The newsophere, blogosphere, tellyosphere and al the other o’spheres? have been chock a block with this for the past couple of days; so yes i know we are all at the end of our tether with “commentary” on this issue.That said, this blog post by….
Rogier Creemers’ who is doing a PhD at the University of Maastricht on copyright and media control in China covers the issues succinctly and with some semblance of an understanding of the eternal battle beteween international corporations and the PRC govt.. We recommend it as a decent read on the isse.
Creemers writes:
“By now, most in the blogosphere already know about Google’s announcement to possibly leave China, which may have some very interesting consequences and repercussions in the months to come. However, the case certainly goes way beyond the rhetoric about free speech and censorship. I believe it to be linked with both business and political issues, as well as the earlier Google Books case in China.
To start with, this decision taken by Google most certainly is a business decision, rather than a purely ethical decision. Going into China was a business decision as well, even if it led to some bad PR in the West. So what could lead Google into making this decision? Essentially, I believe that there was a sort of implicit deal between Google and the Chinese government: you let us operate in China, and we will obey by your censoring rules. Since then, however, Google has diversified from being a search engine into many other branches, such as maps, document processing, calendar services, etc. Many of these services based on the idea of Internet-based “cloud computing”, which means that the user’s data are no longer primarily stored on a hard drive in his computer, but the Internet, to be easily accessible from any computer in the world. It is planning to take this a step further through the Google Phone and the Chrome OS. Crucially, the viability of this business model depends on the trust that users have in the security of their data storage. If China – and the nature and sophistication of the attack against Google’s and other companies’ data centres suggests that the government might be involved to some extent – is perceived as attacking Google, Google must be seen to retaliate against China. Moreover, a number of the aforementioned services have been temporarily or permanently blocked in China. Whether this is about censorship-related control or a bid to make local competition much more attractive, the fact of the matter remains that Google has not had an easy time doing business in China.Additionally, the recent uproar concerning Google Books in China also did not help in this. While an argument can be made that Google Books could be legal under Chinese copyright legislation, it seems that this case was used by China, long pressured by the West to improve their intellectual property enforcement, to finally retaliate against a Western company perceived to violate Chinese IP. In the end, Google seems to say that if the Chinese government does not honour their part of the deal, Google will also not keep up theirs. And they say it loudly and clearly, hence their public announcement about stopping their censoring, and if told to leave China, they will.
Read the full post at? http://ipdragon.blogspot.com/2010/01/rogier-creemers-take-on-google-in-china.html
