Rebecca MacKinnon

One day, people in China may be able to see the records of conversations between multinational tech companies and the Chinese authorities.

In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that's now in place, the user doesn't know to what extent, why, and under what authority there's been censorship. There's no way of appealing. There's no due process.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

If you just technically adhere to the law, sometimes that's enough, sometimes it's not; it's really hard to predict. There is definitely a possibility that the Chinese authorities won't find it sufficient.

Speech within the kingdom of Amazonia - run by its sovereign Jeff Bezos and his board of directors with help from the wise counsel and judgment of the company's executives - is not protected in the same way that speech is constitutionally protected in America's public spaces.

Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Communist China and re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But when he got into office, he pursued a very different policy of engagement with China and of increasing trade and business ties with China.

In the United States, whatever you may think of Julian Assange, even people who are not necessarily big fans of his are very concerned about the way in which the United States government and some companies have handled Wikileaks.

After the non-Japanese Carlos Ghosn was brought in by Nissan to turn around the struggling auto manufacturer, he made English the company's official working language.

The fact of the matter is that fewer people in Tokyo are able to do business in English than in many other big Asian cities, like Shanghai, Seoul or Bangkok.

Companies have choices to make about what extent they're handling their users' content.

There has been a rising tide of criticism about China's treatment of foreign companies.

Clearly Google is searching for a way to do business in China that avoids them sending someone to jail over an e-mail.