Google Shareholders Reject Censorship Proposal 163
prostoalex writes "At the annual shareholder meeting, Google put forth for voting a proposal for the company not to engage in self-censorship, resist by all legal means the demands to censor information, inform the user in case their information was provided to the government, and generally not to store sensitive user data in the countries with below average free speech policies. As this proposal, if passed, would effectively mean the end of Google's China operations, the shareholders rejected the document at the recommendation of the Board of Directors."
And there you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about rights (Score:4, Insightful)
anti? (Score:5, Insightful)
Boycott isn't necessarily best (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Screw the Chinese (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And there you have it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And there you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
Do no evil Make more money. (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing else need be said
Re:And there you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
But you missed the point, in the end it didn't happen!. It is like Serghey saying that making a deal with China wasn't very nice, but they still kept the deal. Don't you see this is all a publicity stunt. The whole "do no evil" might have worked when Goolge was just 10 people in a garage. But tt doesn't apply anymore.
Yes, there might have been one altruistic shareholder, but it was 1 againts what? 1000? You might as well ignore that one individual as a statistical 'fluke'.
One of my friends invests in a consumer products company that does animal research. Many rabbits and hamsters are maimed, disfigured and practically tortured, to figure out if the products are "safe". My friend is against animal research (I am not, though), but yet he will not sell his stock in that company. Unfortunately, as sad as it is, $$$$ does make the world go round.
No matter what moral slogans you hear from "Google" or other companies, they only serve one purpose -- to imporove the public image -- to make more $$$$$. When it comes to "make more $$$" vs. "adhering to a moral principle", then "make more $$$$" wins.
The way I see it, a good test of moral character for a company (and for a person, for that matter) is if they would be willing to stand by their moral convictions at the expense of a significant loss in profit. Google has failed to do that...
That's the spirit! (sort of) (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't see where I'm wrong here," the hitman said, "if I don't do it, some other hitman would take my place if I pull out".
The argument that doing something unethical becomes ethical (or less unethical) because others would do it if you don't, is nonsensical.
just like congress (Score:1, Insightful)
Money is definitely the new god.
This is not evil (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm failing how to see how this is evil.
Let's not kid ourselves. These proposals were aimed at doing the following:
I think the misguided idea here is that Google can single-handedly pressure the Chinese government into giving free speech to its citizens. The rationale, I suppose, is that China wants Google so badly that they will shed off oppression just to have it.
If you believe this, you're fooling yourself. There's not a damn thing that Google can do to give people in China the right to free speech. If this proposal passed, the Chinese government would simply block Google from all of China, and by the time the Chinese people do hopefully have free speech someday, they'll all be using Yahoo and MSN instead of Google.
If you don't like the fact that the Chinese people don't have free speech, be mad at the right people, the people who are actually responsible for it: The Chinese government. Stop being so indignant with companies who are doing what they can with the rules they have to play with.
I'm all for Google fighting the DMCA. However, I am not in favor of forcing them to, which is exactly what this proposal would do. They should have the right to choose the battles they wish to fight. If I start my own business and decide that I (and my shareholders) want to fight for the prevention of animal cruelty and dedicate some of my profits towards that goal, that's noble. If an outside group decides that I (and my shareholders) should fight for the prevention of animal cruelty, and then we get raked over the coals because we decide that there are more worthwhile causes to take up, well, I wouldn't care so much.
Is repealing the DMCA a priority of mine? Yes. Do I call people (or companies) "evil" for not making it a priority of theirs? No.
And is anyone thinking that this is a double standard? Even in the United States, Google engages in proactive censorship. I'm sure there has been at least a few cases of national security information the government didn't want to get out being taken down, and we know that copyrighted videos have been pulled. In the case of China, this proposal says that Google is supposed to say, "To hell with it, we're going to do it anyway." In the case of the United States, though, Google is supposed to say, "We'll use legal means to resist."
As for telling people when Google has to disclose information about them, I actually would be in favor of such a proposal. It sounds like they are trying to keep Google for doing something like getting someone arrested [rsf.org], and when you cross the line from censoring your own operations and ruining other people's lives, it's a different ballgame.
But keep in mind a couple of things. First of all, it's not like China is the only place this can happen. If I used Gmail to send out terrorist threats here in the U.S., our government would compel Google to turn over my personally identifiable information. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, but there's no practical way Google can say, "Okay, this is a harmless joke e-mail, so we'll wipe the user's data. This is Chinese free speech, so we'll wipe the user's data. Whoops, this is a terrorist threat, so we'll keep this around for a while." Even if they could, I'm not so sure that is such a good idea, either. Again, there's a double standard of impractically expecting Google to comply with U.S. law, but thumb its nose at international law.
Also, to my knowledge, Google hasn't turned over personally identifiable information to a government like China. Is there some reason to think that it has? Or that if it was ordered to, that Google wouldn't fight it as vigorously as possible? How do we know that it hasn't already happened, and unlike Yahoo, Google was successful? It seems to me that compared to other soulless bastard corporations, Google would be one of the most likely to actually care about stuff like that.
Re:And there you have it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Screw the Chinese (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And there you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Screw the Chinese (Score:1, Insightful)
only 10% or less of shares floated (Score:4, Insightful)
"Do no evil, unless shareholders vote otherwise." (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:only 10% or less of shares floated (Score:3, Insightful)
What is evil, exactly? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you go to another country, you abide by their rules or you face punishment. The belief that "our" way is better than China's way is the same kind of thinking that got the US in the Iraq war. (Oh, look how wretched they are! We most go liberate them!) All countries have PR campaigns that try to keep the populace going a certain way, China just goes further.
