is local and Chinese do not link abroad
• Blognation: Are We Sealing Ourselves In? Only 6% of Chinese Sites Link to Foreign Sites

 

Blognation theorizes that there are two main reasons for this statistic - aside from the language barrier:

• For legal reasons: China’s Internet law regarding Internet news forbids links to foreign news sites on mainland Chinese news sites unless Chinese State Council approval is obtained. Some sites spell out the URL of a foreign site (or even a domestic site), but they leave out the A HREF hyperlink. (The legal basis behind this is provided by Article 14 of the Interim Regulations Regarding News Services on Internet Websites — a 2000 law.)

• For geo-network reasons: If I’m not totally mistaken, the Web inside China feels more like an intranet. Why is it that I can access any local website “just like that” (click and go — truer words could not be uttered!), whereas a click on a link outside Chinese frontiers can create waits of up to 20 — sometimes even 30 — seconds and more? In fact, at some universities, access to sites located outside of geographical mainland China is blocked, period. (My blog! There goes my blog hosted on servers in the US!)

In the comments thread below that blog post, some people think the results as being mainly caused by the language barrier. But another commentor writing from the U.S. writes:

I don’t think that language is the major barrier. There are many chinese language sites fom outside china that my wife (who is native chinese) only started visiting after leaving china. Part of it has to do with which sites are promoted within china. Its not surprising that local content is promoted (via newspaper,signs,text messages, etc.) more than foreign content, if you are not aware of a foreign chinese website how can you visit those sites. Of course, you could search for the external content assuming that the search engine you use will look for sites outside china (google china isn’t exactly the same as normal google and if the chinese gov’t is feeling unhappy you might get redirected to baidu.) but the external sites might actually be too far down the list of links to be bothered with.
Its easier for locals to find local content, so that is what they go with. That might not be true if there was a real choice

My own view is that language barrier is indeed non-trivial. But it is dramatically exacerbated by the other policy factors.

(See my recent post China's Censorship 2.0 and Reporters Without Borders' Journey to the heart of Internet censorship for more details about how the Chinese government gets web companies and their staffs to shoulder much of the work when it comes to domestic Internet censorship.)

Facebook goes to China... will it censor too?

Kaiser Kuo and Pacific Epoch have both picked up a report in Chinese on China-cbn.com citing an "industry insider" who says Facebook could enter China as early as December. (UPDATE Oct.31: Reuters reports: Facebook to speak Chinese with .cn domain name) It's likely that the Chinese Facebook will be censored the same way all other Web2.0 services are censored in China.

See a recent blog post I wrote describing how domestically hosted user-generated content and social networking services are censored in China - and how the role of censor is shouldered increasingly by the businesses themselves. Also be sure to read a recent Reporters Without Borders report titled "Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship" which seems pretty accurate based on what I know. Of course these web companies have no choice if they want to keep their licenses.

Cherry Zhang at Pacific Epoch writes: "According to the insider, Facebook originally planned to simply translate its existing site into other languages, but now plans to build a separate website in China." Kaiser brings us more detail:

The paper claims that Facebook has given up its initial plan to set up its own China-based site like MySpace has done with MySpace.cn, but will instead acquire an existing SNS in China. Who do you suppose that could be? I can think of a couple of likely acquisition targets…

One person commenting on Kaiser's blog speculates about Zhanzuo, Xiaonei, and Mop. Another writes:

Whatever they do i hope they seamlessly their link Chinese version to their English version. Click …and swithc language. Those who are perfectly bilingual ( which i am NOT) should be able to communicate with their Chinese friends in Chinese and with their non-chinese friends in english … without changing platforms. Otherwise 2 monoligual silos will be created. That would be - from a mutual understanding point of view- a missed opportunity.

"Seamless" will be pretty hard if they're going to have to censor their Chinese-language site in ways that users of the international English-language Facebook would not tolerate. I guess that's why it's rumored they're likely to aquire an existing Chinese SNS with all the "user content management" mechanisms in place: perhaps it's a way to keep their hands at least technically a little cleaner and have greater justifications for not having seamless interoperability between the domestic and international versions?

