Rebecca MacKinnon posts about an open letter from some Chinese netizens who feel ignored in the struggle between China and Google. Says Rebecca:

In a nutshell, it expresses the view that Chinese Internet users have been left in the dark. While it’s assumed that the Chinese government would seek to keep its people in the dark – hence its censorship in the first place – they find it unfair that Google has not provided them with enough information to form educated and fact-based opinions about what’s going on.

The letter writers support “necessary censorship” so long as it follows clear rules, is done by relevant and named departments, and does not impede “The public’s right to study, scientific inquiry, communication, and commercial activity…”

Rebecca also says that she’s hearing “from many people that the ‘Google China incident’ – as many Chinese call it – has greatly heightened awareness among normally apolitical Chinese Internet users about the extent of Internet censorship in their country. It has sparked a lot of debate and soul searching about the extent to which their government is causing them to be isolated from the rest of the world.”

It would be very helpful and non-evil if Google were to address these questions.

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Donnie Dong (Hao Dong), a Berkman Fellow, is giving a Berkman Tuesday lunchtime talk.

Donnie begins by asking us to play “spot the difference”: Google’s homepage on March 14 (3.14 — the Google pi logo) and Google.cn (Google’s Chinese home page) on that day. Besides not having the pi logo, the link to gmail is missing on China.cn, there’s no sign-in link, therte’s a link to tianya.cn, and the Chinese version has an official government ICP license number.

Tiany.cn is a massively popular social network. At the hot topics in the forums, there can be millions visitors and millions replies. (Donnie shows one topic that has over 4 million replies, and it was only posted in February of this year.) There are hundreds of boards and board masters, organizationally structured in a way similar to the Chinese government: A secretary general, branching powers, judges, appeals judges, etc. The structure works well. The rules say that no posts can be deleted or edited, so people consider carefully what they are writing. You can petition for a change to any edits made by the board master, but that’s embedded in an administrative bureaucracy. This is “decentralization under a super power,” he says.

QQ.com is an instant messenger app with over 1.4 billion accounts. It offers many kinds of services, all based on IM. It is a closed system with an open API.

Douban.com is a Web 2.0 site. (“Douban” is a Chinese dish.) Douban provides links to media (books, DVDs), etc., and enables its 36M people to comment, review, and discuss them. Everything posted at Douban is public. “Douban has a lot of Habermas’ public sphere.” But, Donnie adds, it strongly supports censorship.

Donnie points to common features of Chinese Web sites. First, they accept Web 2.0 ideas, but make user-generated contents controllable. Second, they only comply with Chinese culture. Third, they provide integrated services, not an open API. Fourth, they are driven by instant messaging, with a bulletin board management style. The Chinese Internet is not driven by email but by IM.

Google has never made money in China, Donnie says.

Donnie points out the “music” link on the Google.cn page. Google.cn actually is provided by t0p100.cn [I may not have transcribed accurately]. You can download legal music there. But at mp3.Baidu.com you can search the Internet and download what you find. Baidu has been sued, but it’s been defended by the safe harbor laws. Google has been copying Baidu, but not very successfully, Donnie says.

Until 2005, the Chinese control over the Net was accomplished mainly by technical control. From 2003-9, there was more and more legal enforcement. In 2010, there is a legislative rebooting. There is now a jungle of licenses: domains, commercial websites, webcast website, news website, online games…

The switch from tech to law has increased certainty because the authorities have explained why sites are being shut down. It has also caused important discussions to occur. But, the law is immature and thus enforcement is somewhat arbitrary. And the “clouds of licensing systems” are still difficult to navigate. But, these are temporary.

Hillary Clinton said there is a single Internet, says Donnie. “I do not think it is really true from the cultural, legal, and linguistic aspects.” Tim Wu, in Who Controls the Internet, says that the Internet is splitting, and there are under-appreciated advantages of this. “I agree,” says Donnie. Can we get along with each other in this world if the Net splits? “I think we can,” he says, because the Net consists of autonomous systems connected without hierarchy. We have to look at the Internet as pluralist, he says.

What we should really care about, he says, is that those with wealth, who have more access to the Net, do not replicate the economic/social divide on the Internet. [This is based on a brief conversation with Donnie afterwards.]

Q: The Chinese language itself is a barrier, in both directions, but not with Taiwan. Are the sites accessible?
A: Most of the Taiwanese Web sites are accessible in China, including the official government sites. Some sites that advocate Taiwan’s continuing autonomy are not accessible.

Q: What will be the effect of the announcement that access to the Internet is a basic human right?
A: The BBC had a survey that showed that 80% of people believe that, and that news was published all over the Chinese Web sites without problem. The problem is the law from the 1990s. I believe they will be changed sooner or later.