Yes, my stance is a slippery slope; so is the opposite way of thinking. The point is, YOU can't be sure that YOU are GOOD.
Re:And there you have it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good for Google. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would have been a principled stand. It would have been an example. And once Google was on board, attention could be turned to other companies that conduct odious operations in collusion with the Chinese government.
Don't think organized business activism can make a real difference in the world? Think that "someone else" will always just make up the difference and the system will not change? I'd suggest you talk to someone from South Africa...
Re:This is not evil (Score:4, Insightful)
You're wrong. There might be nothing material to be gained. Indeed, it would probably lead to a loss. But for some of us, at least, moral stature is another thing to be valued. Google would gain because it would cease odious practices -- they would be better.
The cynicism that none of this matters would be shocking if it weren't so prevalent. Shareholder-led business activism can lead to real and positive change. We knows this because it already has.
Re:Screw the Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. However when 10,000 of their most active members and leaders gather at around Tiananmen Square [wikipedia.org] and get shot dead and run over by tanks it tends to discourage the rest. The few exchange students and workers from China around here are timid and compliant. They don't even admit they know anything about those events. They are completely into the consumer culture and fashion. There is no life in them. Its like with the today's Irish. Hundreds of years of British oppression and brutality made sure that the only ones that are left are the descendants of the cowards, the collaborators and the incompetent. I am reminded of this whenever I visit the shithole Dublin has become.
The Tamk Man [pbs.org] was the last rebel...
Re:And there you have it (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like they mean "We never do any evil", what they are doing is telling their employees "Please do no evil". HUGE difference. The only thing I can imagine is that some people see it as the former--them declaring to the world that they are better than all other companies.
To see people constantly bring up such a goal as a negative makes me ill.
That said, I have to agree with the parent. Publicly traded companies have a tendency to move towards "Evil" with every stockholder decision. The entire free-market system moves thousands of entities just a little bit closer to the darkside with every vote.
Re:This is not evil (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I think that is not so much a misguided idea as a straw man of yours. Most opinions I have read on
What do you mean "there is not a damn thing Google can do"?! If Google is not blocked, its search results will be different from those other search sites that are either state-controlled or self-censored. If it is blocked, then the Chinese people would wonder what's there that their government don't want them to see (as in the wikipedia blocking case)). And that's still better than showing them content censored by the government, because then the people won't know better.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Google should try to be the hero and disregard its shareholders' interest, but I'm more sick and tired of arguments like yours, which are not far from arguing "what's the point of donating $100 bucks if that's not going to be even remotely meaningful for relieving the Katrina damages."
Re:Morality Isn't About Evil (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine, take a stand on censorship. But by hounding Google, you're doing it wrong. I can't say this enough, it seems, so I'll bring out the obnoxious bold letters again. Google has no impact whatsoever on whether or not the Chinese government censors its citizens. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg.
Could they take it up as an issue and maybe make an impact using their financial resources? Maybe. But then, they could also take up fighting genocide in Darfur. They could take up preventing AIDS in Africa. They could take up womens' reproductive rights. They could take up building tidal wave detection and alerting systems in southeast Asia. They could spend every dime they have on solving the world's problems. They already spend a lot [google.org]. Which other ones should they take up? What do they have to do before they're no longer evil? Go bankrupt?
If anything, by hassling Google, you're actually being counterproductive, as there are much more effective means of trying to make positive changes than wasting your time griping about a company that has absolutely no say-so in the matter at all. Do you really feel so strongly that filtering search results in China is so evil that you should boycott Google for doing it? I'm sorry, but that's pretty stupid.
Plus, if this is the standard by which you judge whether a company is or isn't evil, then you're pretty much screwed supporting any company. As I've said, every company that deals with China at all has to abide by Chinese laws. Do you have a television? Did any of its parts come from China? You obviously have a computer, who made all of the components in it?
Oh, and what do you plan on doing about the U.S. government? That's right, our own government. You know that huge national debt that we keep hearing about? Guess who owns $416.2 billion [treas.gov] of it? That's right: China. Just to put that in perspective, that's just shy of the amount of money [costofwar.com] that has been spent on the Iraq War. That's right, put another way, China is indirectly paying for our little experiment in spreading so-called democracy. (You sure as hell didn't think that we were paying for it, did you?) So unless you want to move out to the wilderness and get by on subsistence farming and hunting, I guess you're supporting oppression in various places around the world.
So of all the productive things that could be done to help unfetter the Chinese people from government oppression, and of all the ways in which you depend on China to live a normal life, why are you singling out Google to pick on? I mean, I already know the answer [slashdot.org], but I'm interested in seeing what you have to say.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is evil, exactly? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Our" way of thinking implies an 'us vs. them' mentality, which is what leads to many problems in the world--perhaps most of them, in fact.
(As an aside, I'd suggest that the invasion of Iraq was a carefully planned bit of empire-building wrapped in 'us vs. them' for the sake of garnering popular support. You can judge for yourself just how far in advance this was planned by reading the Project for a New American Century [newamericancentury.org].)
In this case, it's a fairly simple proposition, though: Censorship is bad. IF you accept that claim, then yes--turning down an anti-censorship policy for the sake of corporate profits is bad. In fact, turning down even a provisionally good policy (i.e., based on the idea that censorship is generally bad for most cases) for profit-driven reasons can be argued as bad.
Does this rejection stink? My feeling is yes. However, that is a single-case and somewhat informed opinion. Your point that "China==censorship==bad!!!" is a stupid and thoughtless attitude still stands strongly. I hope more people consider it.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)