Free Market, Anti-Freedom Companies

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are aiding and abetting freedom-repressing Chinese communists by helping them block words like "democracy" in Internet communications. Opines USA Today:

Software giant Microsoft has agreed to block certain words - democracy, freedom and human rights among them - by users on parts of its new Chinese Internet portal. According to news reports, the words trigger this message: "This item should not contain forbidden speech, such as profanity."

Freedom, profane?

What's actually profane is a company that built its fortune on the freedom provided by the American system helping a repressive regime censor such ideas. Sadder still is that Microsoft has company among other U.S. tech concerns that should know better:

• Yahoo China signed a pledge of "self-discipline" in 2002, vowing to refrain from posting "pernicious information that may jeopardize state security."

• Google launched a news search engine in China last year, but searchers in China get a different list of news links than someone doing a similar search in the USA. Missing links include the BBC and Voice of America, which carry reports not to China's liking.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. The Internet and capitalism were supposed to jump-start democracy in former communist regimes. These actions suggest a different future: One in which companies and dictators share benefits in suppressing democratic communications.

The companies attempt to excuse themselves by saying they'd be frozen out of the Chinese market if they didn't comply. So? These champions of a free Internet are anything but. Since they are being complicit with the architects of the Tiananmen Square, they should recuse themselves of any of their defenses of Internet freedom here in the U.S. or in others parts of the world.

What they're really saying is, "We thought we'd get away with it." Well, they didn't. I don't think Congress should enact legislation prohibiting this sort of thing because I'm a free-market advocate and I can see all sorts of ways that could lead to unintended consequences. Boycott? Protest? It's frustrating how powerless we are against these giants.

So I guess I'll just be angry for a while.