Google, China, (and now Australia too?)
Almost two months ago, I vowed to start writing about my interest in the intersection of culture, world politics and social media. Then, life took over, and I have been a major failure at that since. Now that I have returned from a wonderful trip to my beloved East Coast, I am back in action…
First things first, let’s tackle the biggie you have probably already heard about to no end:
During my trip to the East Coast, I met a girl who is currently working in Beijing, who said that she has to hack into her Facebook to access it. While she was visiting her family in the U.S., Google’s row with China over censorship took another turn and now all of the searches from Google China are rerouted to the uncensored Hong Kong site, where the freedom of speech and expression is respected at a much higher level. The original problem was that the Chinese government was using Google’s servers to access information about Chinese dissidents and was also asking Google to censor the search engine. Now, with the Hong Kong redirect, these will hopefully no longer be issues for the Chinese Google user.
Australia, however, seems to be the next problem area for Google and the internet in general, with their plans to introduce internet filters. Though a democracy, Australia has presented a proposal that crosses the line, going past restrictions of sexually explicit material to censorship of politically and socially controversial material. Michael Tran, a state department spokesman, told the Associated Press that the free flow of information is “vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally.”
Problem is, Yahoo and Google have become accustomed to a country where free speech holds a high level legal status, whereas it does not have the same meaning in other countries, if mentioned at all in law. With the globalization of business and the internet, perhaps it is time for a global free speech law as well? Would that be infringing on the rights of foreign countries to refuse our democratic ideals? Many have often criticized America for its desire to export democracy on a global level, but what happens when the internet is already exported (literally – http://mashable.com/2010/03/07/internet-exports-iran-cuba/), but the freedoms of its use are not? Should we consider the internet to be a human right governed by international laws?
Tags: associated press, australia, censorship, china, chinese, democracy, export, facebook, google, hong kong, human rights, internet, search engine, state department, yahoo