Google Outage Shows Risk of Doing Business In China 113
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that widespread disruptions to Google in China over the weekend, halting use of everything from Google's search engine to its Gmail email service to its Google Play mobile-applications store, underscore the uncertainty surrounding Beijing's effort to control the flow of information into the country, as well as the risks that effort poses to the government's efforts to draw global businesses. The source of the disruptions couldn't be determined, but Internet experts pointed to China's Internet censorship efforts, which have been ratcheted up ahead of the 18th Party Congress. 'There appears to be a throttling under way of Web access,' says David Wolf, citing recent articles in foreign media about corruption and wealth in China spurred by the party congress and the fall of former party star Bo Xilai, 'that's their primary concern, people getting news either through Google or through its services.' Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, says Wolf and such a move could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under the World Trade Organization and make China a less-attractive place to do business. 'If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasingly untenable place to do business.'"
just stop then (Score:1)
Just stop doing business with China, then.
They do this crap because they know they can get away with it, since everybody will try to do business with and in China anyway.
If you care, just take a firm stance and do business elsewhere.
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All they need to do is create a new index for import tariffs, putting China at a very high rate. Just derived the formula for the tariff from a nations amount of slave labor, world pollution index, smuggling rates, etc.
anyone else curious (Score:1)
if this could be related to the BGP routes issue last week
http://blog.cloudflare.com/why-google-went-offline-today-and-a-bit-about
seriously, there should be a 1 strike rule on announcing prefixes that are
not in control of the announcing entity.
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So you did catch that the Pakistani company's upstream was PCCW?
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This article refers to a different incident where Google was explicitly blocked prior to a leadership change in China. The Pakistan routing screw up is completely different.
Re:anyone else curious (Score:5, Informative)
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And every time they ask for help on a web forum they'll probably be met with "Just Google it!"... stroke of brilliance by the Chinese gov't.
China will be an increasingly untenable place ... (Score:5, Insightful)
to do business?
really?
since when do we CARE ONE BIT about freedom when it comes to the almighty dollar?
we'll be in china even if they start executing puppies and kittens in the streets.
there is nothing in this world that will cause western capitalism to turn its back on china.
stop acting like we have any morals here. we don't. we worship money and anything that gets in its way we will stomp on.
other than that, we could really care less what they do. and they care less about what we do.
as long as money flows, the guys who run things are happy to eat popcorn on the sidelines and watch the world burn.
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Troll moderation is SO unfair...
Nothing forces a corporation to uphold the rights of ANYONE without some outside influence. If they can game the system they'll do it.
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Even gold is priced in Dollars.
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Gold is priced in anything.
I can buy gold for SEK, I could likely trade gold for silver and if I offered you enough gold you'd sell me a house.
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Its got nothing to do with morals. Businesses won't operate in China if they can be shut down on a whim, much too risky.
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sorry but you are wrong.
today, already, businesses can be 'shut down' by the US gov in the US or the china gov in china. even if you follow laws, the US can shut you down if they 'want to'. they can grab your domain and hold onto it and return it, maybe, years later with no apology.
does this stop business?
NO!
they consider punative things 'cost of doing business'. its in their cost analysis they all do. they assume they'll get sued for X amount, have to pay Y sometimes, and still the remainder makes it w
Everyone knows the risk of doing business in china (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose this is just another thing that needs to be repeated until it is generally accepted. You know, kind of like "smoking is bad for you and everyone around you."
There are ample examples of how doing business in China have turned really bad on all scales. It is especially obvious when heavy tech such as aircraft and train manufacturing have been screwed over by the promises of the Chinese government which were later revoked causing amazing damage to the companies who put their faith in what they were told.
We all want to have those WalMart prices in everything we buy. Lower costs of everything from materials and manufacturing to labor and delivery are things we ALL want. But there are risks and I measure those risks with every transaction I make on eBay. (And I am talking about pennies, not billions of dollars.) The risk is heavy on my mind always. But then again, it's the question of risk isn't it?
These days, whether people realize it or not, but the risk to business has largely been shifted to employees and the general population. When things fail or go badly, who feels the pinch worse? The people on wall street or the people on the street? Somehow, we got to a place where risk is socialized and rewards are privatized.
So yeah.... there is risk to doing business with china, but the risk is socialized... it's on all of us and we have little we can say or do about it.
