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Courts in modern times are generally protective of the First Amendment, specifically our freedoms of speech and press. On the whole, they vigorously oppose any attempt by government to minimize those essential liberties; they recognize that a free press is critical to any society that values expression and intellectual diversity. The Supreme Courts 1983 ruling inMinneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue(1983), striking down certain taxes on ink and paper, shows that attempts to regulate the media as a group, even when broadly applied, are considered unacceptable if they crowd out certain viewpoints.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD), a public university, attempted to do something similar when it defunded certain student organizations in a thinly veiled attempt to censor one organizations opinions. The Koala, a satirical newspaper funded by student activity fees, published an article mocking safe places that sparked controversy on campus and debate in the schools student government. In response, the student government enacted a Media Act that defunded all student-printed media organizations, in order to prevent the The Koala from publishing further articles that contradicted the student governments political sensibilities.

The Koalasued in an attempt to restore its funding, but the federal district court remarkably ruled against them. Cato has joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on an amicus brief supporting its claim.

There is a longstanding, constitutionally based tradition of public universities serving as conduits for freedom of expression, a tradition that UCSD has unceremoniously abandoned. By providing funding to certain groups and not others, the university is effectively restricting certain members of the public from a public forum, in blatant violation of the First Amendment.

The lower court misread well-established jurisprudence regarding the scope of such forums, and failed to consider the evidence of viewpoint discrimination prevalent in the schools Media Act. Not only does this rule have a discriminatory effect, but also it constitutes unconstitutional retaliation in direct response to the controversy surrounding The Koalas article.

In addition, the Supreme Court has established that student activity fee programs are required to respect viewpoint-neutrality, in order to ensure that political bias does not stifle speech. UCSD has violated all of these core constitutional principles in pursuit of political correctness and the comfort of ideological homogeneity.

In The Koala v. Khosla, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should reverse the lower courts decision and stop UCSDs efforts to seek vengeance against student groups for satirical articles.

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Should the Koala Bear the Brunt of Censorship? - Cato Institute (blog)

Tencent, Microsoft MSFT and Action Alerts PLUScharity portfolio holding Apple (AAPL) have all in the last five days learned the hard way that in China, software is power.

Tech companies that might put up a fight elsewhere over content restrictions or access to their products crumble in the face of the Communist Party. With Web restrictions tightening in China, the issue is only going to gain in prominence, and the ranks of companies caving are likely to grow.

Comically, Tencent (TCEHY) has removed chatbots developed by Microsoft and Beijing-based Turing Robot after they started giving so-called unpatriotic answers.

The BabyQ bot co-developed by Beijing-based Turing Robot answered the question "Do you love the Communist Party?" with "No," the Financial Times reports. The XiaoBing bot from Microsoft (MSFT) reportedly told users: "My China dream is go to America."

On a more serious note, Applecame under fire for removing VPN-related apps from its app store. VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, can help Chinese citizens get around the stringent governmentcontrols of Web content to access overseas information.

Apple says it was merely complying with tightened Chinese regulations. But there was none of the defiance that Apple showed when it fought back on home soil against a court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone, as the agency investigated the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

The president of Golden Frog, which saw its privacy software VyprVPN knocked off the Apple app tree in China, said it was "disappointed" Apple bowed to pressure from Beijing, without even citing the specific law that makes a VPN illegal.

"We view access to Internet in China as a human rights issue, and I would expect Apple to value human rights over profits," Sunday Yokubaitis told The New York Times. Golden Frog filed an amicus brief in support of Apple's action against the FBI.

The pulling of the chatbots is no surprise. They were likely tricked into giving their answers by users, just as provocative Twitter comments helped swindle Microsoft's Tay bot into making anti-Semitic and offensive comments such as "feminism is cancer."

But online access is a mounting concern.

Amazon.com (AMZN) , too, appears to be under pressure in China over its cloud computing services. One of Amazon's operators in China has told its customers to stop using software that would let someone get around China's controls.

Cloud computing is an increasingly thorny issue for the Chinese government, since it raises the potential for controversial content to be held outside China. In response, China is insisting that companies operating data services store the data within China's borders, ostensibly on public safety grounds. Banking data, for instance, could go missing.

But we know the real reason. It's so China can regulate what its citizens see, in a bid to control what they think, particularly on issues concerning the Communist Party and its unelected authority to govern.

