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CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA: WHO CARES FOR THE GLOBAL COMPACT OR THE GLOBAL ONLINE FREEDOM ACT?

George Washington International Law Review, The, 2007 by Deva, Surya

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The factor reflected in this passage also explains the roots of Internet censorship in China: if the Internet is a window of change to democracy and freedom, the Chinese government does not want to open this window too wide. Changes are definitely taking places in China, but only in those areas and at a pace dictated by the people's60 government.

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This is not to suggest, however, that Internet service providers are not (or should not be) subject to certain restrictions. Like many other rights, the right to freedom of speech, which includes the right to seek, receive and impart information, is not absolute.61 It could be reasonably restricted, say, on the ground of public order, health, morality, or the rights of others.62 For this reason, even corporations that are providing Internet services have to facilitate the freedom of speech, or of press, within such applicable limitations. A corporation should not turn a blind eye, for example, to its website being used to incite terrorism, promote genocide, spread social hatred, sell slaves, or facilitate music piracy.63 But the censorship by the Chinese government, and the corporate complicity therein, has gone too far.

B. Internet Censorship in China: Yahoo! Here Comes Microsoft's Google, but Where is Cisco?

Although the task of Internet censorship in China has been shared by, or "delegated" to64 several Chinese and non-Chinese corporations,65 the conduct of four U.S. corporations - Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco - has attracted special attention from the media, NGOs and even the U.S. Congress. Of these four, Cisco's role has not received as much criticism from Amnesty International66 and Human Rights Watch;67 two comprehensive reports released by these reputed NGOs did not, for different reasons, deal with Cisco's conduct. This section, however, examines the role of all four corporations, each a market leader in their own field and generally seen as a good corporate citizen.68 Their respective policies will be contrasted with their actual conduct.69

1) Yahoo!

Yahoo! was an early arrival in China as "one of the first foreign Internet companies to enter the Chinese market in 1999."70 It, therefore, also took the lead in bowing under the pressure of the Chinese government to cooperate in censorship. Yahoo! China facilitated Internet censorship by maintaining "a list of thousands of words, phrases and web addresses to be filtered out of search results."71 But the worst was yet to come. Beginning in 2003, Yahoo!, or subsidiaries such as Yahoo! China and Yahoo! (Holdings) Hong Kong, provided electronic details and information about cyber-dissidents to the Chinese authorities, leading to many incarcerations.72 This conduct is more questionable, and perhaps indefensible, in that it "assisted the suppression of dissent with severe consequences for those affected."'73 A study conducted by Reporters Without Borders also found 'Yahoo! to be the clear worst offender in censorship," compared to the Chinese version of search engines run by Google and Microsoft.74

CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN CHINA: WHO CARES FOR THE GLOBAL COMPACT OR THE GLOBAL ONLINE FREEDOM ACT?

George Washington International Law Review, The, 2007 by Deva, Surya

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