Michael Darragh

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:57:06 +0800

At least YouTube is back online :-)

stephenyang

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:13:36 +0800

Reading this article made me think about a conversation I had recently with a native Chinese. As a New Yorker, I was a bit frustrated that I had been denied access to some websites while in China. The general sentiment in the United States is that everyone should have access to websites and that it should be censored locally, i.e. by family or each individual; our online freedom seems to be a logical extension of our other freedoms of speech and print. When I asked my Chinese friend if the government censorship bothered her, she replied "no." She said that she had never had a freedom on the internet and so she couldn't lament a denied access to a website. For her, the government isn't censoring anything, because the website never existed in the first place. I'm not all for government control, but we Westerners should be careful not to western-pomorphize the world. Just because someone doesn't have a freedom we have, doesn't necessarily mean that they long for it. Often freedom is a relative term and we choose certain freedoms over others. No one is completely free who lives in a society and culture. Assuming that we are liberating another people by giving them the things we have and expecting them to then think like us can actually be a contradictory position.

ThomasCrampton

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:51:52 +0800

FYI: related to this topic I recently did a posting with a co-founder of Friendster explaining rationale behind the social network's refusal to localize for China. http://www.thomascrampton.com/2007/10/23/kent-lindstrom-why-friendster-refuses-to-localize-for-china/

Shanghaiist: Facebook to enter China? What next?

Michael Darragh

stephenyang

ThomasCrampton