On 25/11/14 18:42, Adam Porter wrote: > I think it is common knowledge that the Chinese government exercises > strict control over its portion of the Internet, and over companies > like Baidu.
Yes, but how does that make Baidu a de facto arms of the Chinese government? All governments exercise varying control over companies. > But better than taking my word for it would be to consider what > people in those areas have said, like the Taiwanese user who posted > in this thread, Irvin's post: On 24/11/14 08:03, Irvin Chen wrote: > I don't have any personal prefer over Baidu or other search engine on > China, but Baidu do have many controversies through Chinese users. > For ex.,Baidu operating hao123, well known #1 Firefox hijacking > malware. > > Our partnership's reputation should always be consider a important > issue when we setting any deal, whether it's renew or new deals. (At > least we cantake the advantage of the deal to asking them to do > something like improving malware protecting.) > > Irvin > and the Ukrainians who posted on Bugzilla. From your own email: > "Yandex is a Russian company, and that raises security concerns among > users. Russia has been tightening the screws on internet for years, > and currently has laws requiring companies operating in Russia to > physically place their servers on Russian territory for easier access > by security and police agencies. And Russian government is serious > about this. This spring CEO of Vkontakte (largest Russian social > network), Pavel Durov, was dismissed from his post for his refusal to > hand over personal details of users to Russian security service." > > "Russia is currently at war with our country. This makes Ukrainian > users even more concerned about possibility of their data being > accessible to Russian officials. Yandex as a company might not be as > strongly tied to government as Mail.ru is, but they still must obey > their laws. And they expressed their corporate position clear enough > by removing from his post head of their Ukrainian office, Sergey > Petrenko, for expressing his pro-Ukrainian position." > If their concerns are not valid, then perhaps mine are not either. I wouldn't say that at all, but I don't see them saying that Baidu is a de facto arm of the Chinese government, or that Yandex is a de facto arm of the Russian government. What I do see is Irvin arguing that maybe Baidu is bad enough as a company in its own right to consider not making a deal with it, and Tim saying it would be a very bad idea to make a large Russian company the default choice for Ukrainian users. > Or perhaps mine would be reduced to a matter of principle, which > clearly entails a variety of responses. The questions would then > include ones like: How will users in these locales interpret Mozilla's > being funded by these entities? How will Mozilla's being funded by > them reflect on its stated mission and values? Will Mozilla become > dependent on their funding, and if so, could that present a future > risk? What if these entities were to later attempt to leverage their > funding to change Mozilla's behavior, to change Firefox? It has > already been speculated in the past that Google's funding of Mozilla > has caused Mozilla to not take certain stands which could have been > contrary to Google's interests; and whether true or not, appearances > do matter to some extent. And perhaps most importantly, will being > funded by them and collaborating with them actually result in more > liberty for people in these places? Will it inspire people to resist > oppression, or to tolerate it? There we have a potentially useful discussion, rather than this odd linking of the bad human rights records of various countries with the companies which operate within them.
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