A Free-Speech Deal

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have gotten into more than one awkward moment, thanks to their business operations in undemocratic countries, particularly China. Google has been roundly criticized for excluding search results that dwell on the Tiananmen Square democracy movement or Tibetan independence, and congressmen have personally dressed down Yahoo execs for giving the Chinese government the names of bloggers who criticized the regime. Now, the three companies have agreed to a set of guidelines that, they hope, will help them avoid such unpleasantness in the future.

Of course, none of these companies will simply be able to refuse the next Chinese demand for a set of names. But this new set of principles, dubbed the Global Network Initiative, are designed to minimize the collaboration with oppressive governments, offering search and other Internet services while reducing the number of moments when they might be obligated to do something that clashes with democratic ethics. In other words, they're going to drag their feet as much as possible or, as the Wall Street Journal reports, "narrowly interpret and implement demands that compromise privacy."

What, exactly, does this mean? Isn't this just a lot of public relations jazz? Yes and no. Since Google and its partners can't simply refuse to comply with oppressive regimes and expect to stay in business, they plan to be as transparent as possible about their operations. Discussions of new business operations in, say, Vietnam must include board-level talks about the country's human-rights record. Users of blogging software will be warned in no uncertain terms that the companies may be forced to divulge their names if they criticize the government too much. Finally, each company's record of collaboration and privacy protection will be periodically assessed by outside groups such as Human Rights Watch.

As journalism professor Rebecca MacKinnon told the Journal's China blog, "Does it solve all problems? Probably not. ... Part of this is about getting companies to think through these issues before they get into bad situations."