K.Mandla
April 13th, 2006, 11:22 PM
I caught an excellent Frontline documentary about the Tank Man (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/) recently, but it has unfortunately thrown me into a quandary over, of all things, the quicksearch bar in Firefox.
One of the points made in the documentary was the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist sentenced to ten years in prison for "revealing state secrets" -- in this case, "e-mailing comments made in a newspaper staff meeting to a democracy group in New York (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.html)." Ironically, it was Internet giant Yahoo! who forwarded Shi's IP address to the Chinese police, and even "worked with" the police to find him.
Yahoo Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong worked with mainland Chinese police to find Shi, according to court documents. So far, Yahoo has refused to offer details beyond this statement released Thursday: "Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the [local] laws, regulations, and customs."
When queried whether Yahoo gave Shi's address to police after a court request, or whether police simply phoned Yahoo offices on the mainland to get help, Hong Kong Yahoo marketing spokesperson Pauline Wong said she was "unable to give out any information like that."
Perhaps this doesn't grab you, and if it doesn't, that's all right. But as a journalist I find it infuriating that a corporate entity would go so far as to assist the police in tracking down and incarcerating another journalist, particularly given the nature of his "transgression."
And as I am one of those passive-agressive-social-reformist types, I've already abandoned (think: closed) my Yahoo! e-mail account. I, for one, certainly won't give Yahoo! the opportunity to generate revenue with ads shown in my e-mail pages, so long as it will actively work to suppress the free flow of information (in that case, the news) in another country. (I also don't shop at Wal-Mart, but that's a whole different rant.)
So what's that got to do with Ubuntu?
Another corporate giant mentioned in the documentary is Google, who, you might be aware, also operates within China but regularly screens -- censors -- the information it shows in search results, at the request of the Chinese government.
And so I come to my point. Given the Ubuntu philosophy (http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy) that we all at least glanced at when we first stepped toward this version of Linux, isn't there a bit of a contradiction in bundling the Google search bar with Firefox, and Firefox with Ubuntu?
Granted, the two issues are not necessarily congruent. I suppose any argument could be made to dismiss my point out of hand. Firefox is just made that way, and Ubuntu isn't responsible for it. You don't have to use that search bar if you don't want to. You don't even have to use Firefox if you don't want to. Google didn't sin to the degree Yahoo! did. Using Google is completely irrelevant to what OS or even what browser you use.
But I find it at least a little disturbing that each time someone uses the search bar in Firefox in Ubuntu, whether or not they are a proponent of free and open software -- or for that matter, free and open speech -- they generate a measure of income for a company that regularly blocks the free flow of information to an entire population, because of the requests of a totalitarian government.
One other point worth noting, before I have to close this up and go to work: At one point in the documentary, a U.S. congressman asks a Yahoo! VP, if Yahoo! had known where Anne Frank and her family were hiding, would Yahoo! have told the Nazis?
I'll leave it to you to watch the documentary to find out what the Yahoo! executive replied.
One of the points made in the documentary was the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist sentenced to ten years in prison for "revealing state secrets" -- in this case, "e-mailing comments made in a newspaper staff meeting to a democracy group in New York (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.html)." Ironically, it was Internet giant Yahoo! who forwarded Shi's IP address to the Chinese police, and even "worked with" the police to find him.
Yahoo Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong worked with mainland Chinese police to find Shi, according to court documents. So far, Yahoo has refused to offer details beyond this statement released Thursday: "Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the [local] laws, regulations, and customs."
When queried whether Yahoo gave Shi's address to police after a court request, or whether police simply phoned Yahoo offices on the mainland to get help, Hong Kong Yahoo marketing spokesperson Pauline Wong said she was "unable to give out any information like that."
Perhaps this doesn't grab you, and if it doesn't, that's all right. But as a journalist I find it infuriating that a corporate entity would go so far as to assist the police in tracking down and incarcerating another journalist, particularly given the nature of his "transgression."
And as I am one of those passive-agressive-social-reformist types, I've already abandoned (think: closed) my Yahoo! e-mail account. I, for one, certainly won't give Yahoo! the opportunity to generate revenue with ads shown in my e-mail pages, so long as it will actively work to suppress the free flow of information (in that case, the news) in another country. (I also don't shop at Wal-Mart, but that's a whole different rant.)
So what's that got to do with Ubuntu?
Another corporate giant mentioned in the documentary is Google, who, you might be aware, also operates within China but regularly screens -- censors -- the information it shows in search results, at the request of the Chinese government.
And so I come to my point. Given the Ubuntu philosophy (http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy) that we all at least glanced at when we first stepped toward this version of Linux, isn't there a bit of a contradiction in bundling the Google search bar with Firefox, and Firefox with Ubuntu?
Granted, the two issues are not necessarily congruent. I suppose any argument could be made to dismiss my point out of hand. Firefox is just made that way, and Ubuntu isn't responsible for it. You don't have to use that search bar if you don't want to. You don't even have to use Firefox if you don't want to. Google didn't sin to the degree Yahoo! did. Using Google is completely irrelevant to what OS or even what browser you use.
But I find it at least a little disturbing that each time someone uses the search bar in Firefox in Ubuntu, whether or not they are a proponent of free and open software -- or for that matter, free and open speech -- they generate a measure of income for a company that regularly blocks the free flow of information to an entire population, because of the requests of a totalitarian government.
One other point worth noting, before I have to close this up and go to work: At one point in the documentary, a U.S. congressman asks a Yahoo! VP, if Yahoo! had known where Anne Frank and her family were hiding, would Yahoo! have told the Nazis?
I'll leave it to you to watch the documentary to find out what the Yahoo! executive replied.