To Be Censored, Or Not To Be Censored: Wikipedia vs. Baidu - SendMeRSS
Posted by elveston priory at 8:40 pm
After Congress came down hard on Yahoo for cooperating with Chinese censorship laws, it’s been made perfectly clear that American businesses are being pressured to stand up to the Great Firewall of China. Is that possible, and how will the government help out US businesses to this end?
Yesterday’s court settlement between Yahoo and the families of those Chinese journalists who were arrested as a result of Yahoo’s cooperation with censors brought to the forefront a major issue that’s hitting some raw nerves when it comes to two countries that are on opposite ends of the spectrum. And with the success of Baidu’s Wikipedia-like user-generated encyclopedia Baike, the differences between the US and China are even more pronounced.
Congress is So Not Helpful
After doing what Congress seemingly wants it to do (not give in to China’s censorship laws), Wikipedia was banned from use in China. This gave Baidu a prime opportunity to corner the market, which it did very well. The problem was that many users were covering several of the topics found on Wikipedia, and copying them verbatim from entries found on Wikipedia. That’s called plagiarism, and Wikipedia doesn’t take too lightly to this.
Now we have another issue that’s caught in the folds of the US-China discrepancy. How can Wikipedia take action? All though it’s not going to be a legal war in this case, Wikipedia would still like Baidu to acknowledge that there’s plagiarized content on BaiduBaike. Will this be able to take place, considering the mounting tension between authorities in each respective country?
Larger Issues for Wikipedia and Every other US Business with Global Plans
And what about the larger issue of US companies often being caught between a rock and a hard place, having to decide whether they will comply with censorship laws, or stand their ground. Is it worth it to have your business reach a global scale, if you look bad back at home? These are issues that Wikipedia will have to consider closely, especially as its parent company has recently moved its offices to San Francisco in part to be closer to China for continued global expansion.
[via businessweek]
User comment: By: CurseyouKhanCopyright infringement in China? Who would have thought. There's a very steep price to be paid for doing or not doing business in China. If you're in China and your product gets ripped off you have a slightly better chance of getting some cooperation from the local government officials. But, according to what I've read, it's only a slight increase. Also you do get access to that amazingly large population. The drawback, of course, is all those difficult moral/PR issues that come with cooperating with a police state. Most businesses ignore those issue and focus on share-holder value. However, businesses are finding that the lack of a consistent and transparent legal system (to put it mildly) poses problems not just for China's citizenry. Some countries have managed to have a working system of law for businesses but not for the common folk. China hasn't made it there. Given how much it relies on volunteers and goodwill, Wikimedia faces a major problem if they start playing footsy with Beijing.
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