I confess being conflicted over the kerfluffle with internet companies and the repressive Chinese government. The nut of the deal is that Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others are censoring content as the price of doing business with the booming economy. For example, I entered "Tibetan independence" on Yahoo's China site and, predictably, I don't know what I found because it was in Chinese...but I have it on good authority that I would have been redirected to only articles from the state run press. Ditto for Tienanmen, Falun Gong, Democracy, etc.
So the question is: should U.S. companies be complicit in Chinese repression? Yahoo is reported to have turned over emails that led to the jailing of political dissidents. On the face, I would say no. However, on the flip-side I believe "sunshine is the best disinfectant" and if we can incrementally inject some information into Chinese culture, it's bound to spread.
The real answer may be one of nuance. I hear Google only agreed to the censorship provided they appended a message at the bottom of the results page that says the content had been filtered. Thoughts?
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