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I take it you have never been in China? The only risk right now is not doing business in China. The western world is broke, these guys are a manufacturing powerhouse, cheap labor, cheap housing. Don't be a fear monger if you don't know what you are talking about please. Expanding into Asia is a great way to improve your business, no matter what you are producing.
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The western world is not "broke." When the western world is "in debt" the next question is "two whom?" That's where you will find some obvious answers to obvious questions.
We don't need to do business with China. We *want* to save a few bucks to increase our profits or at least to lower our costs. Without these savings or cost reductions, how can we guarantee a ridiculously large bonus... a bonus so large that even people in the top 25% earning bracket would never make so much in a life time.
We live in
They're doing this in a Really Crafty way... (Score:3)
They're just degrading service, rather than blocking it. If you degrade service, people will naturally move away because they will think it is the service's fault, not the government's fault.
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Is it just me, or isn't this exactly the same as submitting an app to the Apple App store? You never know if you'll be allowed entry, and can get the boot anytime for no reason...
Perhaps it is close, but at least on the App Store the customers are free to stop using Apple and switch to Android. This is the difference between a corporation and a government. This is true whether we're talking about the U.S. government or the Chinese government. You can change employers, you can change insurance companies, you can change your electronic equipment - unless the government says you can't, and you don't get to switch to another government.
they are just mainframe problems (Score:2)
Get real. This was already known, just ignored (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing and Airbus have been FOOLISH in allowing China to do various parts of planes. Sadly, Boeing gives one part of a plane to China and buys Boeing. But then China approached Airbus and says that if you will give us a different part from an airbus plane, then we will put that plane on the approved list. IOW, Chinese gov. is making sure that they get access to ALL of the tech because so many western companies think short-term.
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Then by all means we deserve to be overrun by China. The US govt has been long been a tool of these corporate fools. I don't see an issue with what China is doing, it's only logical that they want to take advantage of every opportunity they can. The main problems is neither the White House or Congress are willing to do what it takes because they would just have fight many enterprises in the process.
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Why is this sad? Certainly everybody who does business in China knew 25 years ago that they steal technology. If Boeing is dumb enough to subsidize the development of a Chinese competitor, that's their loss.
The tragedy here is the inability to even learn, not just the lack of long term thinking.
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An we continue to be pissed about it except it makes no news because we have "mini-bush" in the PM's office!
- Yo Grark
What about the risk of doing business with Google? (Score:2)
What will you do the day where the SSL certificate from Google says it is invalid? Will you really resist getting to yo
Google Decided to Leave China (Score:1)
Google's predicament in China is entirely self created. Google elected to leave China in response to a hack attack perpetrated / tolerated by the Chinese government. Mr. Brin played a large part in the decision largely based on his experience growing up in Russia. China != Russia. Google made a huge mistake leaving China. Google used to own half of the market, now they own a fraction. Eventually Google will make a good business decision and return to China, but until then those of us living in China will ju
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Re:Laws of country (Score:4, Insightful)
10:58AM Nice copy paste bro!
Re:I agree... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I agree... (Score:4, Informative)
The phrase is "toed" the line, as in, someone drew a line in the sand and you are sticking your toe across the line, challenging them.
Close. Toeing the line means you keep your ties right at the line without crossing it, thus you are specifically obeying all of the rules and not challenging authority.
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Correct.
The archaic derivation seems to be:
TOE THE LINE
The space between each pair of deck planks in a wooden ship was filled with packing material called âoeoakumâ and then sealed with a mixture of pitch and tar. The result, from afar, was a series of parallel lines and a half-foot or so apart, running the length of the deck. Once a week, as a rule, usually on Sunday, a warshipâ(TM)s crew was ordered to fall in at quartersâ"that is, each group of men into which the crew was divided wo
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Sorry, copypasta.
Should have given it a shufti before posting.
It's spelled "medieval" (Score:2)
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Thus proving the point that every time you correct someone, your probably wrong. :)
My probably wrong what? What's this about my probably wrong?
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I think it's TOAD the line. Origin either from battletoads or Toad The Wet Sprocket's unreleased next album, together with a TARDIS mishap innoculating 18th century culture with the phrase and underlying pop culture context enough to sustain it.
(Yeah, mine may be wrong, but it's not utterly backwards like thinking to toe the line is to challenge authority. Oopsie.)
