p2p news / p2pnet: Microsoft, Cisco and Google, three of four companies invited to attend today’s congressional briefing on US Net businesses operating in Communist China, are in effect boycotting it.

“Critics have been blasting American companies for helping China’s communist government enforce censorship and silence dissent in return for access to a potentially lucrative market,” says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

M,C & G weren’t planning on being at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and when the story was posted, Yahoo hadn’t said whether it would be there or not.

“While attendance at Wednesday’s briefing was not mandatory, companies could be compelled with subpoenas to attend a Feb. 15 hearing on the issue, said Rep. Chris Smith, Republican chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on global human rights,” says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, going on:

“In an interview, Smith criticized U.S. Internet companies, saying they were helping China arrest and torture activists and screen information from its citizens.

” ‘This is not benign or neutral,’ the lawmaker said of companies acceding to China’s demands. ‘They have an obligation not to be promoting dictatorship’.”

Also See:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Tech companies won’t attend D.C. meeting, January 31, 2006

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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate. It’s a free DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.

Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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