Q: To what extent does the system of govt bureaucracy account for the siloed nature of their services?
A: I think those structures were based on the notion that the Internet is just like other public media, such as TV.

Q: How does the censorship look from the inside?
A: As Rebecca MacKinnon said, most of the citizens don’t feel the censorship. There’s so much information available, so much news, so many services, so many forums. And if you really want to get some information, you can find a way to. And if you really want to express something, you can. The filtering mechanism can’t work perfectly, and their are many examples of this.
Q: What’s wrong with the system?
A: Because it reflects the old mass media, not on the Internet’s nature. It’s old logic. If we can reform the law so that it fits the Internet better, the question will be less urgent.

Q: You’re optimistic about the future of the split Internet. But there should be a common denominator wherever you go. A core function of the Net is to foster the circulation of info. What about the Chinese attitude toward copyright protection?
A: You can compare the systems of censorship and copyright protection. In China, there is a great deal of “freedom” (in quotes) in using copyrighted materials, even though China’s copyright laws are pretty much the same as everyone’s. The govt could do a campaign to fight piracy just as it does to fight pornography, and it could be very effective.

Q: It’s normal that a medium would be adapted to local needs. But do you think there is something about the Net’s design and essence that is core so that if it were changed, it’s not the Internet?
A: I believe everyone in the world has universal rights that should be complied with. But I’m suggesting that the separated parts of the Net could have universal principles and universal protocols.
Q: What separates the Internets?
A: Infrastructurally, linguistically, culturally, legally. By infrastructure, I mean the physical base of the Net. The protocols are the same.

Q: Can you compare the Chinese Internet to other linguistically isolated cultures? E.g., Would you say that Japan has a different Internet as well?
A: The term “pluralism” itself has many layers.

Q: What’s the effect on the ordinary Chinese citizen on Google’s departure? A Nature poll says that Google is the first choice of scientists in China.
A: Google won’t quit all of China. (This is just a guess, he says.) Resourceful users will be able to get to Google even after it departs.

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Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years in prison today for speaking out against the Chinese government.

The Guardian article begins this way:

One of China‘s most prominent human rights activists was condemned today to 11 years in prison, prompting a furious backlash from domestic bloggers and international civil society groups.

Picture me on this quiet Christmas morning finishing a cup of coffee, listening to a set of tracks I just downloaded from Amazon, my family doing their early slow bustle, criticizing a country a full diameter away from me, and you’ve got the picture of a snug, smug American blogger. Fury? Not sure where to locate it in that picture.

It’s obviously not the same for the Chinese bloggers supporting Liu Xiaobo. This post costs me nothing, but their posts put them at risk. I cannot even imagine what it’s like to press the Publish button having to worry about anything more than losing some reputation points. “What will my pals think?” is a lot different than “Will this start the gears of imprisonment?” That unimaginable gap is our freedom of speech.

The flip side of my ability to blog free of risk is powerlessness. So, I condemn the Chinese government. Let’s say many bloggers do. And then what happens? The Chinese government quakes in its boots because the blogosphere has given it a good scolding?

On the other hand, powerless compared to what? Fifteen years ago, my condemnation would have gotten as far as the person sitting across from me. Or maybe I would have written an outraged letter to the Chinese government. (Actually, I’m sure I wouldn’t have since I never have.) Now at least there’s a chance — but just a chance — that the Chinese bloggers will know that many other bloggers are with them. And this is part of the difference: The mighty are deaf to our words, but our allies and friends may not be.

So, why am I posting about Liu Xiaobo? For a jumble of reasons, as is always the case for us humans. To make myself feel like I’m doing something even if I’m not. To align myself with someone I admire, in part so I’ll be perceived as someone who cares. To contribute a couple more hops to the networked spread of news about Liu Xiaobo. So those at risk can feel the slight weight of one more post comforting them — and to be comforted myself that perhaps our words can connect us for a moment before they evaporate as words almost always do.

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TheOnion has been bought by a Chinese fish company. Hilarious. (Be sure to click on the op-ed titled “The Internet Allows for a Free Exchange of Unmitigated Information.”)

[Tags: theonion the_onion onion humor china free_internet free_speech freedom ]

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My old college housemate and good friend Hank Levine has started a blog. He’s was a Foreign Service Office for a long time, and has spent a lot of his life in China, so it’s no surprise that his blog focuseson US-China relations. It’s a bit wonky, but it’s great to hear Hank’s voice.

Hank was the funny one in a pretty funny group. (Funny haha, not so much funny peculiar.) We fell out of touch for about 25 years, but a few weeks ago we video-skyped. He looks distressingly the same. And he’s still funny, although not so much in his blog. Howdy, Hank!

