Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

abiox wrote: post #150

Dylan16807 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

"complying"... the law is the law. behaving in an illegal manner which will only get you shutdown doesn't seem like a great strategy.

Shutting down voluntarily is also legal. Remember that the question wasn't about business strategy. The question is whether he is "doing almost the same thing as what he's fighting against". And the answer seems to be yes.

Expensive options are not the only way to solve this dilemma. They could simply amend their position on free expression to explain why this is an exception. Such an explanation might not even reflect badly on them.

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

#162

Post by Veratyr » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

cgmg wrote: post #73

Veratyr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Communist" implies authoritarian, as in a one-party state.

Upon further reading, it seems this is largely due to the fact that previous implementations of communist society have included an authoritarian government.

I'm mainly reading the Wikipedia pages but it seems that communism in theory is actually stateless and doesn't have a government at all, let alone an authoritarian one:

"A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labor."

"Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society

Intent is understood though, thanks.

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

#163

Post by justadeveloper2 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

Sad the world we live in. We need the world to reach for Western standards of openness, freedom, and dignity and put people before profits. Instead, I see us altering our way of life to the least common denominator of state coercion.

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

#164

Post by justadeveloper2 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:13 PM UTC

chrismeller wrote: post #112

jjoonathan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So they should have just defied the Chinese government, had all their manufacturing facilities cut off, and just closed up shop and called it a day? Of course they don't agree with it, but they don't have the power to effectively ignore their demands right now. Yes, this sucks, but it means they get to live and fight another day, hopefully when they do have a bargaining chip.

Yes. There's no bargaining with communists, there is only wiping them from the earth.

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

#165

Post by am1988 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:19 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #154

am1988 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "forced censorship" isn't about a right to be forgotten or any reasonable definition of freedom of expression. It's about a company violating IP rights. The US government puts the same pressure on Google. Worse actually, because the DCMA expects it to be done without a court order (which has lead to rampant abuse on sites like youtube).

Of course, I should have figured that our censorship was for good reasons, but not Chinese censorship. After all, copyright interests are clearly worth censoring for, but whatever excuse the Chinese government used (State interests?) aren't.

I don't agree with a lot of the censorship for copyright eihter (nintendo and lets play videos is one such example).

You seriously can't see the rather important moral difference between "take down this site selling copies of my stuff as their own" vs "take down this criticism of the government massacring citizens"?

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

#166

Post by askvictor » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #141

dis-sys wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed for you - The Chinese judicial system, prisons and government obviously have many flaws, arguably getting worse, and has a difficult relationship with human rights. However, the Chinese government does not do things like operating Guantanamo Bay or cause civilian deaths using WMD as excuses. How many civilians got killed in Iraq as a direct consequence of US invasion? Their lives worth less than those human rig…

I find it baffling that there is an idea that China's records on human rights is comparable to that of the US. The US has human rights problems, and China's are objectively much worse.

Please define what metric(s) you're using to make that statement. I'm not saying you're wrong, but a statement of objectivity requires something to substantiate it. Certainly, the US doesn't have nearly as many political dissidents incarcerated, but China doesn't have a systematic problem with summary executions of a racial group by police (for example; there are plenty more on both sides, which are not necessarily comparable; yes I know in this case that China has its own minority racial group issues). Then, are scale effects (population size) factored in your figures?

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

#167

Post by mistermann » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #118

mistermann wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living by strong personal principles in a world that no longer has any is a recipe for a very unhappy life. The business and government leaders of the world have, over more than a decade of decisions, put us on this path, what's going to happen will happen. Don't sacrifice your life in some futile attempt to "do the right thing", it won't change anything other than harm you.

As option mentioned above, SDE job market is very hot right now, so finding another position will not be a problem.

It may be, but it's a bad habit to get into imho.

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

#168

Post by jaggajasoos33 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

micaksica wrote: post #2

In case you assumed that corporate responsibility is actually taken to heart by those making corporate strategic decisions, let this show you that it is not. Corporate responsibility moves are little more than good PR, a product selling point, and a way to avoid fines in some jurisdictions. Money matters more than morals. These corporations want access to the Chinese market. To gain access (and profit from) to the Ch…

Are you suggesting that a corporation should not obey local laws ?

China's laws might be bad but I am not sure how Americans benefit by not providing a service. If China wanted access to servers in USA then it will be a different story (which I believe US government is already doing through backdoors).

Let Chinese government hurt their own pace of innovation by putting politics before the market and let American stock market benefit from the access to such large market. It is going to be fun watching how it all unravels.

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

#169

Post by teknologist » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 2:11 AM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #144

teknologist wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually not having the ICP also means your site is dog slow and prone to being blocked at any moment. Of course if your site is actually needed enough this rule kind of gets ignored. See: GitHub. They probably don't have an ICP license or plans to get one and yet it works really well in China (not even joking)

I remember Github has been blocked in the past . See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China

Yeah, and then they realized that most tech companies rely on it.

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

#170

Post by wyager » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 2:13 AM UTC

am1988 wrote: post #165

wyager wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, I should have figured that our censorship was for good reasons, but not Chinese censorship. After all, copyright interests are clearly worth censoring for, but whatever excuse the Chinese government used (State interests?) aren't.

I don't agree with a lot of the censorship for copyright eihter (nintendo and lets play videos is one such example). You seriously can't see the rather important moral difference between "take down this site selling copies of my stuff as their own" vs "take down this criticism of the government massacring citizens"?

The recent Canadian and European takedown cases covered here on HN weren't about "stuff I own", they were about "inconvenient information I want to remove from public view". Still covered under copyright law.