Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Kudos to Congressmember Christopher Smith for chairing today’s hearing at which he summoned Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco to answer for their collusion with Chinese authorities in censoring their offerings. In the case of Yahoo, the company even provided crucial information leading to the arrest and imprisonment of two online dissidents.

Internet executives defend censorship in Chinese market at Congressional hearing (photo: Tom Zeller Jr/NYT)

In the NY Times‘ coverage, I was struck by this breathtakingly and transparently hypocritical statement from Google’s representative:

“Many, if not most, of you here know that one of Google’s corporate mantras is ‘Don’t be evil.’ ” Mr. Schrage of Google said in his statement. “Some of our critics — and even a few of our friends — think that phrase arrogant, or naive or both. It’s not. It’s an admonition that reminds us to consider the moral and ethical implications of every single business decision we make,” the statement continued. “We believe that our current approach to China is consistent with this mantra.”

So you believe that censoring any search terms that might remotely offend China’s government snoops is consistent with a “moral and ethical” business philosophy? You believe that by shutting down offending Chinese blogs which say things inconvenient to the authorities you’re doing the right thing? C’mon–what’re ya smokin’??

And a big raspberry to one of our local Congressmembers, Adam Smith, the Representative from Microsoft (Henry Jackson used to be called the Senator from Boeing) for serving as a dutiful corporate lackey (and I say this liking his liberal Democratic philosophy):

“Let’s assume for a moment that no U.S. tech company does business in China. Does it get better? Is it less repressive? Does China move forward? I don’t think so,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington State.

I call this position “collusionist” because it throws up a smokescreen which allows Smith’s corporate “clients” to do business as usual with no restraints on their behavior vis a vis the Chinese government. That’s not what we need. We need companies that will be accountable to the American public and its representatives for their overseas behavior when it misses the standard they adhere to in their domestic markets.

Smith plans to introduce legislation to that effect this week:

The subcommittee’s chairman, Representative Christopher H. Smith, plans to introduce legislation by week’s end that would restrict an Internet company’s ability to censor or filter basic political or religious terms — even if that puts the company at odds with local laws in the countries where it now operates…

Mr. Smith’s legislation, called the Global On line Freedom Act, would render much of what the Internet companies are currently doing in China illegal.

It deserves our support. But you can be damn sure that these companies’ infernal lobbyists will be working furiously to derail these efforts. Let’s not let ‘em get away with it. Call or write Christopher Smith to encourage him in his efforts. Call Adam Smith to tell him he’s off the reservation when it comes to upholding basic human and American rights of freedom of speech. YOu can reach both by calling (202) 224-3121 and asking for their offices. Let’s not let Microsoft diminish our sacred rights. Don’t the Chinese people deserve similar consideration to what Microsoft would accord us?

I find it pretty humorous that the snitches at Yahoo who sent two freedom-loving Chinese internet users to prison had this to say:

“We always reserve the right to get better,” Mr. Callahan, Yahoo’s general counsel, said in a phone call last weekend.

To quote another company’s marketing slogan: “Just do it!” Stop talking and get going. Get better NOW. Stop colluding with China. Start honoring principles that most Americans want you to uphold here at home and abroad.

Let’s let Smith have the last word:

Mr. Smith, the subcommittee chairman, says he thinks more than engagement is necessary. “The bottom line is no one is being compelled to sell to China,” Mr. Smith said.

Indeed.

If anyone needs to know how Microsoft got into the technological doldrums it’s been in for some time, just take a look into the mind of Bill Gates. Interviewed by CNET, he made a few doozies that deserve people’s attention (thanks to Adam Penenberg of Slate for drawing my attention to it):

Users of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your [Microsoft] chains! (source: Slate)

In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

Gates: No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.

That’s right, you heard it: all of us who support open source, peer to peer…we’re all lousy commies. He sounds like he belongs in a 50s B-movie about FBI agents fighting Communist conspiracies right here under our noses in the good ‘ol USA. Besides Bill, we don’t mind you disagree with us; but at least do us the favor of characterizing our beliefs properly. We’re not against incentives, we’re against your current means of distribution. And besides, the issue isn’t the musicians and artists. You don’t give a crap about them. It’s about maintaining your own corporate distribution channel and its golden revenue stream. Right now, it looks to me like Microsoft is being led by a guy who thinks like J. Edgar Hoover. Nice, MS.

There are also a few other moments of delusion worth mentioning:

When asked about the blogging phenomenon, instead of making a semi-articulate statement about it he mouths more self-serving Micro-plugs:

Well, actually I think the biggest blogging statistic I know, which really blew me away, is that we’ve got close to a million people setting up blogs (Web logs) with the Spaces capability that’s connected up to Messenger.

Spaces seems to be Microsoft’s best effort to compete with the phenomenal success of Movable Type, WordPress and Typepad. And it’s like so many Microsoft efforts–a day late and a dollar short. The innovation in blogging platforms isn’t happening (and won’t ever be) at Microsoft. Just take a look at some of the blogs offered at Spaces. Nothing especially wrong with them. But it seems that the blogs are not an object in themselves, but rather a synergy for Microsoft to package more readers and eyeballs for their ads and products.

But when asked about blogs, Bill reveals his complete lack of understanding of them. First, he’s asked what blogs he reads. His answer? He can’t name a single one and instead makes this feeble response:

Well, it’s interesting, I get a lot of people–and this is very typical for me–I get people who are forwarding things on to me, so I sort of have human search engines that will say, “Hey, there’s a particular thing that’s hot and that’s interesting.”

