Peter Singer Quotes

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.

Google attempted to run a search engine in China, and they ended up giving up.

Now the British are coming. I think Cameron should ask the Chinese government not to make people 'disappear' or to jail them merely because they have different opinions.

As long as a government can come and shoot you, you can't jump on the Internet to freedom.

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

The early idealists and companies and governments have all assumed that the Internet will bring freedom. Yet China proves that this is not the case.

There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government's attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable.

The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.

There is a long tradition in China for writers and journalists to take pen names, partly as protection from retaliation by authorities. If Facebook requires the use of real names, that could potentially put Chinese citizens in danger.

The Chinese government tried to keep a lid on the SARS crisis, but there were 160 million text messages in three days sent by Chinese citizens. These are early indications that it's going to be difficult for people who used to have control over the news to maintain that level of control.

In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.

To uphold state security China like many other countries of the world has placed some restrictions on the Internet to protect the freedom of the majority of the people.

The Internet in China is fully open and the Chinese Government manages the Internet according to the law. As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don’t watch what you cannot watch.

Today, the Chinese government blocks websites and search results with the so called Great Firewall, an army of censors deletes articles and comments deemed politically sensitive, and legions of government-sponsored Internet users steer online sentiment in the government’s favor by posting pro-Communist Party and nationalist comments in discussion forums.

When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese websites for pirated content, a blind eye is generally turned to the fact that ensuing crackdowns provide a great excuse to tighten mechanisms to censor all content the Chinese government doesn't like.

This is the real tragedy of America's 'Internet freedom agenda': It's going to be the dissidents in China and Iran who will pay for the hypocrisy that drove it from the very beginning.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.

I study how governments seek to stifle and control online dissent.

Google will be obliged either to accept Chinese regulations or exit the world's largest Internet market, with serious consequences for its long-term global ambitions. This is a metaphor for our times: America's most dynamic company cannot take on the Chinese government - even on an issue like free and open information - and win.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

Consistently, Baidu has censored politically sensitive search results much more thoroughly than Google.cn.

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.