Random thoughts

Blogging has been light lately. It's been a busy week and nothing big has caught my attention. I'm a political junkie, but I didn't watch the State of the Union. I hate political speeches. They're all full of fluff and soundbites and no one ever says anything truly eye opening, at least in my opinion. So, anyway, I've been out of the loop. Today, though, I noticed a couple of stories that touch on one of my favorite subjects: free speech.

First, there is this report from the Christian Science Monitor. I've long thought the speech restrictions in high schools were loathsome, but this is just too much. I certainly understand taking action if a student makes a credible threat of violence on his blog and I can even understand a school's refusal to let students blog using school computers. What I don't get at all, though, is how a school thinks it can, by fiat, stop students from blogging about school matters from home! The obvious "overstep" by schools comes at the end of the story:

One Pittsburgh senior is currently suing his school district on free-speech grounds, with the help of the ACLU, after he was suspended for parodying his principal on his MySpace site.

C'mon, school, you know better than that. That example seems so obviously wrong that it doesn't worry me. The more disturbing parts of the article, again in my opinion, are the ones where school administrators want to censor student blogs because students might be mean to others. Hello, it's high school! Of course kids are going to be mean to each other! Is it nice? No. Would it be nice if kids didn't behave that way? Yes. Should the school try to police what kids say to each other off campus in order to stop such teasing and bullying? HELL NO! I'm speaking as a kid who was the "smart, fat kid" on a school bus full of less than sensitive souls -- I've got street cred.

The article then tries to point out the potential positive aspects of student blogging -- an outlet for the new kid in school, a student in crisis was able to get peer support for his pain, etc. Those are nice, but to me irrelevant, aspects of teen blogging. You shouldn't have to PROVE that free speech is good! In the absence of evidence to the contrary, just what gives schools the idea they can "ban use of some blogs even at home"? It's just crazy, I tell you.

On a sort of related note, I saw this column by Sebastian Mallaby at the WaPo. I've sort of followed the debate about Yahoo, Microsoft, and lately Google capitulating to the Chinese government's demand to "filter", "censor", "insert favorite euphemism here" internet content in China. Philosophically I am opposed to such actions, but I do realize it is a business decision and there's the old standby argument of engagement rather than isolation; something like, "A little freedom is better than keeping them completely cut off." Anyway, that's the argument that companies and administrations have been using (at least) since Nixon. Mallaby, though, points out:

Google's answer to the China dilemma is better, and more subtle, than that of other Internet firms. It does not simply assert that engagement with China is always good. It recognizes the arms race between China's repressive state power and China's liberating economic growth, and it accepts the conclusion that follows: Some forms of engagement hasten liberal trends; others empower jailers

So what is Google's answer? Basically, Google agreed to let the government filter results, but:

Google has negotiated the right to disclose, at the bottom of its Chinese search results, whether information has been withheld -- a disclosure that may prompt users to repeat their search using google.com instead of google.cn. Of course, the second search might be frustrated by Cisco's routers. But disclosing censorship is half the battle. If people know they are being brainwashed, then they are not being brainwashed.

A pretty cool trick pulled off by Google.

Anyway, all this came to Mallaby's attention when he received an inquiry from a Chinese publisher wanting to publish his latest book on the World Bank, with modifications. He first wanted nothing to do with the offer, but then he asked, "Was it better for Western books to circulate in China in censored form, or was it better not to circulate?" But then he worried that if the Chinese government cut his criticisms of China's use of prison labor and its overall dictatorial system, the reader would be left with only his praise of the country's aggressive poverty reduction programs -- a seriously unbalanced picture. Mallaby's solution -- he Googled:

And so, thanks to Google, I have come up with my answer. I'll accept the Chinese offer on three conditions: The translation should include a note warning the reader that it's been censored; the note should say which chapter has been changed; I'll give the proceeds to a human rights group. It feels good to have resolved that, but I don't really expect this deal to go through. The Chinese offer may mysteriously vanish now that I've written this column.