How Orwellian of Them
From Techdirt (para breaks added by me):
A week ago, people were surprised to see how a Chinese government official publicly stated that the country does not censor the internet, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. It looks like this is becoming the official Chinese government line on the topic.
Following the announcement from Reporters Without Borders that China was one of the “enemies of the internet” due to censorship, the Chinese government is again protesting the claim that they censor the internet. However, if you read the response, you can see that it’s very carefully worded to tip toe around the definition of censorship. The official stated: “As in other countries, the Internet is managed according to international standards, the law, and the self-management of Internet service providers.”
It’s that last part where the trickiness is involved. China’s censorship policy has recently been focused on making it clear to ISPs that they need to censor access to “undesirable” content online. This lets the government claim that they don’t do any censorship at all — and that it’s simply “self-management” by ISPs in accordance with what makes sense. It’s a sneaky way of getting around the issue, but it’s not clear who they think they’re fooling with these claims. Perhaps just themselves.
Reporters Without Borders is among the not fooled, and mentions BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame members Cisco and Yahoo! at the linked article.