The perils of operating in China are many, but top among them would be running afoul of the Communist Party. Bloomberg has given in by suppressing touchy news stories about Chinese officials, such as this non-working link to its own story once about the wealth of the family Chinese President Xi Jinping. Most companies capitulate. Chinese yuan are too good to give up.

Google, and now its parent Alphabet (GOOGL) , has been the only major company that springs to mind that has taken a stand against Chinese censorship. It pulled its search engine from China, redirecting traffic to its uncensored Hong Kong engine, in 2010 in a fight over China's censorship rules. The company is reportedly in talks to get access in China for some of its offerings, such as Google Scholar.

There are plenty of sites you can't access in China, including Facebook , Pinterest and Snapchat. But many would like to get in, given the chance. For instance, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been happy to chat with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Mandarin and post this Facebook photo of the two together.

You'd think online censorship is a battle destined to fail. Web access only grows with the production of every new digital site, app and device, while content proliferates faster exponentially.

But the Chinese government fights hard. And while they may know they're not getting the full truth, many of China's citizens believe a large amount of what they're told.

The Chinese government orchestrates 488 million fake social-media posts every year, according to a study led by Harvard University data scientist Gary King. In many cases, the government pays the equivalent of $0.08 for people who post comments cheer-leading for China, talking about the Communist Party's revolutionary history, or supporting the regime.

The first thing I do every time I visit mainland China is to log in to the hotel's WiFi and search for "Tiananmen Square." Here in Hong Kong, the Chinese government's 1989 massacre of students protesting in favor of democracy pops right up. It's appeared at a couple of Chinese hotels, too, presumably because the Chinese government hadn't yet paid them a digital visit.

Hong Kong and Macau are the only parts of China with their own rules on issues like censorship. Macau, relying on Beijing's approval of mainland travel visas to prop up its casino business, toes the party line. For now, I'm free to say what I want from my base in Hong Kong, but that freedom of expression is also disappearing, and fast.

The new administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam, known for her stubborn streak and devotion to Beijing in equal parts, is under pressure to resurrect a highly unpopular "national education" curriculum, viewed by many teachers as patriotic airbrushing and brainwashing. It is also likely to attempt to introduce a "security" law, which by outlawing "sedition and subversion" will obliterate that theoretical freedom of speech.

It would certainly make it illegal for Hong Kong politicians to suggest that they support autonomy or independence for Hong Kong. To "challenge the power of the central government" or "endanger China's sovereignty," both terms that can and will be interpreted broadly, "crosses a red line."

That's what Chinese President Xi Jinping told Hong Kongers on his July 1 visit to "celebrate" the 20thanniversary of Hong Kong's reversion to China. Freedom of speech only allows you to say, it seems, what the Communists want you to say.

In China, it determines what you can read, see and hear online. Don't question authority, and don't get any upstart ideas.

That applies as much at the corporate level as the personal. Even providing the platform, the software, on which to express controversial sentiments crosses a very ill-defined line.

Will other companies take a stand like Google? Or will they all cave?

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Comic Chatbot Errors in China Mask Serious Corporate Caving on Censorship - TheStreet.com

Customers come to the newly opened Apple store in Shanghai, China.

VCG/Getty Images

Apple recently removed some of the virtual private networks from the App Store in China, making it harder for users there to get around internet censorship. Amazon has capitulated to China's censors as well; The New York Times reported this week that the company's China cloud service instructed local customers to stop using software to circumvent that country's censorship apparatus. While caving to China's demands prompts a vocal backlash, for anyone who follows US tech companies in China it was anything but surprising. Apple and Amazon have simply joined the ranks of companies that abandon so-called Western values in order to access the huge Chinese market.

Doing business in China requires playing by Chinese rules, and American tech companies have a long history of complying with Chinese censorship. Every time a new compromise comes to light, indignation briefly flares up in the press and on social media. Then, its back to business as usual. This isnt even the first time Apple has complied with Chinese censors. Earlier this year, the company removed New York Times apps from its Chinese store, following a request from Chinese authorities. "We would obviously rather not remove apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever do we business," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during Tuesday's earnings call, in response to the vanished VPN apps.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of American companies that have aided Chinese censorship. In 2005, Yahoo provided information that helped Chinese authorities convict a journalist, Shi Tao. Shi had sent an anonymous post to a US-based website. The post contained state secrets, according to authorities, and Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Also in 2005, Microsoft shut down the blog of a Chinese freedom-of-speech advocate. A year later, Google agreed to censor its search results in China. Internal documents show that Cisco apparently saw China's "Great Firewall" as a choice opportunity to sell routers at around the same time. In 2006, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco faced a congressional hearing about their Chinese collaboration. I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," representative Tom Lantos said at the time.

