Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Censorship Microsoft

Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogger 462

Posted by Zonk from the getting-in-good-with-the-new-boss dept.
wooppp writes "Microsoft has admitted to removing the blog of a Chinese journalist from MSN Spaces. The censored site has been re-hosted elsewhere after a short down-time, but is no longer accessible to the folks in China." From the ZDNet article: "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..."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogger More

Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogger

Comments Filter:

  • Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:39AM (#14408418)
    Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements...

    Like the suppression of independent, free thought? Way to support 'em, Microsoft! Sleep well at night!

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lucifig ( 255388 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:02AM (#14408538)
      If it were Google or Apple, it would be "the cost of doing business in China". Since it is Microsoft it is "suppression of independant, free thought."

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:37AM (#14408763) Journal
      Occasionally, as in Großdeutschland, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements...

      ...therefore, we at Microsoft's German subsidiary have turned over to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, as required by law, the names of all Jewish employees. Microsoft Germany has been assured by no less than Heinrich Himmler himself, that our Jewish employees will be peaceably resettled in the the East. [jewishvirtuallibrary.org]

      • Bit over the top. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
        I find it so odd. If a US company that does business with a foreign government ignores the laws in that company it gets nailed for being an all powerful multi-national evil mega-corp unless you don't agree with that countries laws?
        I happen to agree that Microsoft should not have pulled it but I often considered US centric in my opinions. How should a company act when faced with a country that doesn't respect the core values of that companies home country?

        • Re:Bit over the top. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Lifewish ( 724999 )
          It's not so much a matter of laws as a matter of morality. If a law goes against my personal morality, I will not obey it. Therefore, if Microsoft obeys immoral Chinese laws then we can only conclude that either a) it has no willpower whatsoever or b) it has no problem with censorship of journalists. Either way, the negative publicity it gets as a result would, in an ideal world, cause that company some pain. That way companies will have an incentive to operate according to the morality of the world they li

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:45AM (#14408825) Journal
      > Like the suppression of independent, free thought?
      > Way to support 'em, Microsoft! Sleep well at night!

      While it is rather smarmy for a corporation to do, if you have a problem with it, talk to your own government.

      Foreign policy is one of the functions of the government, and currently, the strategy is balls-to-the-wall capitalism with China, presumably in the hopes it opens up their nation.

    • ObWhere.... (Score:3, Funny)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )
      Microsoft... Where Don't you wan't to go today?

  • No Problem (Score:4, Funny)

    by jdub712 ( 625332 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:40AM (#14408421) Homepage
    I have no problem with not pissing off the chinese. Have you ever seen a Bruce Lee movie? I ain't f'n with those peeps.
  • Do you believe that Microsoft and MSN should obey the law and avoid illegal practices?

    If so, doesn't that apply just as much in China as in America?

    • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Prospero's Grue ( 876407 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:43AM (#14408437)
      Do you believe that Microsoft and MSN should obey the law and avoid illegal practices?

      If so, doesn't that apply just as much in China as in America?

      If they respected Chinese law and American law to the same degree, then they wouldn't have so enthusiastically pulled down the offending post, would they?

      Not without a long, drawn out court fight.

      Or could it be...just maybe...that this isn't about law & order, principles, or anything more noble than the pursuit of economic interests.

      • Or could it be...just maybe...that this isn't about law & order, principles, or anything more noble than the pursuit of economic interests.

        Pursuit of economic interests is exactly what one would expect from a publically traded corporation (which has an obligation to maximize profit potential for its shareholders). Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is the law of the corporate jungle.

        If I were a shareholder, I would expect nothing less from Apple, Google, or <your favorite benevolent corp here>

        • shareholders might, just might, have some ethical principles.
          few do, though.
          • Actually I think most shareholders have ethics. Its just those shareholders we also call 'executives' that screw over people for an extra buck. Its not done for the shareholders, its done for themselves.

        • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:44AM (#14408818)
          Actually some shareholders do require integrity to invest in a company. Many small time shaheholders do and then few really big ones. One example of a really big one that does is the Norvegian state investment arm that invests the oil incomes. They have for example recently pulled out of companies that are involved in nuclear weapons work and have before pulled out from others with chilf labour and such.

      • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LainTouko ( 926420 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:01AM (#14408526)
        Pursuit of economic interests is exactly what one would expect from a publically traded corporation (which has an obligation to maximize profit potential for its shareholders). Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is the law of the corporate jungle.

        If I were a shareholder, I would expect nothing less from Apple, Google, or under the same circumstances.

        Which is why it is the duty of we, the public, to intensely criticise any corporation when it does do something unethical, so that the ethical choice becomes the most profitable one.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:46AM (#14408451)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Amen.

