China and The Internet

There’s a complicated discussion taking place online surrounding U.S. Internet companies doing business in China and whether they should adhere to local laws as part of the process of doing business, even when the local laws contradict fundamental ideas and ideals protected by The Constitution of The United States of America in this country. At the core of the discussion is whether or not U.S. based Internet companies should censor their products for citizens of countries outside the U.S. when local law dictates. A recent hearing in the U.S. Congress called in representatives of Yahoo, Google, AOL and Microsoft to talk about this issue. Many organizations and individuals are calling for measures ranging from all-out boycott of China to accepting no compromise in regards to freedoms. To get a better handle on the situation, we talked with Danny O’Brien of Electronic Frontier Foundation about their proposed Code of Conduct for Internet Companies in Authoritarian Regimes. We also talked with censorware expert Seth Finkelstein about censorship online, how it works, how it doesn’t work and why blogs are a lousy tool for online activism.