It turns out that some corporate leaders will sacrifice a good nights sleep to reach hundreds of millions of internet usersand potential customers. In 2014, LinkedIn launched a Chinese version of its service with the understanding that doing so would curtail freedom of expression. Users who posted politically sensitive content would get a message saying that their content would not be seen by LinkedIn members in China.

In a 2014 interview with The Wall Street Journal , LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner was upfront about the Chinese bargain. Were expecting there will be requests to filter content, Weiner said. We are strongly in support of freedom of expression and we are opposed to censorship, but thats going to be necessary for us to achieve the kind of scale that wed like to be able to deliver to our membership.

Perhaps LinkedIn figured that, as a business networking site, it could dodge political controversy. But when it comes to China, its never that simple. LinkedIns community, after all, includes China-based journalists. It wasnt long before users complained about receiving notices from LinkedIn that their posts were not available in China. Just this month, journalist Ian Johnson posted one of those notices on Twitter. Twitter is blocked in China, but some people there access it with circumvention technology. In the past, China-based activists have used Twitter to get their message to the outside world. Twitter is a rare American platform that offers relative freedom of expression to the Chinese who are willing to use it.

Bending to China's will doesn't guarantee success. China remains a tough market, even for those willing to censor. Derek Shen, formerly president of LinkedIn China, recently stepped down after the company had less-than-impressive results in China. Problems apparently included missed sales targets and failure to attract new users. In 2010 Google declared wholesale defeat in mainland China, citing problems with censorship and cybersecurity.

Censorship isn't the only challenge: US companies now have to contend with fierce Chinese rivals. Apple has struggled against domestic Chinese competition, including smartphone powerhouses Huawei and Oppo. Uber flailed against incumbent ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing before eventually selling its China operations to its local rival. When it comes to the internet, Chinese users arent necessarily longing to jump over the Great Firewall to gain access to overseas sites. Many are content with domestic products, particularly WeChat, a wildly popular messaging app.

Still, US companies will always try to break through in China. Facebook has eyed the mainland for a while. A Facebook entry may appear unlikely, especially as China temporarily blocked its WhatsApp messaging service. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears willing to go the distance; Facebook has reportedly worked on a censorship tool for the purposes of getting China's approval. Conventional wisdom once held that Facebook would not risk the public outcry following a decision to self-censor in China. But is that really true? All those other companies got away with it, and Facebook probably would too.

So will Apple. The company might take a beating in China, but it wont be because of its moral choices. That doesnt mean that the Chinese internet outlook is bleak. Despite pervasive censorship, information manages to get through. Some circumvention tools will vanish, and others will appear. For every sensitive term that gets blocked, people will find a different word to replace it.

The spread of the internet will continue to expand the space for expression in Chinajust not necessarily thanks to the American companies willing to do whatever it takes to gain a foothold there.

Emily Parker has covered China for The Wall Street Journal and has been an adviser in the US State Department. She is the author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are , a book about the power of social media in China, Cuba, and Russia.

The rest is here:
Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant - WIRED

BEIJING Moves by business giants Apple and Amazon to stop consumers from using censorship-skirting apps in China have renewed questions about the extent U.S. companies are willing to work with authorities to operate in the vast but tightly controlled Chinese market.

Apple chief Tim Cook attempted to defend the companys decision to remove dozens of apps designed to circumvent censorship from the Chinese version of its app store.

In an earnings call for Apples quarterly financial report, Cook said China tightened its rules on virtual private networks, or VPNs, in 2015, and was now making a renewed push to enforce them.

We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business, he said Tuesday.

By helping Chinese authorities curb the use of many popular VPNs, U.S. tech companies are seen as helping the Communist Party bolster what is already the worlds most elaborate and sophisticated censorship regime, often called the Great Firewall.

In addition to blocking the likes of Google and Facebook, Chinas censors shape what is published online, pull content deemed politically sensitive and, according to a recent study, even intercept images being sent via chat apps.

Cook argued that pulling some apps beats pulling out of the market.

We strongly believe that participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries as well, he said. And so we believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree.

