Braden Cox

Is Censorship a Trade Barrier?

Over at the Google Public Policy Blog, there’s an interesting post about recent efforts by Google to lobby the State Department and USTR to treat censorship as a trade barrier. Andrew McLaughlin writes:

Just as the U.S. government has, in decades past, utilized its trade negotiation powers to advance the interests of other U.S. industries, we would like to see the federal government take to heart the interests of the information industries and treat the elimination of unwarranted censorship as a central objective of our bilateral and multilateral trade agendas in the years to come.

But my hope is that the U.S. government can begin to move – incrementally, agreement-by-agreement, over the coming decade and beyond – to include in our bilateral and, eventually, multilateral trade agreements the notion that trade in information services should presumptively be free, absent some good reason to the contrary.

I can see how censorship hurts U.S. IT companies, especially if entire sites like YouTube are blocked when governments object to some user-generated content. But good luck to our trade negotiators in getting China or other repressive governments to loosen their grip over information!

June 22, 2007 | Comments |

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    But good luck to our trade negotiators in getting China or other repressive governments to loosen their grip over information!

    It should be clear to anyone that cares about freedom that the Chinese model is a real threat to everyone, everywhere. Their model consists of:

    1. freedom of action for corporations, and

    2. a corresponding lack of freedom for individuals, including religious persecution, forced abortions, suppression of the press and lack of voting rights

    Notice, though how frequently there are articles over at IPCentral praising China, and often discrediting India. It's because the corporate power advocates iin America see China as a role model, and they wish to emulate the "success" of the Chinese model in America.

    So, either we export freedom to China or China will export its repressive policies to America.

    For those who think, BTW, that China is somehow different, and democracy wouldn't wrk there, I would refer to Amartya Sen's book Development as Freedom, in which he thoroughly discredits that argument.
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    Apparently our commenter above doesn't get irony. And also confuses an interest in developments in China such as the opening of markets, support for property rights, and the interest of Chinese people in entrepreneurship with sympathy for policies of the Chinese government. And isn't quite understanding the risk that the whole system--reforms and all--is going to collapse, resulting in horrible chaos in which potentially a billion people could die. And furthermore mistakes mild concern for the --somewhat lesser-- vulnerability of India into some sort of anti-Indian conspiracy. I think someone needs a new lens. For his own sake. Because if one sees a bunch of free-marketers with a history of serious attention to free speech issues as supporters of "fascism" --not communism, apparently--, well, now that's gotta be depressing.

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