Really too bad. If they do end up having to create different Facebook "silos" in order to be compliant with Chinese government censorship requirements (and maybe other governments with other language services too), it isn't just a missed opportunity to provide a great global, multilingual service that many people would find incredibly exciting.

The silo-ing of social networking sites like Facebook (and MySpace China already) is a sadly missed opportunity to build bridges of communication and understanding between the Chinese-speaking world and the English-speaking world. God knows we desperately need better communication and understanding between native Chinese speakers and native English speakers these days. 

The Internet presented such early promise of helping people communicate across borders and cultures and political systems. Language barriers are already a huge obstacle and have grown greater as the non-English parts of the Internet have grown rapidly in the past few years. Now political borders are going up in cyberspace as well.

Is this inevitable? Isn't this situation also serving to "ghettoize" Chinese internet users instead of giving them a multilingual on-ramp to a global human network? If I was a Chinese internet user I'd feel like my government is holding me back by controlling the web in China so much that Facebook can't open its doors for me to a global multilingual and multicultural network - a network that would be best not only for my social life but also for my career and business. 

I sympathize on one hand with the argument that there's no other way to do business in China than to comply with a whole pile of requirements to control user-generated content. But still. The Internet is balkanizing. China is just the beginning. This ghettoization and balkanization may be in the short term interest of governments and businesses, but it's definitely not in the long-term interest of human beings. Is there anything we can do about it?

links for 2007-10-29

• EastSouthWestNorth: Roland's view on the Martin Lee affair
  Roland writes: "this may be a test for democracy in Hong Kong. Do not believe what the media say, or what the democrats say, or what they leftists say. Go and find out about the entire affair yourself. Think about it and then come to a conclusion."
  (tags: hongkong politics elections democracy jmschku)

links for 2007-10-28

• WordPress makes a stand for open source morality | Technology | The Guardian
  Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg on being blocked in China: "if we were willing to forbid certain words, track people and give up their information if asked, we could be turned back on....We decided that being there under those circumstances isn't worth i
  (tags: china censorship freespeech blogs blogging wordpress opensource cnwebwatch)

links for 2007-10-27

• Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits: Why One Pro Photographer Posted Free-to-Use CA Fire Photos Online
  "through this effort my images and work have gained tremendous exposure. When an image receives nearly 12,000 views in 24 hours, that is a strong message -- including powerful marketing for my photography work."
  (tags: creativecommons photography photojournalism flickr)
• Global Voices Online » China: Official excess met with humor, scorn, death threats
  "Bloggers for some reason kept mostly or dead quiet about the 17th Party Congress while it was being held during the third week of this month, and now that it's over, blog posts on the subject are being deleted even before they get published"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs blogging censorship freespeech politics internet)

links for 2007-10-26

• Google to focus on mobile Internet in China | Technology | Reuters
  Google's challenge: "how to cater to masses of Web surfers who go online for the first time via mobile devices, rather than migrating from PCs."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet search google)
• China Media Project » Blog Archive » Wait a minute, what happened to political reform?
  "Hu Jintao’s report frustrated even our most modest hopes."
  (tags: china politics)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Martin Lee in The Wall Street Journal
  Martin Lee suggests that the Olympics is a good opportunity to pressure China on human rights, Hong Kong's pro-China groups demonstrate against him and call him "running dog."
  (tags: hongkong politics humanrights olympics china prochina democracy)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Daily Brief Comments October 21-31, 2007
  The Wong Tai Sin District Council Election - from Roland Soong.
  (tags: jmschku districtcouncil elections hongkong politics)

links for 2007-10-24

• Politicos OK limits for U.S. firms in Net-censoring countries | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
  "As expected, the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs backed a slightly amended version of the Global Online Freedom Act by a voice vote on Tuesday morning."
  (tags: GOFA internet censorship business yahoo google microsoft freespeech privacy surveillance humanrights)

Global Online Freedom Act Passes House Committee

CNet reports that the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 has just been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. CNet also points out that the 2006 version of the bill was also passed by the same committee last year, but never went to a full vote of the House and thus died. The proposed law would impose a series of constraints and requirements on companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Cisco and others when doing business in authoritarian countries where the Internet tends to be censored and surveilled for purposes other than what Americans would view as "legitimate law-enforcement reasons."  Here is how CNet describes the proposed law:

American firms would face a host of new restrictions and obligations under the bill. For instance, they wouldn't be allowed to store any e-mails or other electronic communications containing "personally identifiable information" about their users on servers in any of the designated countries. And they'd be obligated to give the State Department a detailed breakdown of how their products' search results have been filtered and all URLs that have been removed or blocked at the request of foreign governments known to be restrictive.

