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A recent story by Caixin Magazine about a Chinese government crackdown on two public relations firms brought a couple of things to light: that the government no longer has a monopoly on media censorshipand that its actually a really good business.

Up until this past July, when the government threw 100 employees in jail, the companies in question were profiting handsomely from the post deletion business, the service of making unflattering things printed online simply go away.

According to the report by Caixin, which is one of Chinas best-regarded business magazines, these PR firms had developed a few different ways of doing this. One was to befriend search engine administrators who could tweak search results so that a keyword would fail to generate resultsmeaning, all the articles in which the keyword appeared simply wouldnt show up. But the best way to censor negative news about their clients was to buy off the reporters bosses. PR firms regularly bribed news editors to take down articles that they or their colleagues had commissioned in the first place.

And as this business turned out to be quite lucrativeone nervous government official paid the PR firm Yage Times 500,000 yuan ($80,400) for a single deletion projectthese PR firms had begun branching out. Their new line of business, reported Caixin, assigned employees to troll websites looking for negative news and, once they found some, to contact the relevant companies, citizens or government officials and conveniently offer them their services. But when finding articles proved to be just too much work, these firms started generating the bad press themselves, essentially turning the already crooked post-deletion industry into one of straight-up blackmail.

While it is unclear why the government launched the July crackdown,Caixin indicated that local government officials had been availing themselves of post-deletion services, which could possibly have something to do with it given the recent crackdown on corruption. An unnamed employee from Yage Times told the magazine that an estimated 60% of the companys profits came from government officials in small cities, as well as from police officers.

Theyll have no recourse now that the government has stamped out these types of servicesfor a time, at least. But as long as the government requires online media companies to enforce its elaborate censorship dragnet, this PR model is bound to surface again.

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Originally posted here:
Chinese government crackdown shows that its control over censorship is wearing thin

Chinese filmmakers must fight censorship even if it means removing their name from their own work, one-time banned Chinese director Lou Ye told AFP in an interview ahead of this month's Asian Film Awards in which his crime thriller "Mystery" has been nominated in six categories.

Banned in 2006 from filming in China for five years, Lou's latest picture tackles the subject of a new breed of wealthy and middle income men in post-socialist China for whom taking a mistress is the norm, in a practice that harks back to imperial China.

With nominations including best film, best director and best actress for Hao Lei's portrayal of a betrayed wife, "Mystery" begins with a violent death and tells the story of one man's double life.

"The film is about a very small group of people. It is about what happens between two women, the double life that this man leads, but through this I get to talk about things that happen in wider society," he said in Paris where the film was shown as part of a China programme at the city's Forum des Images in February.

"What is important to me is the way in which we see that all the protagonists are linked to the death of this young girl, the way that no-one can say this has nothing to do with me," he said.

According to Lou, having a mistress is now commonplace in China for anyone with sufficient means.

"Currently we see this way of life in particular among people who have money," he said adding that it was seen as a status symbol for men while a woman acting in the same way would be stigmatised.

The film is his second since the end of the ban imposed after he took his love story "Summer Palace", set around the taboo subject of the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests, to Cannes without official approval.

Lou responded by continuing to work, filming his next feature "Spring Fever" in secret using a handheld camera as well as "Love and Bruises" which came out after the ban expired.

Although now able to film in China again, Lou remains the subject of unwanted attention from censors.

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In a test case that could have significant implications for Google throughout Europe the company faced off against the Spanish data protection authority in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. One could frame the case as privacy vs. censorship.

From the Spanish governments point of view its data protection authority is simply vindicating the recently articulated right (of individuals) to be forgotten to have content or data about them removed from the search index upon request. From Googles perspective, if the court agrees with Spain, the outcome would be tantamount to granting individuals the right to censor Google.

A concise statement of the underlying facts of the case is provided by Reporters without Borders:

The AEPD rejected Costejas complaint against the newspaper on the grounds that the publication of the information was legal and was protected by the right to information but, with extraordinary inconsistency, upheld his complaint his complaint against Google, ordering the search engine to eliminate about 100 links from all future searches for Costejas name.

Google refused to accept the ruling and filed an appeal . . .

As Google indicated in its blog post, there are roughly 200 cases like this pending in Spain featuring individuals seeking to have content about them removed from search results.

As the factual summary above indicates, Spanish authorities decided that newspapers are protected from these individual takedown requests by a right to information or expression (free speech). However, Google is not being given the same treatment. This is true despite the fact that in earlierdecisions, Google was labeled a publisher for purposes of libel laws.

Google thus gets the liability treatment of a publisher without the corresponding freedom of expression protections accorded to newspapers.

Speaking with someone with knowledge of the European Court proceedings yesterday, I was told that the judges expressed skepticism about at least some of Spains arguments in the case. For example, Spain wants Google to remove the disputed information not just from its Spanish index but from all Google results globally.

I was told that a ruling may not come down for several months. And, like the US Supreme Court, the European judicial body could narrowly rule on the particular facts or broadly articulate principles around the right to be forgotten that might apply across Europe.

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Privacy Vs Censorship: Google, Spanish Government Face Off In European Courts