Judge Dismissed Baidu Censorship Case

A federal judge of the District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a case against Chinese search engine Baidu.

Activities alleged Baidu's government sponsored censorship prevented them from reaching to Baidu's users in the US.

Judge Jesse M. Furman reasoned in his ruling that Baidu as a business was entitled to its own right to free speech, in this case in form of censorship, from (US) government interference.

The Seagull disagrees with this analysis.

The court failed to recognize three facts: 1) Baidu is a government sponsored company, which is the only reason for its dominance in China, despite well recognized technical and service advantages of Google. 2) For people living in China, there is no alternative as the case of newspaper or radio stations. 3) Same can be said to Baidu's users in the US, who are stuck with the only search engine that they are familiar with.

The First Amendment was never designed are meant to protect a government speech. Other search engines who are considered of higher quality product and service standard including Google were literally driven out of Chinese market by the government.

In other words, Baidu is more of a propaganda arm of the Chinese government than anything else. Regrettably, Judge Furman built his rationale on a false assumption.

The case is Zhang et al v. Baidu.com Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-03388.

Chinese search engine Baidu bragged about its 'Testing on Toilet' Knock-off

The official Chinese search engine Baidu bragged about its 'Testing on Toilet (TOTT)' project, where intriguing thoughts or projects were posted in the bathroom for employees to 'digest, an idea piloted by Google about 5 years ago.

Well, they might be too used to copying & pasting in their cubicles, that couldn't help to do the same when releasing themselves, as revealed by this Biadu TOTT dated 10/12/2011. Notice the Google logo at the bottom right corner.

Although Baidu, as the official search provider endorsed by the Chinese propaganda department, dominant Chinese Internet search market and had chased Google out of mainland China, boasting its 'secure' searching algorithm that could filter out any information not favored by the Communists Party, its technical capability ran into a major embarrassment when Google shut down its own 'sensitive words' filter after getting afoul with the Chinese authority and instantaneously Baidu's search results were populated with forbidden topics such as the Massacre at Tian'anmen Square in 1989. It is evident that for all the time, Baidu's 'advanced' searching product had been piggybacking on Google.

source via solid_dot

Green Dam May Not Result of Pure Political Intention

While the world cheering for the delay in mandatory deployment of the 'Green Dam', a government issued filter software, the positive development of the case might not be as significant as perceived by many.

A fast replay of the event: the Ministry of Information of China announced that all PC sold in China after July 1st 2009 must have a special filter software 'Green Dam' pre-installed to fight inappropriate contents online. The measure was booed by not only ordinary Chinese netizens, but virtually everyone with a voice, including traditional media. Today, the government announced that the installation would be delayed for technical and logistical reasons until further notice.

While the world is cheering for a victory of ordinary people, the incident should not be over-read into a symbol of any willingness of relaxing the regulation of the Internet in China.

Actually there is another angle to examine the tip of this iceberg, that the CCP is so corrupted that 1) a few low level officials dare to make a small fortune at the cost of the entire ruling class, and 2) the ruling class had to endorse the obvious greedy mistake made by a few crazy low level officials.

The Seagull never doubts the CCP's intention and determination to block the Internet or any media (radio, TV, newspaper, etc.). However, this 'Green Dam' thing looks apparently initiated by a few people associated with the firm who produced the 'green dam'. Likely, Google had been blocked for quite a few times, all thanks to its competitor 'Baidu'.