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He probably has a mental picture of a lion at the end of a rope. He just misspelled "lion."
But china doesn't have rule of Law.. (Score:5, Insightful)
China lacks rule of law, it only has rule of the rulers.
Thats the big problem with doing business in China, there is no actual Rule of law [npr.org].
Should it have one? If so, why? (Score:3)
I ask because unlike other 'major' western democracies, the UK has no written constitution [independent.co.uk] and its doing well.
So again I ask: Should China have the "rule of law", just because some western countries have it?
Let's remember that it's one thing to have rules and it's another to actually follow them. Some governments in the west have ignored their own rules too. Just saying.
Re:Should it have one? If so, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
UK has no written constitution [independent.co.uk] and its doing well.
Just because the UK lacks a single constitutional document does not mean the UK lacks the rule of law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom#Parliamentary_supremacy_and_the_rule_of_law [wikipedia.org]
Should China have the "rule of law", just because some western countries have it?
No. China should have the rule of law because the rule of law brings stability and predictability to the way people are governed. In the absence of the rule of law, you have governments and police that are arbitrary and unpredictable, acting based on the whims of the rulers rather than on the deliberated and well-documented intent of a legislature. Without the rule of law corruption and greed are allowed to exist without challenge by the people.
Some governments in the west have ignored their own rules too. Just saying.
Tu quoque, another logical fallacy.
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China *does* have rule of law. Bribes are illegal, punishable by death. That "rule" is applied consistently from a Chinese perspective, but very inconsistently from a western
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Just because the Chinese write down and consistently enforce some laws does not mean they have a respectable rule of law. The key difference here is that people and companies operating in China must respect both the written law, as well as the Party. Enforcement of the written law is at the discretion of the Party. If you offend the rulers, you are punished at least as surely as if you had violated a written law (and there are plenty of written laws that can be made to apply to any situation where you fa
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The key difference here is that people and companies operating in China must respect both the written law, as well as the Party. Enforcement of the written law is at the discretion of the Party.
Yes, just like written law in the US is enforced at the discretion of the police officer.
I'm not trying to be obtuse, but as someone who has spent some time in China, they understand their system much better than ours, and from their perspective, I would say they think they have a more consistent (if not fair) rule of law than is in the US.
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I'm starting to suspect we're using two different definitions of "rule of law". Here are a couple of excerpts from the wikipedia article about it that explain how I'm using it:
Formalists hold that the law must be prospective, well-known, and have characteristics of generality, equality, and certainty. ... ... ... according to political science professor Li Shuguang: "The difference....is that, under the rule of law, the law is preeminent and can serve as a check against the abuse of power. Under rule by law, the law is a mere tool for a government, that suppresses in a legalistic fashion."
According to the functional view, a society in which government officers have a great deal of discretion has a low degree of "rule of law", whereas a society in which government officers have little discretion has a high degree of "rule of law".
"Discretionary enforcement" of the law in the US is limited to situations like speeding, or marijuana possession. Due to the (explicit and intentional) separation of roles of police, prosecutor and judiciary, it's hard to prevent enforcement of serious offenses without a grand conspiracy, and even then, the victim can appeal to the
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"Discretionary enforcement" of the law in the US is limited to situations like speeding, or marijuana possession.
No, the police have chosen to not enforce restraining orders because the guy (who killed the person holding the restraining order against him) harassed her so often the police stopped responding until the neighbors reported gunshots). The police were sued (and won) over that one, and multiples like that because they have infinite powers of di
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I ask because unlike other 'major' western democracies, the UK has no written constitution and its doing well.
So again I ask: Should China have the "rule of law", just because some western countries have it?
Yes, but with a nuance. China should have the rule of law even if western countries for some reason didn't have it.
Let's remember that it's one thing to have rules and it's another to actually follow them. Some governments in the west have ignored their own rules too. Just saying.
And this rationalizes China how? The peer pressure argument is so easy to mock. So if I were to say, execute six million Jews, I could observe that "some governments in the West did that too". It might not make it "ok", but we'd at least have to pretend to think about whether it was right or wrong.
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Yes, but with a nuance. China should have the rule of law even if western countries for some reason didn't have it.
But China does have rule of law, it's just that we don't understand them well enough to get it. We might as well be arguing that Napoleonic code isn't "rule of law" and only English Common Law is. Just because we are too stupid to understand doesn't mean they are wrong.
