Especially this part:
You know, no matter where you live, people want to believe that what they put in to the Internet is not going to be used against them. And censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I am confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.”
Does the secretary of state expect American manufacturers in China to “Make a principled stand” about ensuring their workers’ right to unionize or strike? Does she expect developers to stand for residents property rights? I think she should BTW, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that this is obviously never gonna happened in a gazillion years. There’s much to be said about business practice in China and about what foreign corporations should or shouldn’t put up with, I’m just not so sure this discussion should be focused on censorship.
I’ll try to more coherently phrase what exactly bothers me here tomorrow, maybe. Let me just say that signaling out censorship as a manipulation, breaking the costumers’ trust and an all together evil practice sounds somewhat disingenuous in a world where things like er, advertisement exist.
I understand Clinton was hard pressed to come out with a reasoning supporting Google’s move that would also resonate with conventional business logic (not just diplomatic logic, or human one), but really, isn’t making it a consumer rights issue kind of misses the point?