        Which is something everyone here at /. should be doing, standing up in their communities for what they beleive in. Standing up for our online rights for example. Sure the only legal thing we can do directly to stop the restrictions of our rights is using our brains when we go to the polls. But we can also use whatever influence we have to educate the public and motivate others.

        And we need to start doing this BEFORE it is too late.
      • Ummm... Last time I checked, Microsoft wasn't an individual. It is a corporation owned by stockholders. Let's hold a vote of Microsoft stockholders to see if they think Microsoft should obey foreign laws. Do you seriously think they would want Microsoft breaking the law here?

        Furthermore, who decides what is moral? You? I personally don't think people should drink alcohol, but that doesn't make it OK for me to drive around to all the local bars and set them on fire.
      • This isn't a single individual, though, it's a large group of them in the form of a company. While Bob from the legal division may personally care greatly about democracy and free speech, his primary professional aim is keeping the company on the path of least legal resistance.

      • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by zxnos ( 813588 ) <zxnoss@gmail.com> on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:26AM (#14408688)
        riddle me this caspian, what makes a law immoral? who is the judge?

        i believe in speaking out against laws that are immoral to me, but one has to be willing to accept the consequences.

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:41AM (#14408799)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Dhalka226 ( 559740 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @12:15PM (#14409539)

            However, the morality of drinking really isn't that difficult to discern: It's not immoral to drink except where it would harm another person

            How far do you take that, and who decides what "harm" is?

            You gave a few examples where I don't think you'd get much of an argument from most people about it being wrong to get drunk in those situations. But it's easy to take another step, and another. For example, the purpose of DUIs being wrong is that it could harm others -- no guarantees. And the purpose of not getting drunk enough to interfere with supporting a family is to protect the family. However, there are few people in the world who are truly alone. Is it wrong if I, as a single male with no children, drink myself to death? It could happen. My family would be devastated. Clear emotional harm would be done. So was my drinking immoral? Clearly it would be simple to say "fine, drinking yourself to death is immoral" -- but I do not believe there is a purpose to a system of morality that offers no real guidance. I can get good and drunk, and impair my judgment (making it harder to know when to stop), but it would be immoral to die? Err... helpful.

            What about the "lesser of two evils" cases? What if I know my neighbor is planning on killing people, but I don't have any proof such that I would be able to get the police involved as anything more than a delay tactic? Is it moral to kill the neighbor to protect others? What if I don't KNOW he's going to commit murders, but I have a very strong suspicion? A moderately-strong suspicion? Where is the line? If I am 51% sure, does that mean it's moral? What about 50%? Remember now, we're not talking legality, we're talking morality. Regardless of legality, would it be the right thing to do?

            How about things that are less easy to quantify? If god descended from the heavens right now and told me if I killed every last Arab in the world, peace would reign for the remainder of the history of the world, would it be moral to do it?

            How does friendship play in to morality? If I am friends with somebody who committed a crime and he calls me for bail, should I pay it even if I know that he's going to skip out and never come back? If my friend confesses murder to me, is it my moral imperitive to rat him out or keep his secret? After all, I am causing harm regardless of which I choose. Does it matter if I knew--magically or just by virtue of knowing my friend well--that whatever he did would never be done again?

            Are "selfish" things immoral? If I own a business, is it immoral to close it and lay off my employees because I am no longer interested in running it? (Yes, in reality, the chances are good that I would sell it in that situation -- but assume for the sake of argument that I am unwilling or unable to do so.) That could cause a ton of harm to them, particularly if they themselves have families, and it's not like I'm closing it because it's hemhorraging money or anything.

            I don't expect you or anybody else to actually answer these questions -- in fact I hope nobody takes the time to do so, they're nothing but hypotheticals. I pose them all in order to make one simple comment: Morality is not always as simple as you make it out to be and (at least) in the case of friendships, I do not think it can be wholly logical either. That emotional part you acknowledge can't always be tossed away.

            (I realize as I preview this that the argument is somewhat tangent to your statement about the morality of laws, but it seems like you took a tangent of your own. That and it took me a long time to type and I'll be damned if I'm going to close the window now. :P)

          • spreading "Joe Smith is gay" is wrong; spreading "Joe Smith is a convicted child molestor" (assuming it's true) is alright...

            Really? I don't agree. Having sat on a jury where the charge was aggravated sexual assault of a child, I can tell you that people get convicted of being child molestors for things that don't pass the smell test. Here's an example (just to grab a random example out of today's newspaper) of someone arrested where the actual language of the indictment includes "...She could tell by [chron.com]



      • Governments don't care about what's moral or immoral either. Governments and corporations are alike in the fact that they owe allegiance to something or someone other than the individual. Only individuals are moral creatures, because only individuals have free will.

      • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:37AM (#14408765)
        This kind of comment only serves to display your ignorance (as well as scoring easy points on /.)

