[Gloucs] [Fwd: PRESS RELEASE on China: Internet companies assist censorship]

[Steve Greig]

Thanks for sending those responses Paul and others. I read the BBC
article and sent it on to my Amnesty International Colleagues. Irene
Khan of Amnesty International had a meeting with Microsoft and I have
pasted some brief feed back about it below: "

As some of you know the Secretary General Irene Khan met with Microsoft
at the World Economic Forum Conference in Davos. 
Following the meeting, on 31 January 2006, Microsoft announced a new
policy under which it would: 

(a) Remove blog content only if it receives a legally-binding notice
from a government; 
(b) Remove access only in that country (access will be available
elsewhere in the world); and, 
(c) Notify affected bloggers that their content was blocked due to
government restrictions.  

These measures in some way indicate that following the meeting with
Irene Khan there is now an opening with Microsoft, and that the company
appears to be willing to address concerns raised by AI regarding its
behaviour. However the policy does not fully address the issues - in
fact despite the policy, the company would still be able to provide
information on specific Microsoft users if asked by a legally binding
request by governments even if this is in violation of human  rights.  

We will now need to think what our further response will be, both in
regards to Microsoft and Yahoo but also to Google and potentially other
companies involved with internet in China.

"





On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 14:53 +0000, Paul Broadhead wrote:
> Steve Greig <steve at stevespages.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > I would be very interested in your views about this press release from
> > Amnesty International.
> 
> I'm undecided but have just read a very balanced article on the BBC news site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4654014.stm where a few more facts are presented.  One thing that may be in google's favour is that they will tell users when a search has been blocked "At least if I search for "democracy" on google.cn I'll be told that the results have been restricted by local law.".  This is significant as even in the UK we never know if our search has been restricted.  You can imagine peoples awareness of the restrictions would be greater using such a system.  At the end of the day, the Chinese government will sensor the Internet, if google makes it clear when its happening, thats something positive. It might even lead to greater calls for more openness.
> 
> Regards,
> Paul
> 
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