Nasty Little Man

E-oppressors lashed in Congress

ITworld.com: U.S. lawmakers scold tech companies for China censorship

Representative Tom Lantos and other members of the House International Relations Committee criticized Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. for making profits a higher priority than free expression in China.

"Instead of using their power and creativity to bring openness and free speech to China, they have caved into Beijing's outrageous, but predictable, demands simply for the sake of profits," said Lantos, a California Democrat. "These captains of industry should have been developing new technologies to bypass the sickening censorship of government and repugnant barriers to the Internet. Instead, they enthusiastically volunteered for the Chinese censorship brigade."

I'm very torn on this. Of course, I find the company's actions, especially Yahoo and Google, abhorrent, but I'm intertwined with these companies in a way that is difficult to simply break from. My blogs are on Blogger (owned by Google) for free, and a non-profit group that I work with has a website hosted by Yahoo, which is very user-friendly. Damn these people.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 10:46 PM