        First of all - have you actually read any Chinese laws? No? You can get them in translation, and they are not really all that draconian; in fact I suspect the average American could subscribe to them with no problems at all. But just like in USA, it is the way that the law is practised that matters. Is the police heavyhanded? Are the judges fair etc? And perhaps the Chinese are no worse off than the Americans in that respect either.

        Secondly, what do you actually know about whether the Chinese feel free to speak their mind? I suspect you've never actually been there and spoken to ordinary Chinese. I have, many times, and I can testify that they are not in the least afraid of having an opinion or speaking it in public. I suspect a lot of the American ideas about this come from the time of the cultural revolution, where people were widely persecuted, not only for having the wrong opinions, but also for lots of other things, more or less at random. China has moved on from that - this is a common thing in the world: societies change over time; well, maybe not America, what so I know, but certainly China - how could anyone doubt that? Also, are you absolutely sure that you can get away with having the wrong opinions in America?

        Thirdly, it sounds grand, all this drivel about 'ignore immoral laws'; just you try to do that in America. Or perhaps you don't fancy an unlimited holiday at Hotel Gitmo?

        A very sound rule of thumb is, if a society is stable over time, then the population is by and large happy with the way things are. This is true not only for USA and Europe, but also for China and many other countries. The ordinary feel quite happy with the way their country is run, and if you actually believe in freedom, you should leave it to them to decide whether they like it.

        I think a lot of you Americans need to revise your prejudices. As far as I can see your attitudes towards other countries, and in this particular case China, is caused by a combination of ignorance and simple jealousy - China is doing better and better, while America is going the opposite way, so they are simply 'evil communists' who persecute pious religious practitioners like Falun Gong, American style 'evangelicals' and other representatives of the worst in mankind.
    • Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?

        It's like the pot thats calling the kettle... well you get the idea.
      • Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?

        China has deep pockets and is growing in economic development at a STAGGERING rate. The EU is not. So you had just as well get used to these sorts of stories, because corporations are going to be sucking up to the Chinese government for a very long time to come.

        -Eric

      • Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?

        Because China is soon to be one of the worlds largest markets, and no company can afford to lose its foothold there, lest their more unscrupulous competitors use the China advatage to squeeze the life out of them.

        Besides that, secretly, corperations love the Chinese Government. It's essentially a kind of facist state, which by and large me
    • I believe that it is unethical for a company to operate in a nation if the laws of that nation require them to behave unethically. They don't have any overriding need to operate in China. The only reason to do so is for profit.

      So, they are violating this blogger's human rights (as defined by the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights) in order to make a profit.

      • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:55AM (#14408493)
        Death penalty is violating "human rights (as defined by the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights)". So according to you all companys should stop operating in the US? Brilliant.
        • Only if they're required to carry out the death sentence.
          • What about General Electric? They supply variously; the chair, the straps, the wire, the generator plants, the damp cloth, the TV cameras, the paper, the pen, the ink, the telphone line to the Governer, the telephone, the software, the lights, the plasterboard, the gum and the banks loans to pay for it all.
        • Absolutely. I'd imagine that'd get the US to change its stance pretty quick.
        • Why does every conversation about China on Slashdot include some posters who point out immoral behavior in the United States? Are you trying the justify immoral behavior in China? Didn't anyone ever tell you that two wrongs don't make a right? Isn't that a level of emotional maturity we all master by the age of 9? I'm against immoral government behavior no matter which government is doing it. There are examples I can cite in both the United States and in China. USA: Death Penalty. China: Fearful cens

        • Death penalty is violating "human rights (as defined by the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights)". So according to you all companys should stop operating in the US? Brilliant.

          Yes. Stopping all economic activity between the US and the rest of the world would propably force the US government to perform its duty to protect its citizens by stopping them from being murdered by the state. As an added benefit, it would force the rest of the world to cut its dependency on US economy. So in short, both US

    • Re:Should MSN obey the law? (Score:4, Funny)

      by GlynDavies ( 692080 ) <slashdot.9.agd@s ... et.com minus bsd> on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:03AM (#14408542)
      Do you believe that Microsoft and MSN should obey the law and avoid illegal practices?
      Absolutely. It'll make a nice change. ;-)

  • More information (Score:4, Informative)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:43AM (#14408433)

    A lot more information on this story can be found at Rebecca MacKinnon's RConversation [blogs.com].

    • Thanks for the interesting link. I wonder if their censorship software is smart enough to detect modified versions of forbidden language like: F@lun G0ng. You would think these kind of usages would spring up for the same reasons they have in the west.

      • Re:F@lon G0ng? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by BJH ( 11355 )
        They have. As an example, in Japanese it's now quite common to break down the (Cbinese) characters of a sensitive term into its component parts where possible and write them with separate characters, or write it with characters that can be read the same way but which have a different literal meaning.

