chinese government

It took the Chinese government a few days to know what to say about the Google censorship situation, but the message now is clear: China needs to "guide" its people on the Web, it expects foreigners to play by local rules, and it wants foreign governments to keep a tighter rein on their companies.

The whirlwind of news and rumors surrounding Google and its dealings in China seems to grow faster, more disjointed and more chaotic by the day.

Today, Reuters reports that, in addition to looking at the Chinese government, Google is looking at the possibility that help came from within its own ranks in the recent hacking successes.

The NY Times is reporting that the Chinese government appears to be raising the walls on the Great Firewall of China even higher, shutting down a bunch of sites, limiting the ability to let individuals put up their own websites, and completely restricting the ability to offer third party mobile content.

Here's where it gets sneaky.

The "dark underworld" of online economies is the supposed "gold farmers" often found in countries like China, where people are working in sweatshop like conditions, "playing" video games to generate as much currency or valuable virtual goods as possible, that the gold farm operators can sell for real cash.

However, the Chinese government claims it's cracking down on the practice, though it's not entirely clear how they'll stop it from going on.

We've discussed recently some of the basic conflicts between the First Amendment and copyright law.

The First Amendment, of course, bars Congress from making any law that restricts the freedom of speech, and copyright law does, in many ways, restrict the use of speech.