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But China does have rule of law
No, it doesn't. There are too many cases where something was made illegal just because some bureaucrat decided to make it so on the spur of the moment. Rule of law means that what is on the books is followed by the government. For example, rtfa-troll points out [slashdot.org] two parts of China's constitution associated with the exercise of speech and protest which are frequently violated by the government without consequence.
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The US has had concentration camps and currently has "free speech" zones. Yet, Americans rarely insist that the US has no rule of law. The laws and rules under them are understood.
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The US has had concentration camps and currently has "free speech" zones. Yet, Americans rarely insist that the US has no rule of law. The laws and rules under them are understood.
Those concentration camps (established during several different eras of the US, with the Indians corralled into reservations, Germans detained during the First World War, and the Japanese during the S
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It's the law of the hammer and the thief. Don't stick out and you won't get hammered down. Don't happen to live on property we want, and you won't get kicked off of it. There's no unwritten rules, there's just brutal force exercised by thugs who are usually aware that trouble will happen if they get too greedy.
You are asserting that your ignorance of the unwritten rules is proof they don't exist. I do not accept that as a valid argument.
Those concentration camps (established during several different eras of the US, with the Indians corralled into reservations, Germans detained during the First World War, and the Japanese during the Second World War) were established either by law or treaty. There's good reason to consider them grossly unjust, but not violations of the rule of law.
The laws contradicted a higher law, thus were not valid laws, and legally are no different from a cop making up law on the spot to arrest someone. At least you didn't object to the term "concentration camp" as that's what they were, even if the German use of concentration camps gave the technical term a heavy emotional component.
As to "free speech" zones, these can be and are contested in the court system and there's a legitimate case for them.
You sound like the soccer coach I talked to that w
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You are asserting that your ignorance of the unwritten rules is proof they don't exist. I do not accept that as a valid argument.
No, I'm merely noting the obvious. There's no law in China, just fiat. And fiat can and does change on a whim.
legally are no different from a cop making up law on the spot to arrest someone.
Which happens to be illegal in the US and other developed world countries.
As to "free speech" zones, these can be and are contested in the court system and there's a legitimate case for them.
You sound like the soccer coach I talked to that was training his players to injure opposing players.
I get the impression your head is shoved way up your ass. How does prevent protesters from shutting down a city center compare to deliberately injuring other players in a game (just don't draw a red card!)? It doesn't.
If the US passes laws that are struck down, then it does not have rule of law
How is US law struck down? Only by processes spelled out in the US Constitution. Not an example.
Rule of law doesn't apply when there are multiple sets of conflicting written rules
I see we're ju
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There's no law in China
I can stop right there. I personally can evaluate that statement, and based on that, there's no reason to read anything else you write on this topic. I've read their written laws. They exist. Your insistance otherwise just indicates your ignorance, stupidity and willingness to lie to change facts to fit your opinion.
I get the impression your head is shoved way up your ass.
I seem to have the impression that you confuse your opinion with fact and will lie to support an incorrect opinion, rather than absorb a new fact, as facts make you think, and your wolrd-vie
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I can stop right there. I personally can evaluate that statement [...] I've read their written laws. They exist.
Huh, looks like you can't evaluate that statement. Earlier in the thread, I referred to the Chinese constitution. I know there's stuff written down. But they aren't laws, if you don't have to follow them.
And in your reply to that, you claim "They follow their own rules, but the rules aren't the ones written down." So you readily admit that the laws aren't true laws. As I see it, they're just a bit of theater.
I seem to have the impression that you confuse your opinion with fact and will lie to support an incorrect opinion, rather than absorb a new fact, as facts make you think, and your wolrd-view is solved and new information is inconvenient.
Why? Is that what you would do?
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You ask "why is rule of law important?" The answer is predictability. Businesses and individuals can make smarter decisions about their futures (where to invest, how to grow, what partnerships to engage in) if they have some measure of predictability about the future. If rules are arbitrary, or change every year, you lose predictability. And then decision-making is less than optimal.
Note that predictability is a potential outcome of the rule of law, but is not guaranteed. For example the US system toda
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No Western leader ever lost an election by failing to appease China.
