Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Google pulls out of Mainland China

Before the departure Google maintained about 35% of search market in China, second after Baidu's 60%+. It's a distant second, but Google.cn is making money and progress on its market share. Therefore it's not hard to come to the conclusion that the decision on leaving Chinese mainland isn't a business-based decision as what Chinese state media is propagating.

Google has been under constant cyber attack from China. Operation Aurora was a large scale one and attracted wide media coverage, but hacking of individual accounts has been going on for quite a while. Many Chinese human right activists and foreign journalists stationed in China have the experience that their gmail account is secretly redirected to another account.

Even worse, Google's four year in China has also been subject to varies accusations made by Chinese state media. China's State Broadcaster, CCTV, once accused Google of "spreading unhealthy information to the country's teenagers", but Chinese netizens have soon discovered that the person ("victim") interviewed in the programme is nothing but a CCTV intern.

I'm not against censorship, but the Chinese authority has a long history of abusing this tool for communist party's own good. In an environment where there is no independent media, Internet neutrality is vital for people to access unbiased and factual information. Not in China. The dispute between Google and Chinese authority has been going on for more than two month now, but even the Chinese authority are unable to specify which Law Google has violated - What they want Google and other Chinese websites to do cannot be put under public eyes.

What Google have done today is nothing more than corrects the mistake it has made 4 years ago, but it has created a far greater impact today than if it had never entered the Chinese market. By taking this simple but definitive act of defiance, Google has told the world that money cannot buy everything, and Chinese government cannot hold its own 1.4 billion people to ransom and use it to ask  the western world to obey.

And for that, I applaud Google's courageous decision.  I also want to see other foreign internet companies in China, especially Microsoft and its search engine bing are reacting to this news. Will they also do the right thing, or continuing act like Marx has described – capitalists will do everything to maximise the profit.

Dates not allowed on Google (.cn)'s Calendar

As you may know, Google's Chinese localised version is heavily censored.  When the search results contain pages you are not allowed to see, Google.cn usually returns a notice on the result page : "据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示" (Some results are omitted as restrited by local laws and policies).

One curious Chinese bloger wondered, how many days in a year are outlawed by "local laws"? He worte a script and found out that, out of 366 days, 11 of them will result the censorship notice on the search result page, these are:

* 13 January
* 31 May
* 4 June
* 13 June
* 20 June
* 25 June
* 30 June
* 5 July
* 19 September
* 13 Octorber
* 18 December

The rationale behind some of these censored dates are quite obvious, like 4 June is the date symbolises Tiananmen Square Massacre and the recent riots in China's Uyghur dominated Xinjiang Region started on 5 July.

However, even as a politically minded Chinese, I don't quite get why the rest of dates are considered "sensitive". I checked Wikipedia, there are some past events related to China, however, most of them are quite normal and can be hardly considered as sensitive events.

Section 92A is alive again

Earlier today, Ministry of Economic Development has released a Review Policy Proposal Document, highlighting recommended changes to the older version of the section.

It is significantly improved, according to many sources. A copyright tribunal is proposed to deal with the judicial and punishment issues, and alhtough the three strikes policy is still there, the details are quite different now. I've reduced it two three steps, for details, see the excellent analysis from the Creative Freedom Foundation.

Phase 1 - First Infringement and Cease and Desist Notice Procedure

Phase 2 - Obtain Copyright Tribunal Order to get infringer's details

Phase 3 - Copyright Tribunal decision

Creation of the copyright tribunal significantly improves the fairness of the whole process, however, I am still very disappointed that termination of Internet access remained as a punishment.

Access to Internet, in my opinion, is a fundamental human right in this digital age, people who lacks the full and free Internet access will be significantly disadvantaged in the society.Internet access should be regarded as part of the freedom of communication, which is a concept in many written constitutions.

Such termination is not in the spirit of a free, democratic society - This is why we are so against Internet censorship, especially the Great Firewall. The termination is even worse than that, which the citizens' right to communicate is not just being impeded, but denied in full.

The document is open for consultation, submissions are open until 5pm Friday 7 August.

Twitter impostors

There is a lot of impostors on Twitter. Nearly every Chinese community party leader, even the deceased Chairman Mao, has a twitter account, and his bio reads like:

I'm living in The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. Welcome!!!

We all know those twitterers are fake, because we know for a fact that Chairman Mao cannot tweet from the below (or above, as some may still prefer), and for those who are still breathing, they don't need a twitter account as they don't have to go through the general election process.

But in New Zealand and other countries like the States, politicians need get up to date with all the internet new techs although they are usually a bit behind. It is important nowadays for politicians to at least set up a facebook page (although the politician may never have visited "his/her page", as it was done by the employees).

Everyone wants to get their hands on youth votes, but does a facebook page really means those politicians "understand" WWW ? I always feel pity for anyone who thinks they do - the fact is that Section 92A  was passed by all major parties, except two that are, in my opinion,  sometimes genuinely connected with youth - Maori and Greens.

So no surprise on how John Key was tricked by a twitter impostor on  the April's Fool.

Soulless city of Auckland

An Australian couple has upset Kiwis with an online expat guide which warns that Auckland is a "horrible soulless city" and its inhabitants are "hobbits" who cannot dress properly. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Well I have spent a bit of time to read that guy's blog. I'm not a serious traveller therefore I can only comment on Auckland. What that blogger blogged is indeed bit over the top,but most of the comments, although somewhat exaggerated, are also facts.

Auckland indeed lacks a bit of culture, that's how I feel at least. By "culture" I mean not just the presence of culture diversity, but ... how do I put this, a community that respect, cherish, and upholds "serious" culture (not just the culture of get drunk in a pub every Friday evening.) as one of the important life aspects.

What I was really surprised about is not the whines from this Aussie expat, but how Kiwis reacted toward those comments. I mean, it's just a blogger, like myself (possibly you as well), everyone is entitled to have, and publicly express he or she's opinion, and it is a fact of life that no matter how beautiful the Big Sister Helen or the land of Aotearoa is, it is not possible to win a 100% approval rate - that only happens in North Korea, even the Chinese parliament got more nay votes nowadays.

It's not even a news, there are more than a million blogs out there and I believe a fair amount of them is about New Zealand. Single this blogger out only means that 1) marks the new low of NZ journalism, 2) maybe the view of that blogger is not uncommon and there's a need to discuss it on a higher public forum.

So I was really surprised that many "serious" organisations, like Destination Rotorua or New Zealand beer brewery , treated the comments that seriously, even " took exception to an open letter on the site" ... oh I just see a short cut for bloggers who want to get famous. I actually quite liked the smell of Rotorua, but if I badmouth them once maybe I can generate a bit of traffic to my site as well, but I'll only do that after I put up Google Adsense:)

BTW, wonder where's the sense of humour, or it's just like the Nationalists can make fun on everyone else, but when others make fun of Nationalists, their feelings are hurt.

Section 92A dead

Finally we see common sense prevails.

Most of the us who stood up and against this copyright law is not anti-copyright, I respected copyright holders' rights whenever I can. However, protection of copyright involves a mutual respect, but I feel this Section 92A, promoted by copyright holders, deeply undermines my right.

Since they treat netizens guilty of violating their rights before convicted, I also got a nice name for what they did which caused a great outrage among netizens: "copyright terrorism".

So Section 92A is dead but it doesn't mean this country does not respect copright.  New copyright protection measures will restart from scratch, I hope the new law got more common sense in it.