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Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

nytimes.com

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Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#91

Post by pera »

CountSessine wrote: post #74
pera wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which basically ends up to the classic deontological vs consequentialist ethic theories. I believe though that if enough companies like Amazon and Google won't accept the conditions imposed by the government then, after some time, they may decide to change their politics.

Sure. A cabal of tough-as-nails Chinese leaders who lived through the cultural revolution and command the largest standing army on earth will change their politics because Jeff Bezos gives them the cold shoulder. This is western arrogance at its peak.

I think you are underestimating the power of the western economy and the negative impact of isolationism. China don't want to play alone.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#92

Post by usaphp »

Steko wrote: post #80
usaphp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As expected, Apple CEO Tim Cook accepted the Free Expression Award at the Newseum in Washington D.C. tonight. At the event, Cook was presented the award and made brief comments on what it means to him and Apple, as well as touching on the importance of companies taking a stance…" [1] [1] - https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/18/tim-cook-free-expression-awar...

I'm not disputing the idea that Tim Cook has taken stances on certain issues including human rights. I'm disputing the idea that by complying with a Chinese law means he's "doing almost the same thing as what he's fighting against". That's rubbish.

I am sure a lot of leaders in china do not agree with what is going on there and draconian laws but they can't say anything against it since they will lose control and revenue if they get dropped from the top. Same with apple, it might not agree with what they are doing but they are too worried about their revenue stream to speak up against it. The difference is that at least Chinese don't act like hypocrites in this case. They don't proclaim to be fighters for human rights and freedoms.

Same thing is happening in Russia for example with corruption. A lot of new people who come work in higher positions just could not go agains the corrupted system, if someone that has control over their position tells them to do something, they will do it because otherwise they will be end up with no job and money. Those who speak up without worrying about their lost revenue are the real heros, not Tim Cook who was made look like one with his recent announcements

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#93

Post by imron »

jjoonathan wrote: post #55
madeofpalk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a middleground? You've still got to pick your battles and understand the scope of them. It's also entirely reasonable for a company to not to choose to follow a particular fight because it's too expensive or would have to much of an impact on the strategy of the company. If a company decides to not fund healthcare for everyone in the US, even if that aligned with their values and CSR, there's no need to…

Aiding Chinese censorship for a quick buck is your idea of a "reasonable middleground"?

What's missing here is context. The reason we are seeing a spate of similar news on this is because China recently changed the law, and so companies are making sure they comply with the law as a first step before figuring out further strategies.

Now maybe they take no further steps, but it's unreasonable to expect companies to entirely end their entire China operations based on a new law whose implications are not fully understood.

Instead they are making sure they are in compliance and seeing the specifics of what that entails before deciding what if anything to do next.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#94

Post by CountSessine »

pera wrote: post #91
CountSessine wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. A cabal of tough-as-nails Chinese leaders who lived through the cultural revolution and command the largest standing army on earth will change their politics because Jeff Bezos gives them the cold shoulder. This is western arrogance at its peak.

I think you are underestimating the power of the western economy and the negative impact of isolationism. China don't want to play alone.

Sure - if we imposed across-the-board tariffs on Chinese goods and Europe and Japan did likewise, that would be a very, very long lever.

Outside of FantasyLand, that will never happen. And Amazon leaving China will have even less impact on China's polity than Google's leaving China did.

Don't get me wrong - unlike Apple who really can't leave China and continue to make smartphones, Amazon could and should leave China. Amazon, like Google, will have to comply and cooperate with Chinese authorities in uncomfortable and unethical ways that I think will make it hard for Amazon to retain their best and brightest employees in the rest of the world. And Amazon will never be allowed to gain marketshare or influence in China at the expense of a local company - the deck will be sufficiently stacked against them until they lose, much like what Google was facing.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#96

Post by sergiotapia »

Veratyr wrote: post #26
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

What are they supposed to do? Either they comply or they leave the Chinese market. It's that simple. I hope people don't fault these companies for playing ball with a communist government.

Perhaps a naïve question but I mean it honestly: What relevance does communism have here? Is "communist" just being used as a synonym for corrupt or is there another meaning? I'm not American so I suspect I don't associate communism with the same things you do.

I'm not American either, I'm Bolivian.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#97

Post by Dylan16807 »

Steko wrote: post #80
usaphp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As expected, Apple CEO Tim Cook accepted the Free Expression Award at the Newseum in Washington D.C. tonight. At the event, Cook was presented the award and made brief comments on what it means to him and Apple, as well as touching on the importance of companies taking a stance…" [1] [1] - https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/18/tim-cook-free-expression-awar...

I'm not disputing the idea that Tim Cook has taken stances on certain issues including human rights. I'm disputing the idea that by complying with a Chinese law means he's "doing almost the same thing as what he's fighting against". That's rubbish.

Many of these specific laws are very directly anti-free-expression. Complying there while accepting a free expression award is about as clear as possible an example of "doing almost the same thing as what he's fighting against".

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#98

Post by radicaldreamer »

ams6110 wrote: post #42
radicaldreamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise. Even if Apple or Amazon wanted to resist this, they won't get any competent support from the current US administration. The strategy for the time being seems to be "don't rock the boat" for US businesses right now.

What? Why do they need support from the adminstration. Either they do business in China, and implicity endorse all the anti-freedom, or they do not. Sure it would cost them revenue and share price. Well right and wrong are not economic propositions.

Because even the largest companies (especially the largest companies) rely heavily on the organs of government to help negotiate and solve issues which are geopolitical in nature.

A cursory reading of some leaked state department cables or any analysis of how statecraft works shows that business and government work together to pressure and negotiate over things which affect multinational companies.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#99

Post by Buge »

Steko wrote: post #80
usaphp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As expected, Apple CEO Tim Cook accepted the Free Expression Award at the Newseum in Washington D.C. tonight. At the event, Cook was presented the award and made brief comments on what it means to him and Apple, as well as touching on the importance of companies taking a stance…" [1] [1] - https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/18/tim-cook-free-expression-awar...

I'm not disputing the idea that Tim Cook has taken stances on certain issues including human rights. I'm disputing the idea that by complying with a Chinese law means he's "doing almost the same thing as what he's fighting against". That's rubbish.

All gay internet content is illegal in China[1].

By blocking VPNs, Tim Cook is helping to ban all gay content.

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/06/30/china-homosexuality-internet-w...

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#100

Post by dheera »

mstaoru wrote: post #28

When you apply for ICP beian license at Aliyun (Alibaba's cloud), you either choose "I use Aliyun" and give them the server ID, or you choose "I use another server" and two additional fields appear: your server log in, your server password. You need ICP license if you want to integrate any kind of service. Wechat, Alipay, other payment systems, SMS notifications etc, everything needs the ICP. I guess AWS China also h…

What password? SSH password? What if you use SSH keys? None of my AWS instances have passwords and even in the days when I had EC2 instances in Beijing a couple years ago there were no passwords to them. (I wasn't hosting a public-facing service so no ICP was necessary. But still, any non-idiotic sysadmin won't be having password authentication to all their servers.)
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