The Great Firewall of America

A firestorm is raging over control of the internet, and governments all across the globe are flexing their muscles. More than any other technology the blogosphere has the potential to become a bridge for humanity. It’s a shame that it is being turned into the great divide.

More and more the U.S. is increasingly forcing internet businesses to comply with its law regardless if it is an American company or not. According to the Creator’s Copyright Association it addresses an even larger issue:

“Following along the same line of thought, if it is right for BlackBerry to comply with (good? bad? dubious?) American law in the United States, is it wrong for Google to comply with (undoubtedly bad) Chinese law in China?”

Touché. That’s gotta hurt. Reprinted with thanks to the Canadian Pundit.

George Koo takes the argument even further by stating the U.S. is being hypocritical making bones about China’s abuse of human rights on the internet. It’s all about sovereignty and doing business as far as he is concerned and nothing more.

“In China, people use the Internet to play games, read the news and socialize in chat groups. Few use the Internet to purvey political messages; most do not care and do not feel deprived.”

Hmm. See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.

While I can’t deny U.S. hypocrisy I have to respectfully disagree with Koo’s attempt to detract from the importance of the west’s need to advocate human rights. If we don’t do it who will?

A war of words is better than lobbing bombs on them like Iraq. And besides, the Chinese can lob them back.

He does make an interesting point:

“If Google, Yahoo et al. wish to permit unfiltered access to all sorts of information to the people of China, they can. Just do it from outside of China.”

Which seems to echo sentiments of my own — “instead of the Chinese building a wall around their country, why don’t we just build a firewall around China?” With tongue-in-cheek of course.