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According to that logic any Western tourist that visits Beijing and goes to Tiananmen Square, as I have, and doesn't wave about pro-democracy banners is 'making a conscious decision to endorse' Chinese censorship laws. So apparently I'm now a Communist shill?

Or are you saying that no foreign companies anywhere should do any business at all in China and no tourists should go there because doing so and obeying the laws is tantamount to taking personal responsibility for them?

By extension, I suppose this means that, by not breaking them, you are personally endorsing every law of the country in which you currently reside, or any countries you have or will ever visit?




1 corporations are not people. Analogies should only be made when there's an actual similarity point.

2 if you're making that point, there's still a difference between action and omission. Nobody would held you accountable if you don't actively try to topple a murderous regime, but if somehow it's laws require to participate in the stoning of a person, well, maybe you should grab a ticket to home instead of a stone, or at least is expected for you to weight the situation, not just shrug and quote: "well, it's the law".


Companies are made up of people, and the people are liable for any laws they violate while conducting the business of the company. Furthermore if companies aren't persons, do they therefore not have any of the obligations or responsibilities of a person, to obey the law, to answer to the courts, to be held to contracts or be the subject of law suits? The argument against corporate personhood is, frankly, utterly incoherent. Clearly they are entities which can have rights and obligations, many of which are similar to and derive from those of the people of which they are composed.

What Apple is doing is more like visiting a country and being told you either have to participate in stoning someone or pay a fine, and they are paying the fine. That's why they won't operate iCloud services in China, which will instead be run by a Chinese company which Apple will have to pay for the service.


Proper analogy is Western tourist coming to China, and filing reports about dissenting Chinese citizens. It's not about waving banners.




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