+ copyrights
+ trademarks
+ patents(really bogus patents)
+ religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game)
+ national security
+ ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese commercial products, especially manga/anime/game)
+ child porno(their definition includes some commercial Japanese manga/anime/game which we believe not possibly be a child porn since it's a pure fiction and no real-life human being harmed).
I believe these are also a trade barrier for Japan. But I bet you disagree some of the above points and justify the censorship because it's against your moral based on your culture.
1. Copyright, trademarks, and patents are a pretty weak argument for "censorship" IMO. But I guess I see where you're coming from. There are also many "fair-use" exceptions for these that make it less "censorship" and more "preventing profit on other people's ideas".
2. "US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game" -- Can you give an example? This seems to go directly against first amendment rights.
3. "national security" -- There have been many cases where the government will work with press to attempt to stop them from releasing information that would damage national security. There have also been many cases where the press has not listened, and they're allowed to do that. What specifically are you talking about here? Direct theft of government property/information is illegal, but I would hardly call that censorship. NDAs I guess are censorship, but they are an agreement between two parties, not the government deciding arbitrarily what to censor.
4. "ex-political party symbol" -- absolutely not banned in the US.
5. Okay the last one is a fair example of censorship. I'm not familiar with the US laws on that one and frankly I don't want to find out...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court...
I also would love to see some example and an not aware of cases were stuff was changed due to laws. There is self-censorship, as e.g. the Spice and Wolf anime trying very hard not to use christian symbols for the religion obviously modeled after Christianity. This kinda makes the target audience kinda look bad, but that's their choice and totally fine.
Also, it's not "rare" that the US censors mention of religion. It is completely unheard of in our modern history.
Like I said, many manga/anime/games were modified to remove any casual use of religious symbol when released in US. These days, major products don't contain these beforehand if it's famous enough to expect US release.
Most likely, the publishers themselves removed it to avoid controversy and sell more anime.
This one can be employed to justify any arbitrary measure applied by any arbitrary authority at any arbitrary point in time.
>This one can be employed to justify any arbitrary measure applied by any arbitrary authority at any arbitrary point in time
Yes it can but you don't have to agree with it
It certainly is not how they would want to be treated, or this whole discussion could simply be settled by the holders of one opinion murdering everyone else. Nobody wants that applied to them, making everybody who rationalizes it being done to others a vulgar hypocrite.
> + religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game)
Religious sensitivities run high in the U.S., but criticizing or mocking (or advocating or practicing) a religion is a core territory of legally protected speech, and people very commonly criticize other people's religions and religious beliefs, including in mass media. There is no such ban.
> + national security
This is pretty complicated, but it appears that the courts will protect the publishers (not the leakers) of leaked classified information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...
> + ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese commercial products, especially manga/anime/game)
The U.S., differently from many European countries, does not prohibit the sale or display of swastikas, including when they are actually used to show sympathy for the Nazi Party.
> + child porno(their definition includes some commercial Japanese manga/anime/game which we believe not possibly be a child porn since it's a pure fiction and no real-life human being harmed).
There's still always a risk of obscenity prosecutions for comics in the U.S., and import restrictions on sexually explicit material are famously much more restrictive than domestic restrictions (which sounds like the very definition of a trade barrier). But there is a Supreme Court case specifically addressing attempts to ban sexual images that depict fictional children
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit...
The Court did not accept categorically banning these images.
Like in fictional manga/anime/game where the character with supernatural power has attack power which when invoked, bright Christian cross or Buddism manzi appears or in-fiction religion(Totally not Christianity) use Christian cross as a symbol.
But I can assure you it's not illegal and the government has no power to ban media for using religious symbols this way.
> + religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game)
Where has this happened? The censorship you're describing sounds like it violates the first amendment. I think people may decide to remove religious references because it offends people, but that's not the same as the government censoring it.
> + ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese commercial products, especially manga/anime/game)
Where has this happened? Again, considering we have straight up neo Nazis in the US who are allowed to display the actual swastika legally, I don't understand how this could happen.
Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are not censorship, they are actually designed to encourage the exposure of information (copyrighted/trademarked/patented information is free to view, that's the foundation of the concept) by promising restrictions on third party usage of the information, which is a concern for creators who avoid sharing their knowledge for fear of theft.
The US doesn't actually have any religious censorship laws (if you know of any, please link them) that cares about offence taken by religious believers. If private creators are modifying their own creations to sell better to a US audience, that has nothing to do with US censorship.
The US grants irrevocable protections to the press in publishing even sensitive and national security critical information. The US press voluntarily consults the government on the national security impact of publishing sensitive material, but the government has no legal avenue to actually prevent the press from publishing it. Demonstrations of this are pretty famous, like the Pentagon Papers. There are also whistleblower protections.
