If the problem of keeping the Internet free, available, and anonymous is difficult in open and democratic societies, it's even harder in more closed societies such as China.

All the major search engines now filter their results at the behest of the Chinese government. They do so because that's "the price of doing business in China," and they typically say that in the long run having the Internet and all that information out there will facilitate a more open exchange of ideas. And China is a big market: The U.S., with 203 million users, is now the biggest market, but it's pretty much saturated. China is second, with 103 million users—less than 8 percent of its population.

Google is the latest to give in. Until recently, it didn't have a Chinese site. The Chinese government blocks a number of political sites, but users could at least find out they existed using Google and then try to circumvent the restrictions. But now Google has a Chinese site that eliminates the sites the government doesn't want its citizens to see.

There are no great answers here. A Chinese journalist was jailed after Yahoo! turned over his e-mails. Microsoft has blocked antigovernment blogs all over the world, and it's still doing so in China.

It's not just search engines that are a concern. All sorts of tech companies make products that can be used for repression: databases that can keep track of what people are doing, firewalls that can block certain sites, and routers that can monitor what people are doing online. It's fruitless to say that U.S. tech companies shouldn't participate in the Chinese market, but what they could do is at least fight for more transparency there—and it would be good to see them come together to suggest proper rules.

China isn't the only country restricting the Internet. The U.S. has rules aimed at protecting minors. A number of European countries have restrictions against Nazi or racist content. But these are nothing compared with closed societies. One of the first things the new hard-line Iranian government did was crack down on the Web.

Even the U.S. government's asking Yahoo! and Google for large amounts of data makes people more careful with their searches. I worry that even well--intentioned actions to place minor constraints on the Internet are sending a message that restricting information is acceptable. In one sense, the countries that make finding dissident sites close to impossible are pushing that message to an extreme. And that's a bad sign for all of us.—Continue reading...