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Google in China

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Searching for Internet Freedom in China_GALLEYED (Do Not Delete) 3/18/2013 9:19 PM
434 CARDOZO ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT [Vol. 31:405 successful dealing with local filtering regulations in other countries, it failed to understand the differences between the Chinese market and others; in China, the primary master that Google needs to please is the government, not consumers—a formula that is the opposite of standard scenarios in many other countries.
A more serious issue for Internet scholarship is how the Chinese government is shaping the Internet according to its ideologies and preferences and how this process will affect the global Internet in the long run. If the authoritarian state significantly changes the nature of the Internet, the benefits and values promised by digital technologies may lapse or even fail to take hold. Therefore, the case of google.cn casts a problem that none of the world’s democracies have yet solved: How do we make sure that people with power over our digital lives will not abuse the power?
When political power successfully leverages commercial and technological power, a serious accountability crisis will occur and more importantly, the crisis will have a spillover effect in different jurisdictions. In order to solve the crisis, we propose that Internet-related companies, governments supporting democracy, and NGOs should be aware of their positive roles in the digitally networked environments. These stakeholders’ efforts to shape a transparent and democratic global Internet may not have instant positive results, but they are crucial to the robust development of Internet technologies and economies.

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