…And what if ” as a mark of good faith for being permitted to do business in what any rational observer has to admit is now the most tantalizing Internet and technology market on the planet ” an executive from each company were required to assist, mano a mano, in the beating of an imprisoned blogger?
Nothing too strenuous, but you would have to make like you meant it.
What if no one had to know? They never would, right?
Yes, it’s an all too easy and not entirely fair game to play. The issues on the ground in China are complex, and there are plenty of people who believe that Bill Gates is right when he says, as he did last week when discussing the matter at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in Lisbon, that “the ability to really withhold information no longer exists.”
That is to say, Microsoft or Google may agree to censor this or filter that, but in the end, censorship is no match for human ingenuity and the endless ways for the Internet to provide workarounds.
See also:
-“Google Under the Gun” from Time Magazine.
-“Google and the China Syndrome” from Newsweek Magazine.
-“Cyber saints or sinners?” from The Telegraph.
-“Google Does China” from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
-“Google sells its soul, and ours” from the Los Angeles Times, via the Sydney Morning Herald.
