6-1 SHORT PAPER: DIGITAL CENSORSHIP
1. (a) Assume that you work as the senior vice president for international markets for Google. Your job is to prepare the company for its move into China. During negotiations with Chinese officials, you are given the following ultimatum: remove all links to webpages blocked by the Chinese government from search results. Otherwise, Google will be blocked and unavailable to Chinese citizens. China is a large new market for Google, so the consequences of being excluded from that market are quite serious. Also, competitors (like Yahoo) seem willing to play along with China. What would you recommend to Google's CEO about how to proceed? (b) What are the dangers involved in Google's current strategy?
Due to the internet being state run, Google has been given an ultimatum by the
Chinese government to remove all web sites with restricted content from the search engine
or they will be faced with the Chinese government blocking them from being accessible to
the Chinese people. This ultimatum gives Google no other choice but to comply with the
demands should they wish to continue doing business with the Chinese government. It
would be my suggestion to the CEO to discuss a solution with the government as to what
is allowed by the government for the citizens to access and negotiate, if possible, what
regulations they wish to implement with Google. The investment opportunities that are at
stake are going to be a huge factor as to how much Google will want to push for less
regulations to be initiated. Google will have to take into consideration that should the
Chinese government refuse to negotiate on what restrictions are implemented then they
will be forced to comply with them if they wish to continue doing business in the country
One of the things that must also be considered is that should Google comply with
the government as to what content will be restricted, then they will be opening themselves
up to the possibility that there will be additional content that could be restricted at any
time due to the content not aligning with the government's stance on a particular subject or
deeming that it is inappropriate for the people to see. It is possible for the Chinese
government to refuse to allow Google to operate entirely within the country by completely
6-1 SHORT PAPER: DIGITAL CENSORSHIP
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blocking them from conducting business within the country should they attempt to push
for any sort of negotiations.
2. Should companies like Cisco be concerned that their routers are being used to filter out sensitive content in countries like China? Are they complicit in China's censorship regime?
I do feel that there should be some concern over the fact that the routers are
capable of filtering any content that the government deems worthy of censoring. This
could lead to a violation of a person's human rights should the government feel that it is in
violation of any political policy or against the government in