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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.

KansasJoe
April 13th, 2006, 11:34 PM
Not sure what's worse???

The time you wasted to write that

The time I wasted to read it

teasum
April 14th, 2006, 12:05 AM
Not sure what's worse???

The time you wasted to write that

The time I wasted to read it

Answer: The time you wasted to post your response.

For those of us who care about free speech and journalistic freedom, it might be time well spent.

zubrug
April 14th, 2006, 12:54 AM
I am not a journalist but all this information getting given or ordered to government agencies is alarming. I don't even have anything to be concerned about but the idea that this is happening should not be glanced over.
Teasum would be singing a different tune if he were anywhere close to being put in that situation.
If its happening there, its surely happening here. Beware

teasum
April 14th, 2006, 03:41 AM
Teasum would be singing a different tune if he were anywhere close to being put in that situation.
If its happening there, its surely happening here. Beware

What? I was saying that the original post was worthwhile, but that the dismissive response was a waste of time... I'm not a journalist either, but I have studied issues of journalistic freedom in Asia (mostly SE Asia, however). In any case, this is a valid discussion topic, given the philosophy behind Ubuntu.

Sutekh
April 14th, 2006, 03:42 AM
zubrug, I think teasum agrees that this post is important.

I certainly think it's important and disturbing. Just remember at the end of the day, big corporations and governements don't really care about you.

zubrug
April 14th, 2006, 03:52 AM
ooops, I agree and sorry Teasum.

3rdalbum
April 14th, 2006, 06:34 AM
I must admit, I was a bit disturbed to find that Google was the default search engine in Firefox (as I started using FF shortly after the controversy started). I immediately changed it to AOL.

JimmyJazz
April 14th, 2006, 07:11 AM
I heard there is a live CD based on OpenBSD that would allow users in China to hide themselves when using the internet. I forgot the name of it but it seems like a great idea to me.

helpme
April 14th, 2006, 08:00 AM
I can certainly understand your concern, but I think we shouldn't mix up what google is doing and what yahoo is doing.

While I agree that censoring search results (but at least being frank about censoring them) is certainly problematic, to say the least, it's still a far cry from what yahoo have done, that is work together with an oppressive regime to get a journalist thrown into jail.

My point is, if you want to discuss the morality of what google are doing and the relationship between free software and google, fine, but don't through in yahoo for good measure.

Virogenesis
April 14th, 2006, 10:42 AM
I can certainly understand your concern, but I think we shouldn't mix up what google is doing and what yahoo is doing.

While I agree that censoring search results (but at least being frank about censoring them) is certainly problematic, to say the least, it's still a far cry from what yahoo have done, that is work together with an oppressive regime to get a journalist thrown into jail.

My point is, if you want to discuss the morality of what google are doing and the relationship between free software and google, fine, but don't through in yahoo for good measure.
Couldn't agree more with you on this,
what you have to remember is the U.S asked google for their logs and google said no unlike others.
If they didn't filter then they would lose the market share to yahoo and msn this isn't good for business remember google is a business and remember to beat them you have to join them.

ezphilosophy
April 14th, 2006, 12:41 PM
I live in China and I clicked on the links. I was able to bring up "thetankman" page, but none of the links from there worked. Do they still work for you? If so, then it looks like the government censored that too.

seshomaru samma
April 14th, 2006, 02:58 PM
I live in China and the links worked fine for me.
As far as I know sites are blocked at the ISP level so that might explain it.

Anyway , getting a proxy is very easy ... if you want to access Taiwanese-independece web sites and the like...

Schoappied
July 16th, 2007, 12:51 PM
I caught an excellent Frontline documentary about the Tank Ma
n (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.


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.

Man, my reply is a little bit late... but I agree with you and think I've found after a long search finally someone who has the same question about the relationship between Google and open source especially with Mozilla in there firefox project...
I'm not only shift from Windows to Ubuntu because of there 'humanity to others' philosophy... but I liked that point very much. Now I'm starting to realize that I shifted from the one bad thing (Microsoft) in the other (Google, who is using open source)....

First I started putting questions to Google. Now I see more and more a link between open source and google and I think this bond is not good and not neccesary!

I started to discuss Google here: http://socialdiscussion.com/off-topic-talk/5536-abandon-google.html

Then I was wondering if the project of Iceweasel of Debian, was different from the Firefox project... Maybe Iceweasel didn't support Google the way Firefox does... So i posted a discussion on the debian forum: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=87181#87181

I like to here the ideas of other open source users... so join the discussion if you want!

Greetz,