We'll harrumph a lot and wag the finger at them, but in the long term, we'll just roll over and let China do whatever the hell it wants to, partly because no one ove here really gives a shit what happens to a bunch of poor Chinese people, and mostly because Western corporations are lining up to cash in on their misery. We're all complicit to an extent, being addicted to the teat of cheap goods, and then washing our consciences by telling ou
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Ironically, China was birthplace of the philosophy known as Legalism [wikipedia.org]:
"The law code must be clearly written and made public. All people under the ruler were equal before the law. Laws should reward those who obey them and punish accordingly those who dare to break them. Thus it is guaranteed that actions taken are systematically predictable. In addition, the system of law ran the state, not the ruler, a statement of rule of law. If the law is successfully enforced, even a weak ruler will be strong."
Even more ironically was that, as a practical philosophy or ruling, Legalism eventually degenerated into a maze of tyrannical and self-contradicting rules, existing only as a tool to enhance the power of the rulers via selective enforcement. Not an uncommon tactic in modern times, but as with many inventions, the Chinese had it first.
Re:Laws of country (Score:5, Insightful)
... the point is that China isn't adhering to the free trade treaties they've signed by blocking companies possibilities to do business on a whim.
you see - it's NOT in the law that you can't use Google in China. it's just that they decided to block it for some time now, purely on gut feeling. no laws, no courts, just random decisions.
that's pretty much why it's risky to do business in China and other random dictatorialships in general like Russia. You run immense risks of your business being taken away on a whim. That's also why some places have really hard time attracting investment money despite possibilities for good profits from business, as those places have a really poor track record of having consistent application of law which is pretty much a requirement if you don't want to gamble with your business.
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Isn't this what the US govt did to Huawei and ZTE? Oh wait, you actually believe they are a threat to national security. My bad.
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What was the purpose of your rant? Your first sentence is about being blocked in China and it was a general blanket statement.
The following 5 paragraphs have absolutely NOTHING to do with being blocked. Only a tangent about Google not being popular in other random countries. Are you actually trying to relate Google being blocked with their lack of popularity or was this just a springboard to bitch about unrelated things?
New account, two posts. Very little on topic content
What we have here is a shill.
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I live in west china and starting some time last week, is the only time I've had problems accessing Gmail. There hasn't been any complete blocking, but access have been slow and sporadic in a way that I would usually assume is just issues with the
Re:Laws of country (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know it's cliche to call 'shrill' around here,
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Perhaps you meant "shill"? That's still not quite the right term for what you've described, but it's a lot closer than adjective describing a certain auditory characteristic. No?
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I doubt it really was though. A slashdot user with a rich hist
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So according to you, everybody that doesn't hate the Chinese govt is a paid tool of that government. Jesus.
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Re:Laws of country (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, Google is not struggling because the Great Firewall or because the government makes competition hard. Google is struggling on their own regards and only by themselves. They seem not to be able to justify their existence in China and doesn't seem to offer Chinese citizens what they want.
Hmm, it only takes one paragraph to tell that you're talking out of your ass. Have you ever tried to use any Google service from China? Do you have the faintest idea how long does it take to load one page of search results, or how often does the Wall reset all connections to Google from your IP for one full minute, for some censorship filter was triggered by the most ordinary and unoffensive search terms? And these things are not exactly good for business.
Re:Laws of country (Score:4, Informative)
You have to abide laws everywhere in the world. This includes abiding Chinese laws..
Right; so how about: The Chinese government starts following Chinese law, in particular article 35 or the Chinese constitution which says:
or this:
And how about, companies like Microsoft, Cisco and so on, start obeying Chinese law by treating those that break that article of the constitution as criminals and stop doing business with them?
It's not usually the law's problem (Score:2)
While some particularly "sensitive" content might be technically in violation of Chinese law (the law might be wrong even then, but that's a different matter), the majority of the GFW'd content are not illegal, even in China, and very often they would not even be considered sensitive in any way. On the other hand, we do have computer security laws, and disrupting the public Internet via passive and active attacks, as the so-called GFW does, is probably as illegal as they are in developed countries, and I a
Not addressing the point (Score:1)
You have to abide laws everywhere in the world. This includes abiding Chinese laws if you want to do business there. China has many gigantic internet companies that tailor their sites and products specifically to Chinese market and they are doing just fine.
Laws? What part of the OP mentioned laws? In what way is any of what you said related to the disruptions?
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