January 4, 2006 7:33 AM PST
Microsoft censors Chinese blogger
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The blog, written by Zhao Jing, also known as Michael Anti, was removed from MSN servers on Dec. 31, according to investigative journalist and former CNN reporter Rebecca Mackinnon. She claimed that the blog was actively removed by MSN staff rather than being blocked by Chinese authorities.
A Microsoft representative told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that it blocked Anti's MSN Space blog to help ensure that the service complied with local laws in China.
"MSN is committed to ensuring that products and services comply with global and local laws, norms and industry practices. Most countries have laws and practices that require companies providing online services to make the Internet safe for local users. Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements," the representative said.
Questions still remain over why a site believed to be hosted in the United States has to comply with Chinese law. Microsoft responded to requests for more information on this issue by stating that "Microsoft is a multinational business and, as such, needs to manage the reality of operating in countries around the world."
Responding to Mackinnon's report, Microsoft's own in-house blogger, Robert Scoble, said he was "depressed" by the news and offered Anti the opportunity to blog via his site.
"Guys over at MSN: Sorry, I don't agree with your being used as a state-run thug," he said. "It's one thing to pull a list of words out of a blog using an algorithm. It's another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger's work," Scoble wrote.
Scoble's comments referred to reports in June 2005, when Microsoft acknowledged censoring words such as "freedom" and "democracy" from its Chinese MSN portal. In an e-mail sent to ZDNet UK sister site Silicon.com, Microsoft said, "We don't disclose the list, but we do have the ability to change and update the filter, as needed, to help ensure we abide by the laws, regulations and norms of China."
Scoble's latest blog entry on the issue, made shortly before his departure to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which begins Thursday, states that he has had problems tracking down the relevant parties in Microsoft to comment on the issue and that some individuals have criticized him for commenting on the issue without checking further.
"I have been talking to lots of people today, though, inside and outside of Microsoft. In every instance, they asked me to keep those conversations confidential. Why? Cause we're talking about international relations here--and the lives of employees," Scoble wrote.
In September, Yahoo was heavily criticized when it emerged that the portal company had provided information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist.
Andrew Donoghue of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Microsoft Adds are all propaganda and lies. How dare they claim they are part of making peoples dreams come true.
Microsoft is now all about HOW NIGHTMARES CONTINUE.
Microsoft should apologize, re-instate the blog. And admit that it was helping the Communist Totalitarian Government in Peking to squish/kill/torture people for the sake of the decadent fat cats at the top in China (who can get away with whatever they please).
- (if they allow this or do not rectify this) They are traitors, though and through.
- (if they allow this or do not rectify this) They are the kind of people who will stab out country in the back, if there is ever a crisis.
- (if they allow this, do not rectify this) They believe in money, not the constitution of the United Stated.
- (if they allow this, do not rectify this) they are traitors who should go live in China permanently, that's where they belong.
I don't like Yahoo as I think it is totally biased on their news where Google just takes the most popular Yahoo has a definite LIBERAL bias.
Yahoo is just too commercial like AOL. Blah!
Enough IS Enough, it?s time to stand up and quash this garbage one and for all!
If MS wants to be ?global? then quit colluding with minor isolated governments that don?t do squat for the people!
from. And if something is going to impede the cash flow, MS is
obligated to remove it. It's not censorship, it's simple business. Or
at least, business the way MS defines it.
You expected better?
This article is just a cheap shot at MS intended to stir up knee-jerk reactions from readers.
So why should it stick its neck out?
"You got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything."
Your actions tell what you stand for. As Americans (and American businesses), we are supposed to stand for freedom. It is better to have a business fail, than to actively assist a government who does not uphold the same values.
Microsoft, Yahoo, and others who place a higher value on dollars than on freedom, will find that they will eventually loose both
If MS had a backbone, they would refuse to do business in countries with a long reputation of serious human rights abuses. However, they have shown time and time again that their product proliferation and bottom line is all that matters, and have had to be forced in the courts to change anything at all.
I have occasionally wondered if MS existed during the 1930s, if it would have sold services to the Nazi party. After all, when you're a global business, you have to "manage the reality of operating in countries around the world" - so they would have adhered to anti-semitic laws of the time in order to continue to do business and bring in revenue. Perhaps they would have sold MS to Jews in the U.S., but not in Poland; perhaps even they would have censored the French resistance and given sympathizers a place to blog their hearts out, as long as it didn't bang up against the party mission and paint themselves a subversive threat to the government.
Some of these companies are getting so huge and so rich that they no longer care about the individual behind the purchase. Gone are the days of person to person anything. Companies this big and this rich no longer have a human identity - they've basically sold their souls for the money.
partially true.
We in America back in the 1950s as a "free thinking demacracy"
did all you said to anyone who was, or was reported to be,
communist or somehow sympathetic with social communism.
And recently, with the PAtriot Act, America's back in the
buisness of arresting without charges, imprisoning without trial
and using torture 'when necessary'. To China, your comments
must sound like the Pot calling the Kettle 'Red'.
- Capitolism pressured to obey Communist China
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by jluchford
January 5, 2006 9:55 AM PST
- Ironic that MS people are so afraid of losing money to bad relations in a communist government.
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See all 33 Comments >>American executives pressure the US Gov. to allow more "business" in China citing how capatilism made Russia drop communism. Instead, MS employees adopt censorship without even being ASKED.
Ah well, bribes work in ANY form of government...even if they are only in the form of contracts!