A Stitch in Haste

Google's "Don't be Evil" founders are acknowledging that their decision to embrace censorship in China may have been a mistake:

Google's China-approved Web service omits politically sensitive information that might be retrieved during Internet searches, such as details about the 1989 suppression of political unrest in Tiananmen Square. Its agreement with China has provoked considerable criticism from human rights groups.

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," [Sergey] Brin said.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday that Google's main Web site, http://www.google.com, was no longer accessible in most Chinese provinces due to censorship efforts, and that it was completely inaccessible throughout China on May 31.

Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company's customers in China use the non-censored service.

Put those last two paragraphs together: almost everybody uses uncensored Google, yet uncensored Google is not available in most provinces. It follows, like a simple LSAT question, that almost all uncensored Google use is in just a few provinces. And we of course know precisely which provinces those are -- the perverted "capitalist zones," such as Shanghai, which are only open to China's crony capitalist elites and others with Communist Party connections (which require, as a condition precedent, a demonstrated loyalty to the dictatorship).

So censored Google isn't being used, and uncensored Google is only being used by those who actually like (and profiteer from) the Communist authoritarians.

This is somehow supposed to catalyze the spread of freedom in China?

Absurd.

Bravo to Brin for acknowledging his error. Hopefully he and his colleagues will follow through and scrap censored Google.

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Brin was in Washington to lobby against so-called "net neutrality." I wish I could get my hands around this issue. It seems to me that if I pay my Internet Service Provider for, well, Internet Service Provision, then it shouldn't matter which sites I'm visiting -- it's now my bandwidth, I paid for it. Just like if I pay for cell phone service, then how can the carrier claim a right to charge the person I'm calling? It makes no sense to me.

But many other libertarians argue that "net neutrality" equals invidious regulation -- that the ISPs "own their pipe" and should be allowed to "toll" it as they see fit. Just as cable companies both charge you for service and charge the content providers for inclusion in that service.

Hmm...

I'm still leaning toward the concept of "the Internet is a public good, even if access to it is not." So revoke my libertarian credentials if you must, but I'm still, hesitantly, in the "support net neutrality" camp.