I just type in various keywords. We have a lot of blogs that are just internal to Microsoft where people are completely open about what’s going on with this, what’s going on with that.

Isn’t it nice to have several thousand people acting as your personal search engine?

Bill admits that he’s even had a hankering to write a blog:

I’ve toyed with doing one myself, but I don’t want to be one of those people who start and then don’t finish it, and again I’m thinking maybe I could do one a month or one every six weeks–something like that. I’d kind of like to, but I’ve got to be sure I can keep going for at least a year to make it worth doing.

Bill, Bill, a blog isn’t something you “finish.” That’s the whole point of it. It’s ongoing. It’s in process. It’s a record of a journey. Note Bill thinks he can write a blog by posting “once a month or one every six weeks–something like that.” Yeah, something like that. No understanding that what he’s talking about isn’t a blog. I don’t know what it is, but it’s certainly not a blog.

Bill, also makes the mistake of trying to say something intelligent about the oncoming Mozilla/Firefox browser train that is creating former IE-users in droves (including this blogger who left IE nearly two years ago for warmer browser climes):

Other browsers are making market share gains. When does this become a problem or an issue for you guys?

Well, people get confused about browsers. You can have as many browsers as you want on your PC, just like you can have tons of music players and things like that. As RSS has gotten more sophisticated and value-added search capabilities have come along, this thing is really maturing.

So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people’s systems, that’s true, but IE is also on those systems. Firefox is new, and people are trying it out. There’s a certain percentage of people who do that–it’s very easy to download.

We need to keep IE the best. We need to innovate in IE, do more add-ons, do improvements. We have some very exciting plans there. Some percentage of users are going to try Firefox and IE side by side, and use the one that’s best.

So no big problem; it’s not that people have stopped using IE, it’s just we’ve got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead.

In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.

So instead of trying to understand the Firefox phenomenon and why IE’s ossification has made it’s success possible, he resorts to false platitudes. Sure, I have IE on my pc. But I only use it for sites which don’t play nice with Firefox. IE is my browser of last resort. The comment about needing to keep IE “the best” is laughable. IE hasn’t been the best in several years (if it ever was). And by the time IE 7.0 comes out, whatever it’s innovations I’m sure that Mozilla will be on to the next generation of innovations that IE and Microsoft haven’t even begun to contemplate. Firefox is a perfect example of why open source beats proprietary centralized technical systems every time. It is always innovating, changing and adapting and applying these things to the browser function as they come online. Microsoft has to bundle up its innovations for roll-outs that happen every few years.

This interview is eleven months old and it is possible that Gates’ thinking on some of these subjects has developed. But I don’t think it has any less relevance to the technological issues of today.

Bill Gates: "Aw shucks, does
anybody care what I think?"
(credit: Ted S. Warren/AP)

Thank God, Bill Gates is weighing in on the controversy generated by Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for a Washington State bill to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation.  Because his minions, Brad Smith (corporate counsel) and CEO Steve Ballmer have made a mess of things up till now.  Gates apparently feels discomfort with the company’s previous position (or has felt enough heat from his employees and the blogworld to have second thoughts) and may reverse it (according to an interview with the Seattle Times) come the next legislative session:

"Next time this one comes around, we’ll see," he [Gates] said. "We certainly
have a lot of employees who sent us mail. Next time it comes around
that’ll be a major factor for us to take into consideration."

Well, that’s OK as far as it goes, but by no means good enough.  This reminds me of the country that announces its going to war.  After a good drubbing on the battlefield, it wants to withdraw but can’t quite wrap its arms around the idea that it might have to backpedal from a really stupid idea.  It doesn’t want to lose face.  That’s what Bill faces.  His guys really messed up.  But he can’t quite admit that and say: "Yeah, we messed up and we won’t mess up next time around.  We’ll gonna throw everything we’ve got behind the bill and hope to see it pass."  That would be nice to hear.

Instead we hear this fumfering around:

"Well, we didn’t expect that kind of visibility for it," Gates said.
"After all, Microsoft’s position on a political bill — has that ever
caused something to pass or not pass? Is it good, is it bad? I don’t
know.

"Is my being behind it good? Look at the referendums I’ve been behind.
I’ve lost gun control — I’m looking really good on that one," he
quipped.

Gee, is having Microsoft behind a bill really important to its passage?  That’s a tough one: one of the state’s biggest private employers, economic engine of the state’s economy, the state’s richest businessman.  I don’t know.  It might have some slight beneficial impact to have MS behind it, don’t you think?

Bill, I’ve got news for you.  People in this state (especially legislators) look to Microsoft for leadership on all sorts of issues.  So in case you don’t know it already, YES, the company’s support is instrumental in the potential success of this legislation.  Why anyone should have to tell you that is beyond me.  I think you’re merely being modest or else disingenuous (take your pick depending on your view on Bill Gates).

Apparently, Bill got the message that people are really pissed off at the company.  But he still doesn’t get what it would take to get the company back on track:

"It’s perfectly fair for us to be scrutinized on anything," he said.
"We didn’t realize that one would get that level of scrutiny, but
there’s people who care a lot. They care a lot about the issue."

Yes, and I hope they won’t let you or Microsoft off the hook until you do the right thing and put a full court press on the legislature the next time this bill comes to a vote.

tags gay-rights, microsoft, steve-ballmer, washington-state

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