The US has no censorship laws on political symbols like the swastika, IIRC that's specifically a German thing.
Fictional child pornography such as the commercial Japanese manga/anime/games you mentioned is explicitly allowed under US law; US law specifically carves out an exception for fictional works, and the US Supreme Court has cemented this with precedent. Note: these exceptions have definitely been weakened in recent decades by the "PROTECT Act of 2003".
Feel free to correct me on details, but a lot of censorship you list here just isn't happening in the West, and definitely isn't happening in the US where Google is physically and culturally based. The level and breadth of censorship simply isn't comparable to China's.
Furthermore, "moral based on your culture" absolutely matters. To portray censorship as okay because it's based on differing morals based on differing cultures is ridiculous. Would you approve of US-committed atrocities if it was based on US culture?
Edit: removed references to whataboutism because after reconsidering the context, I think the parent comment is less of a deflection that I initially perceived.
this isn't done
>+ child porno(their definition includes some commercial Japanese manga/anime/game which we believe not possibly be a child porn since it's a pure fiction and no real-life human being harmed).
are you actually arguing in favor of not censoring this?
https://www.alphr.com/computing/1000120/public-figures-cant-...
That's why it needs to be worked on a political level, like the post you replied to stated.
... under current international agreements and rules.
The agreements and rules change, the calculus changes. Companies optimize continuously for the current environment they find themselves in.
If Google were to refuse the Chinese terms of business, they would be barred from doing business with the largest population in the world. And the climate over there is that their government risks little political capital in banning non-compliant firms.
It’s easier to deploy something already built than to build a system from scratch. There is a clear civil rights argument against letting American tech companies build this technology for dictators.
[] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...
1. IIRC, it is illegal for newspapers publish arrestee's full names in Germany to protect their privacy - assumption of innocence and all that. This law wouldn't hold in the US as it infringes on publishers 1A rights
You could have the same position as the fined person and you wouldn't be fined in Austria. The fine was imposed due to the context of the fora/background and the intent of communication, not the position itself.
> The courts felt it was an intentional move meant to rile up participants and disturb peace.
Are you saying that the seminars caused anti-Muslim violence? Were there incidents reported that made the connection?
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22002-121...
> Are you saying that the seminars caused anti-Muslim violence? Were there incidents reported that made the connection?
I was pretty clear on what I said. I repeat - The courts (not me) felt it was an intentional move meant to rile up participants and disturb peace.
The case appears to turn on the claim that "having sexual interest in children" is not paedophilia as long as there is also sexual interest in non-children, or, in other words, that the actual defamation was an implied claim that Muhammad did not have a sexual interest in adults.
> In their opinion, by accusing Muhammad of paedophilia, the applicant had merely sought to defame him, without providing evidence that his primary sexual interest in Aisha had been her not yet having reached puberty or that his other wives or concubines had been similarly young. In particular, the applicant had disregarded the fact that the marriage with Aisha had continued until the Prophet’s death, when she had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty.
This is the same anti-girl (and I emphasize "girl", not "woman") logic that refuses to punish rapists like the drivers' ed teacher in italy who raped a girl student who was wearing jeans without underwear, on the basis of her clothing.
If the last few years have shown anything, it's that you can get EU and US citizens to vote against their best interests using a convenient scapegoat or outgroup.
It depends. There are plenty of people who willingly pay more for non-Chinese goods when they can. The problem is that they often have no choice in the matter because so much is made in China.
There are lots of small manufacturing businesses new and old all across the country that are thriving because of where their stuff is made. The problem is that they can't make goods in large enough quantities to be carried in the national chain stores, so it's mostly online and word-of-mouth.
Then the US and EU both have censorship around things protected by law. So you can sue people to take down slanderous material, or material that violates copyrights or trademarks.
Works for me, and seems to empower the people, rather than the state...
> filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU
Could you link me to some credible sources for this?
Not filtering, but censorship.
" filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU."
Some specific reference to some EU government forcing companies to remove controversial information about their countries' past would help making your point (not saying it doesn't happen).
Books are also permanent storage, often stored centrally in public libraries. Does an individual have the right to have information about him removed from books in libraries? Wouldn't that be a kind of censorship? The only difference is that so called "right to be forgotten" applies to Google's electronic storage rather than your local library's books. Just like you don't have a right to remove pages about you from your local public library's copy of your high school yearbook, so you shouldn't have the right to remove information about yourself from Google's indexes. Both are censorship.
I watched a movie recently (though not a recent movie) that had a scene with some Nazi stuff in the background of one scene. The IMDB trivia notes for the film stated that the scene was removed when it was released in Germany.
(If I can remember the film, I'll edit this comment.)
