From today's Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Microsoft Corp.'s MSN online publishing service in China is preventing users from posting such words as "democracy" and "freedom," according to reports from the country, putting the company in the spotlight as the latest U.S. Internet operation to defer to Chinese government censorship.
Microsoft acknowledged that it is cooperating with China's government to censor the company's newly introduced Chinese-language Web portal. However, company representatives in Redmond said they weren't able to confirm specific examples of censored words.
The policy affects weblogs, or blogs, created by users through the MSN Spaces service in China, said Adam Sohn, an MSN global sales and marketing director. Microsoft and its government-funded Chinese business partner work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, Sohn said.
If you read on you will see Microsoft is not alone.
The private sector has no monopoly on our pride today, though. From the Post:
Posted by cradle at June 14, 2005 12:17 PMU.S. Opposed Calls at NATO for Probe of Uzbek Killings
Officials Feared Losing Air Base Access
Defense officials from Russia and the United States last week helped block a new demand for an international probe into the Uzbekistan government's shooting of hundreds of protesters last month, according to U.S. and diplomatic officials.
Hey Microsoft, Google, Cisco Systems and Yahoo!,
way to lead the free world into rolling over when China says to. I really hope this isn't a sign of more to come.
And my favorite sentence from the post story:
Rice has said publicly that international involvement in an inquiry into the killings in Andijan is essential, and she has declined an Uzbek invitation for Washington to send observers to a commission of inquiry controlled by the parliament.
I can't believe that I miss Colin Powell as much as I do.
too much time online, forgive.
I found this about msn allowing certain titles for blogs or not. It's funny.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/02/msn_spaces_seven_dir.html
Shannon,
I must be missing something.
Rice has said publicly that international involvement in an inquiry into the killings in Andijan is essential,
This seems to be the "right thing" from a liberal point of view....
and she has declined an Uzbek invitation for Washington to send observers to a commission of inquiry controlled by the parliament.
...and given that Karimov is likely to give a well-orchestrated dog-and-pony show to make sure that any "invited" observers see what he wants them to see, declining this invitation also seems to be the "right thing", again from a liberal viewpoint. How this differs from how Powell would have responded eludes me.
Posted by: Bob S at June 14, 2005 11:22 PM1. The principle of the thing is enraging
2. I thought no one paid for software in China anyway?
3. word based filters dont work in english; Do they work in chinese?
d3mokgr@cy 4 U!!! ENLARGE YOUR PHR33D0M
4. Perhaps if MS gets fed up with their chinese yoke on their chinese subsidiary, they will sponsor a rebellion?
5. If MS simply chose not to do business in China*, Well, that would probably end up being good for linux, albeit the good new software would come out in chinese first. I don't know Chinese python or chinese C, though.
6. re: point 5 + point 2: actually it would have no affect on linux at all, the chinese would just go back to^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H continue stealing windows. I am not trying to insult chinese people by calling them thieves, so much as note the government's lack of copyright enforcement.
* I am aware this doesn't make any sense, we're talking about MSN, not windows. But I got thinking and I wanted it documented, nonetheless. Its just a blog anyway, so a flight of fancy is valid for transmission.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 15, 2005 12:29 AMThat was me who just posted that.
Posted by: Jack at June 15, 2005 12:30 AMbob s:
totally. I was missing something. I didn't think that a commision was something that would condone the actions of the Uzbek gov't. My misreading. I was thinking it could be involvement of an outside nation to get to the bottom of the non-sense. \
So yeah, I just wish a Uzbek "invite" was actually making things more transparient.
Thanks for the point out.