[Tags: china hank_levine ]

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Rebecca MacKinnon isgiving a Berkman talk on the Chinese Internet. [Note: Live-blogging, hence full of errors and omissions and typos and misspellings and inadequate paraphrases.] [For a better report, see Ethan Zuckerman's]

She begins by pointing to Lao Tze’s saying that directly grasping something is often the worst way of controlling it. Then she shows a video of Chinese kids lipsyncing to the Backstreet Boys. They’re now famous in China as the “Back Dorm Boys.” The Chinese government has lost control of the culture, she says. Novelists and artists are routing around the control structure. For 66% of Chinese young people, the Web is the primary source of video entertainment. Most of it is found through social networking.

Premier Wen Jiabao gave a two hour chat online with Netizens. Questions came in from the Web, moderated by a journalist. It showed a human side of the Chinese leaders. “This is being greeted by many in China with euphoria.” The Premier said that he spends 30-60 mins on line everyday and considers it an important way to hear what people are thinking. There’s an egov site, including chat rooms and forums, as well as providing online services.

The National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference meets for two weeks every year, primarily to rubber stamp decisions. The Premier gives a live press conference once a year. Now he’s on the Web responding to questions directly. The meeting has a site (run by a Chinese newspaper) where people can comment, make suggestions, etc. Someone posted that the one child policy should be ended, with a lively open discussion among Chinese citizens.

So, asks Rebecca, is this “Chinese cyber-glasnost”? Chinese government Web sites are celebrating this as “Internet democracy.” But …

… Blogger Wang Xiaofeng blogged yesterday that people are getting too emotional about this. “Without a proper political structure, all Premiere Wen can do is interact with people on an emotional level…” He posted that yesterday. Today is blog is “closed temporarily.” He was told to close his blog. Other blogs talking about this have to insert spaces between words that otherwise would trigger inspection.

Dissidents are still in jail, Rebecca says. Bloggers, opposition party folks, lawyers… Yongnian Zheng talks about “authoritarian deliberation.” (His book: Technological Empowerment). Authoritarian regimes allow different degrees of deliberation. China is more deliberative because of the Internet, says Rebecca, but institutionally it hasn’t changed.

Our common Western paradigm makes it hard for us to understand Chinese Internet control, Rebecca says. We tend to think of it like the Great Wall: A barrier blocks people from accessing outside information. It is, as Lokman Tsui calls it, the “Iron Curtain 2.0.” Internet filtering is only one small part of censorship in China. It only affects sites hosted outside of China. For those hosted inside, the “Net nanny” metaphor is more accurate: A paternalistic state that protects people from themselves and maintains order. Google China does not show gory photos when you search for “Tianamen Massacre.” Baidu, the largest search service in China, returns zero results. If you try to post a post that contains trigger words, it goes into a moderation queue from which it never emerges. Eight out of 15 blog hosting services removed “objectionable” political content. The censoring is done by the hosting companies.

We could also use the metaphor of hydroelectric engineering. Most of the Chinese leaders have engineering backgrounds. When the storm comes, you put up the dam, then you let water out. New technique: The official news agencies quickly break stories that are bad news for the government (e.g., riots in Weng’an county in 7/08), and then they censor the unofficial versions. The official version “flooded” the Web.

People routed around this censorship. Youc ouldn’t talk about Weng’an, but you can talk about pushups, because the official story behind a murder was that a man was doing pushups on the bridge. Bloggers used pushups as a way of talking about the forbidden content. Or:” the government used “Harmonious Society” as a slogan. People had started using “harmonized” to mean “censored,” but then “harmonized” got censored, so people started using “rivercrab,” which is very close to “harmonious.” Then people started posting rivercrabs wearing three watches because that’s close to another slogan.

Another example. There was an anti-porn crackdown in January. Political discussions were removed along with smut. So, a video showed up, a happy children’s chorus about alpaca sheep, because “alpaca sheep” and “fuck your mother” are very similar; it’s a protest against censorship. It went viral. Now it’s spawned academic research.

“This is why keyword censorship is bound to fail. There’s so much discussion on the Web right now about rivercrabs and alpaca sheep.”

Cybernationalism is big in China, i.e., people on the Net who are very proud of their nation. There’s an anti-CNN site created by Chinese journalism students, to critique CNN’s errors in coverage. People resent foreigners criticizing their Internet. There are now Red Guard-like cyber-vigilantes. There are also paid informants on the Web. Cyber-police. Cyber-bonapartism, i.e., a strong centralized state using democratic means to make people feel more involved? Cyber-confucianism? Cyber-ocracy? She points to Isaac Mao who says we can’t have free speech until we have thinking, and thus he talks about “share-ism.”

Ultimately, we should be talking about off line institutions. Fair mechanisms, transparency, legal protection of free speech. Until you have that, Rebecca says, nothing much changes.