Similarly, the American attitude towards copyright, trademark, and patent laws probably seems ridiculous and borderline unethical to Chinese companies looking to do business here. They seem (from the outside) to have no problem with a phone manufacturer calling itself "Applle" to piggyback on Apple's brand, but that is very illegal under American laws. Similarly, the amount of automatic filtering YouTube and other video hosts have to do under DMCA might block as much content as Chinese political auto-filtering does, although I would love to see more analysis of that.
Being from an American cultural background myself, I have an obvious set of intuitions about which of these are reasonable and which are ridiculous, but I find it hard to make a clear argument about why.
And being technically from European cultural background but having ingested plenty of American-made utopian visions of the world in my formative years, I find myself to have yet different obvious set of intuitions about this. Like e.g. I think copyright-related censorship is overused and borderline unethical, while speech threatening social stability might be a problem.
I say that only to reinforce your point that there's not one and not two, but many differing cultural conceptions about these things.
Even when copyrights are abused to attempt censorship, US copyright law specifically defines Fair Use as an exemption to protect valuable speech.
Foreign policy is hard and I don't pretend to know the best way to do it but I think given recent history we have to be more careful about how we try to influence developing nations so that we actually have the effect we want. This might include doing things that could seem unpalatable in the short term.
But let's be perfectly clear that the Chinese did this out of censorship and the trade part happened to be a side-effect.
Seems we'd best be served to first collectively realize this. Then do as you suggest.
If you believe your system is better, then you really should not have to actively participate in fighting opposing systems of belief. Forcing it through just shows that you are motivated by self interest, and not a core belief in the superiority of your own values. Such a strategy will lose the hearts and minds of the people of China as well, and at which point who are you protecting the rights and interests of anymore if those who you seek to “help” aren’t even on your side?
Uh why ? I think it's exactly the opposite
the approach of "forcing" a foreign country to take on social/political beliefs seems like a very difficult task when the local culture doesn't already support them implicitly. The worst example of this in recent history is probably our(US) interactions in the middle east that in many ways have backfired and made the situation worse by creating economic uncertainty and power vacuums.
I think generally more liberal values become more attractive as economic prosperity. if this is true it seems like a simpler/more effective foreign policy strategy to create economic opportunity for citizens of the foreign country and simply tie an example of the liberal values we want to spread to those opportunities. Then pushes for these sorts of changes would have a much stronger local, and thus more aware of the local situation, base of support.
If the views really are superior it should be easy to derive them independently given examples as your lower level concerns become less of a problem. And if they come to those positions in a more independent way the likelihood that they'll last is much higher.
We tried the hug approach when China was prematurely let into the WTO. That backfired.
Our concern should be, first and foremost, with our own morality. Helping a dictator repress billions of people is wrong, against our values, and should not tolerated by people in our society.
The Chinese people have gained enormously in terms of their standard of living since 2001, and while political repression has not gotten better, it also has not gotten worse.
This is the main issue here. First and foremost morality is relative and our morals are not necessarily the right morals. Believing your way is the only right way and forcing others to conform is how dictatorships spread and start wars.
Second, imposing one’s own morals on others is immoral, and is what started the crusades, proselytizing, Christian missions, imperialism, and slavery.
Third, you may believe they have a brutalizing dictator, and this may be true or a simple misguided opinion based on ignorance at a distance, but if the population you are trying to help doesn’t agree with you then who’s interests are you really serving?
The reality is that regardless of whether China’s ways are in absolute terms (there are no absolute terms) wrong or not, American foreign policy towards China, or even other countries, has always been self-serving, and less about promoting “morals”. Much of the Cold War and anti-communism campaigns on the US were extremely immoral, and only in hindsight do we see that they were carried out of ignorance, prejudice, and a desire mostly to secure more Western allies.
And if you really believe whatever it is they are doing in China won’t work, it will collapse on its own like the Soviet Union. If you are a true free market democratic capitalist, then you should have no problem letting their system survive on its own merits. Anything else is just self-serving ulterior motive propoganda.
What’s the alternative? Only other censored search engines. And Chinese people know baidu search results suck ass compared to google’s.
So basically the western commentariat killing off dragonfly has a demonstrably negative impact on Chinese quality of life.
But we’re only trying to protect the freedoms of oppressed Chinese people, right?
Companies would be able to implement features they deem to be ethically questionable, so long as they or the public determined that "it's what the customer wanted, anyway".
It doesn't matter who it is, whether it's NSA or Russia or Sweden if Google is cooperating with them in unethical ways you should do something about it. Apathy and a blind eye is why corporations can get away with working people to death so we can live in comfort. People may have excuses for that but there is no excuse for allowing them to go so far as what has been written in dystopia literature.
Also just step back for a moment and try to think of scenarios in which people would have to apply your "don't fight opposing systems". I feel you will find it does not apply to a great many things.
Action must be taken.