Take Action Against Chinese Internet Censorship

Internet censorship in China takes place in many different ways. Major search companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, Baidu and Alibaba comply with repressive Chinese Government regulations and block search terms and results, and at the same time, they gather information about search terms in their server logs.

Every time you use a search engine, the words you searched for are recorded in a server log. This provides search engine companies with valuable statistical information that they use to sell advertising space to their clients. Analysing these logs is part of the core business model of these companies.

Amnesty International’s idea is to take their message to the place where it will receive most attention from the search engine companies – the server logs themselves. By inviting users to search for censored topics on search engines in China, we can flood the server logs with terms related to human rights and democracy.

I’ve donated $AUS 500 to the Amnesty International Campaign Against Chinese Internet Censorship

Become a Human Rights Defender today and support Amnesty International Australia with a regular monthly donation. Help to defend human rights in China and around the world.

Search Engines Excuses for Censorship

Aware of the trade-offs they’re making, Google executives say they believe the company can play a more positive role by participating in the Chinese market, despite restrictions, than by boycotting the country in order to avoid such compromises.

“In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy,”

“While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” the company stated.

Google would be a far braver, less evil company if it said to the Chinese government that it won’t do the widespread censorship that’s being demanded. Keep your money, good luck with your suppression of knowledge and freedom, we’ll do business in other places. See you when your policies change. – Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Watch

Amnesty International demands that search engines release a definitive list of search terms that are being blocked and doesn’t buy the “we are only following local laws” excuse, accusing search companies of often self-censoring beyond what the Chinese government asks them to.

A new report Search Engines Chinese Self-Censorship by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that Amnesty is right because search companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo seem to be independently deciding what to censor and could be censoring more information than Chinese laws demand.

Help Amnesty International Tear down the Great Firewall of China

More Information

“Torchure” is one of a series of animated films highlighting China’s human rights record in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. Help Amnesty International take action for human rights in China

Many organisations have investigated Chinese Internet Censorship, a selection of articles are linked to below:


Comments

6 responses to “Take Action Against Chinese Internet Censorship”

  1. Don’t China government know that by implementing such law, the people on their country would more likely to look for alternative way of getting those censored stuff? They are like embracing the piracy more to their country.

    And on Google, that is a very nice move. That’s the right thing to do. It’s business. If the client does want to, then leave them like that. There are so many clients out there. Anyway, I think and of what I know, people from China are using Baidu and the QQ search engine more than Google. I’m not just so sure about it.

  2. Dont forget that donating to charitys and organisations such as Amnesty can be tax deductable, in turn giving you great benefit to donate.

    Good article mate! =)

    EDITOR: excellent point Alex. I recently wrote an article on that topic: Donate to Charity = Lower Tax Bill and Help Your Favourite Cause

  3. […] One top Aussie blogger, Neerav Bhatt even donated $500 to the campaign! […]

  4. Dont forget that donating to charitys and organisations such as Amnesty can be tax deductable, in turn giving you great benefit to donate.

  5. Hey Guys, I just want to see if anyone was interested in supporting my friend’s thesis paper on titled, “Wild International: The practice and operation of international news correspondents in restrictive media environments.”We want freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press -for all countries – it’s a human right.Support her project here -> every $1 counts http://shar.es/mJdaf

  6. Using a VPN to protect your privacy and give you unlimited access to every page. Internet Censorship was yesterday. This might be the only solution against internet censorship.
    I want to let you know that there is currently running a Free Give Away of Premium VPN Accounts from several providers on this page: http://www.Leechermods.com/search?q=vpn
    Chances are high to catch an account for free for everyone.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Articles