If approached by local authorities with requests for users' personal information, American companies wouldn't be allowed to turn it over except for "legitimate law enforcement purposes," as determined by the U.S. Department of Justice. That provision, which enjoys support from human rights groups like Reporters Without Borders, appears to be a response to allegations that Yahoo divulged information to Chinese authorities about prodemocratic online writings by a couple of its citizens, leading to their convictions and imprisonment.

Bottom line, this proposed legislation positions the U.S. government as arbiter and judge of how companies protect human rights. What kind of joke is that.

As if the U.S. didn't have problems with a secret spying program. As if there weren't serious concerns about the way in which parts of the U.S. government lean on telecoms companies to give them all kinds of data about U.S. citizens' private communications, doing it so secretly that they're not accountable to anybody. Don't forget Americans have lawsuits in progress against companies for giving up their users' rights a bit to readily for many Americans' comfort. So why exactly should non-Americans be expected to want to use a U.S. Internet or telecoms service which is required to consult with the DOJ about their cases - yes, the same U.S. government department much maligned by many Americans, not to mention globally, for being a bit - shall we say -too open-minded about torture?  Passage of such a law would seem to hand over one rather awesome marketing advantage to non-American competitors, in addition to being incredibly arrogant and hypocritical.

We need a global set of principles that assumes companies need to be on guard against abuses against their users' rights by any government in any market. And I mean any.

Click here for the post I wrote when GOFA2007 was introduced in January, expressing this type of concern in greater detail. Don't get me wrong. I have been a vocal and long-time critic of how many U.S. companies have caved into Chinese government demands for surveillance and censorship in what I believe is an unaccountable and un-transparent way - which if allowed to continue in that fashion will set a horrible precedent for business practices by internet and telecoms companies around the globe. That's why I've been actively involved in a process to develop a GLOBAL code of conduct on privacy and freedom of expression that Internet and telecoms companies should abide by, and agree to be independently evaluated about the extent to which they're living up to their commitments. No process is going to be perfect, but I still think an independent and global process has more hope of improving corporate behavor on privacy and free expression without forcing U.S. companies to disengage and be perceived around the world as arms of the U.S. government.

GOFA's intentions are honorable in many ways. I think many of the people who support it certainly have honorable intentions. I know and respect many of them, despite having had some pretty heated arguments with some members of the human rights groups who say they support it for strategic reasons. But from where I sit in Hong Kong, this proposed legislation comes off as something that my Chinese friends who hate censorship and surveillance would find arrogant, patronizing, and interventionist, with the likely result that it would kill U.S. tech companies' ability to do business in China in the first place - a result which by the way they don't think would enhance their freedom.

links for 2007-10-23

• Saving Burma the right way - Los Angeles Times
  "Avoiding disaster in Burma will mean taking a long-term and pragmatic approach and understanding that democracy won't be created overnight."
  (tags: burma myanmar democracy politics geopolitics)
• The Great Firewall: China's Misguided — and Futile — Attempt to Control What Happens Online
  “the country's stranglehold on the communications of its citizens is slipping: Bloggers and other Web sources are rapidly supplanting Communist-controlled news outlets."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet gfw censorship freespeech)
• The Standard - YouTube lands in Hong Kong
  "At last, YouTube is storming into Hong Kong with a special Traditional Chinese-character site - which means non-English speakers will finally find no language constraints when sharing their favorite videos on the worldwide portal."
  (tags: youtube honkong chineseinternetresearch video tv copyright creativecommons)