Amazon also was in the spotlight Wednesday after disclosures that the companys Chinese partner, Beijing Sinnet Technology, sent emails to clients advising them to delete tools used to circumvent censorship. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

An employee told The Washington Post that Sinnet sent clients emails last Friday and again on Monday warning they must eliminate any content that violates Chinese telecom laws. The instructions came from Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the employee said.

On Wednesday, calls to Amazon Web Services' China office went unanswered. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Post.)

When Chinas first and only winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo, died in state custody last month, news of his death was all but scrubbed from the Web here. On some platforms, the candle emoji was blocked.

To get around these restrictions, millions of Chinese individuals and businesses use VPNs. Beijing knows this, but so far has let the practice continue, in part because it is good for business and aids academic research.

It is not yet clear how the latest drive to regulate VPNs will play out. In the earnings call, Apples Cook stressed that the company had removed some, but not all, apps.The fact that many VPNs remain could mean the government is focused on regulating the VPN industry, not eliminating it altogether, leaving room for some use.

For a sector focused on privacy, that is still bad news.

Apple claims to just follow the law, but it's just a convenient excuse,said Martin Johnson, the pseudonymous co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that monitors China's Internet filtering and maintains an app to help Internet users get past the restrictions.In fact, they are actively helping the Chinese government expand its control globally.

When Apple removes an app from the app store of a given country, it affects all users who have registered with an address in that country, regardless of their physical location, he added.

This means that, thanks to Apple, Beijing gets a degree of control of Chinese citizens anywhere in the world.

Yang Liu and Shirley Feng contributed to this report.

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Apple, Amazon help China curb the use of anti-censorship tools - Washington Post

Last week, consumer tech giant Apple removed all major VPN apps from the Chinese branch of its Apps Store, seemingly putting yet another barrier in place for millions of Chinese citizens who might desire to defy their governments pervasive internet censorship system. On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained why Apple chose to comply with the wishes of Chinese censors.

Its pretty simple, in Cooks telling. Unlicensed VPNs are against the law in China now, and Apple has to obey the law, period.

The central government in China back in 2015 started tightening the regulations associated with VPN apps, Cook told investors and media during Apples Q3 2017 earnings and conference call, per TechCrunchs Matthew Lynley. We have a number of those on our store. Essentially, as a requirement for someone to operate a VPN they have to have a license from the government there.

Earlier this year, they began a renewed effort to enforce that policy, he continued. We were required by the government to remove some of those VPN apps from the app store that dont meet these new regulations ... Today theres still hundreds of VPN apps on the app store, including hundreds by developers outside China. We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business.

Heres where Cooks reply gets a little more cynical.

We believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree, Cook continued. This particular case, were hopeful that over time the restrictions were seeing are loosened, because innovation really requires freedom to collaborate and communicate.

Cook compared the controversy to Apples 2016 battle with US authorities over iPhone security features, saying the situation last year was very different because US law was on the companys side. But he added if US law changed, Apple would have no choice but to comply.

In the case of China, the law is very clear there, Cook said. Like we would if the US changed the law here, we have to abide by them in both cases. That doesnt mean that we dont state our point of view in the appropriate way, we always do that.

Heres the thing: Apple isnt really engaging Chinese censors so much as complying with their orders, and theres no way removing the VPN apps will somehow result in that censorship being loosened. Its at best a tradeoff between maintaining market access on one hand, and collaborating with the current Chinese censorship system on the other.

Without getting into an argument on the merits of Chinese artist Ai Weiweis work, he hit something on the head in a New York Times editorial earlier this year: Whenever the state controls or blocks information, it not only reasserts its absolute power; it also elicits from the people whom it rules a voluntary submission to the system and an acknowledgment of its dominion. While Apples decision to remove the VPN apps may be mandated by the absolute power of the Chinese state, its also clearly reinforcing part two of the equation, voluntary submission to said power.

Cook, of course, is clearly aware of thiswhich is why he mentioned Apple would have no choice but to comply with a US censorship regime, too. Hes not exactly wrong. But its also a reminder of how any abuse of power requires enablers, and institutions whose bottom line rely on compliance are probably not going to save anyone from autocracy. With a few exceptions, theyll usually comply.

Elsewhere during the call, Cook noted, mainland China sales are doing just fine. The companys poor performance was mostly due to poor sales in the mostly autonomous region of Hong Kong, which has much less restrictive laws on censorship.

[Matthew Lynley]

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Tim Cook Says Apple Had to Comply With Chinese Censors, and They'd Do It in the US Too - Gizmodo