China's Information Dam

Should Yahoo, Google and Microsoft help the censors?

"IT IS NOT our job to fix the Chinese government," Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said last week. Maybe not. But search engines operating in China face a dilemma come July. Starting Wednesday, China is embarking on a broad initiative to clamp down on Web content the government views as obscene, billing these efforts as a fight against pornography. For Chinese officials, there has always been an overlap between pornography and references to politically sensitive topics such as the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square. June traditionally marks a crackdown in China's Web censorship as the country brings down sites such as You Tube (inaccessible since March) and Twitter for the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But more is in the works.

The plan? Fine and shut down all sites offering unapproved information on sexual health, command Google to close access to foreign Web sites and push for the pre-installation of censorship software called "Green Dam" on all computers. As this list reveals, China's Web censorship efforts go far beyond the stated goal of protecting against pornography.

Foreign companies are drawn to China's market of more than 200 million Internet users. But the conditions of doing business in China are complicated: Content providers must agree to abide by China's draconian restrictions on the kind of results they can show. Both Bing and Google's sites acknowledge that results have been removed. Their justification is simple: If we don't do it, someone else will.

But this is not necessarily true. In 1996, state news agency Xinhua tried to place restrictions on breaking financial news, moving to prohibit all stories not vetted by its propaganda machine. A concerted pushback by the international media and other stockholders prevailed against the initiative.

This time, the State Department and industry groups are pushing back against China's Green Dam censorship software. They must stand firm, and search engines should join them. The industry can offer China better alternatives to meet its avowed aim of limiting access to pornography. But closing access to sexual-health Web sites is both wrong and dangerous. Fining people who fail to meet government criteria for the information they post could have devastating repercussions. And enhancing China's ability to persecute those who seek freedom is not forgivable.

It may not be companies' job to fix the Chinese government. But if they choose to do business in China, it is their job to serve the Chinese people.