What does this mean for the global Internet? David Post, in Jefferson’s Moose, talks about the balance between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians (free speech vs. control). This debates rages in China now. The debate is “hampered by censorship and complicated by nationalism.” How do we support that debate, Rebecca asks. Between governments and citizens there’s now global layer of Web and IT services. How do we use this layer, in China and globally? Authoritarian governments may not be moved to democracy and freedom. If we don’t talk about this, we might all end up in the middle.

Q: This echoes the traditional Chinese leadership pattern of going out among the people. And different people in China use the Internet for different purposes. Elites vs, working class, etc.
A: Yes. The Net right now is an echo chamber for elites. If you want to know what the peasantry are thinking, the Internet is not the way to find out. But if you want know about the people who might be future leaders, the Internet is a good tool.

Q: Are there country-to-country discussion forums? And are they using The Onion Router?
A: Some do. Not a critical mass. And there are good-hearted attempts to “save” the Chinese. It’d be better not to be so paternalistic.

Q: Why don’t controversial bloggers post on hosts outside their country?
A: Because their audience would be too small. One guy I know posts the same posts to ten blogs and hope that not all of them are taken down. And the problem with circumvention tools is that you have to know what you want to know. It can be hard to know how much censorship there is if you’re within the system.

Q: Do the Chinese people want to be free? Russians tell you that freedom leads to conflict and misery.
A: What is freedom? There isn’t consensus in China about how much freedom vs. control. But how can you get consensus if you can’t have an uncensored debate about it? [Tags: berkman china filtering rebecca_mackinnon ]

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Hal Roberts, at the Berkman Center, blogs that he’s found that three suppliers of tools that allow those in China to circumvent the government’s restrictions on the Internet — DynaWeb FreeGate, GPass, and FirePhoenix — are selling information about the behavior of their users.

The sites freely publish anonymized data for people doing research on Net trends, but they will also sell you identifiable information … if you pass their smell test. Hal points to one company’s faq:

Q: I am interested in more detailed and in-depth visit data. Are they available?

A: Yes, we can generate custom reports that cover different levels of details for your purposes, based on a fee. But data that can be used to identify a specific user are considered confidential and not shared with third parties unless you pass our strict screening test. Please contact us if you have such a need.

From hands considered safe to the hands of totalitarians with a grudge is a distressingly short distance.

Hal concludes:

This sort of thing demonstrates that there is no way to eliminate points of control from a network. You can only move them around so that you trust different people. In this case, Chinese users are replacing some of the trust in their local Chinese ISPs with trust in the circumvention projects through which they are proxying their traffic. But those tools are acting as virtual ISPs themselves and so have all the potential for control (and abuse) that the local ISPs have. They can snoop on user activity; they can filter and otherwise tamper with connections; they can block P2P traffic.

So, yes, the Net routes around restrictions. But those routes themselves are subject to all the weaknesses to which we are heir. [Tags: berkman china censorship hal_roberts tor ]

[January 15: Rebecca MacKinnon spoke with some of the principles and blogs their explanations.]

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I sometimes put up a Powerpoint (well, Keynote) slide that says “Control doesn’t scale.”The assumption that large projects only succeed if they’re centrally controls led and managed turns out to have been true because we limited the scope of what we we considered realistic. You can build a Britannica using a centrally controlled system, but you could not build a Wikipedia that way.

But I know that there are some important counter-examples, so I’ll frequently add, “Except at an huge cost in expense and freedom,” for we know all too well that some regimes have managed to maintain intense control over massive populations for generations.

Today there’s an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald with Isaac Mao, pioneering Chinese blogger and Berkman fellow, in which he says the Chinese authorities are unable to keep up with increasing volume of social communications the 108M bloggers, millions in social networks, and people texting and twittering away.

So, maybe control doesn’t scale after all.

[Tags: isaac_mao control china berkman ]

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Here’s an odd thing.

I was sure that when Google China first started cleansing its results, a search for “tiananmen” at Google Images did not return the famous photo of the man standing in front of the line of tanks, or other photos of the Tiananmen demonstrations.

Today it does.

Even odder, I was talking with Lokman Tsui of the Berkman Center about this, and he discovered that if you search for “tiananmen” using the Chinese characters (天安门), you don’t get back photos of the demonstrations but sanitized, post-card-ish touristy photos.

On purpose? Fluke? A crack in the structure of control?

[Tags: china google tiananmen oni filtering lokman_tsui search berkman ]

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Rebecca MacKinnon reports that the Chinese government has refused to let citizen journalist blogger Zhou Shuguang (known as Zola) travel outside the country. This is not the first time he’s faced the Chinese authorities. This time, he twittered it as it was happening.

Rebecca posts: “I just communicated with Zola online. I asked him how he’s feeling – he said he’s tired but he feels ok, isn’t stressed.” She is concerned, however, as we all should be.

[Tags: zola blogging Zhou_Shuguang china ]

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