  • The Almight Dollar wins again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ixne ( 599904 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:45AM (#14408446)

    when companies who claim to take pride in living in a "free" country facilitate repression abroad.

  • Just getting it out of the way. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords!

    Rational discussion may now resume.
    • This might have been moderated "funny", but we should remember just how much money the US Government has borrowed from China. That national debt is financed by someone, remember?

      But we can always raise the national debt ceiling...

  • Censorship is a Unique Element of an Oligarchy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:49AM (#14408469)
    "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.

    I am sure George Orwell's '1984', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', and even Bill Gate's 2005 article 'The New World of Work' would be banned as well.

    http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/05-1 9newworldofwork.asp [microsoft.com]
    Quote: "Improving personal productivity: One consequence of an "always-on" environment is the challenge of prioritizing, focusing and working without interruption. Today's software can handle some of this, but hardly at a level that matches the judgment and awareness of a human being. That will change -- new software will learn from the way you work, understand your needs, and help you set priorities." (Bill Gates 5-19-05)

    Unless you live in China.

    • Re:Censorship is a Unique Element of an Oligarchy (Score:5, Funny)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:08AM (#14408566)
      George Orwell's '1984',

      Oh come on, it's not like we live in a world where our calls our monitored, our emails read, history is revised, and our leader is a "big brother" type who makes his own law. I mean, here in America, the NSA would never silence someone just for makin

      • Nothing to see here (Score:5, Funny)

        by doublem ( 118724 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:09AM (#14408990) Homepage Journal
        Move along folks. There's nothing to see here. The user deliberately terminated their post for humor value. No government, private or foreign agency was involved in the truncation of the parent post, or for the poster's completely voluntary relocation to Syria.

        Go back to your homes, watch some football and have a nice fast food meal, secure in the knowledge that whatever the government does, it's for the purpose of protecting your rights and ensuring your safety from TERRORIST!!!!!!!

        9/11, 9/11, You all must remember 9/11.

  • Who's censoring? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Infernon ( 460398 ) * <infernon@gmail. c o m> on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:50AM (#14408471)
    Seriously, I'm ready to step in and bash Microsoft at the drop of a hat, but MS isn't cenoring the reporter - CHINA IS. This just silly. Microsoft is obviously bound by the laws of the countries that it does business in.
    • So why have they not obeyed the laws of the US and Europe then? It does business both here and in the EU but it has still had problems obeying the laws in both countries and has been sued and declared a monopoly in both countries, and lets not even mention Korea.

        I find it very disturbing that MS can't seem to keep itself out of trouble elsewhere but can suddenly follow the laws of a communist nation like china that's what really disturbs me.
      • They've probably just made a risk assessment: The EU & US are far less likely to punish MS in any real way, no matter what laws they break.

        China, on the other hand, could ban all MS products or, hell, probably even round up their employees and shoot them.
    • But that won't stop people from whining when this subject comes up, be it Microsoft or Yahoo or Google.

    • Re:Who's censoring? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:10AM (#14408583)
      MS isn't cenoring the reporter - CHINA IS.

      Incorrect. If you RTFM, it is MSN's employees, rather than China's upstream infrastructure, removing content.
    • China censors when it sets up the great firewall to deny access to big chunks of the net. When Microsoft takes down a blog (in an American .com domain, not a Chinese domain) they're doing the censoring.

      Do you expect every US company doing business with China to remove words like "freedom" from all their sites?

  • And our reporter is afraid of "outspoken" too? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:51AM (#14408474)
    What the heck -- anyone else notice that the linked article doesn't get around to what made this journalist "outspoken"? We're told that terms like "freedom" and "democracy" were removed from the Chinese flavor of MSN in 2005, and that previous postings on Yahoo led to someone's arrest last fall. Presumably this was comparable content... But why doesn't the article tell us?

    We report that the views were controversial for China, but apparently that makes them unreportable. What, are we hoping a Chinese audience will be able to find the story now?

    (As far as Microsoft being ever so scrupulous about adhering to international standards, it's impressive how multinational corporations cover their butts when an authoritarian state is offended. Their commitment to international practices is even more impressive when local labor standards give them what amounts to slave labor.)

  • What would happen if a US citizen mirrored him.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by inaneboy ( 306740 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:51AM (#14408476)
    ...on the same site? What happens if the Chinese govt. decides that a US blogger is violating their laws?

  • Worldwide Censorship? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Friday January 06, 2006 @09:56AM (#14408496) Homepage Journal
    The articles insn't really very clear on exactly how the blog was removed from MSN Spaces.

    Was it simply the case that Chinese IPs were blocked from accessing it, or in fact was the entire blog simply removed from MSN Spaces altogether.

    Either way is shameful, but if private companies begin to censor the web for everyone, worldwide, at the (implied) behest of autocracies, where will that leave us?
  • It would be far more interesting if TFA was not in Chinese, seeing as how I don't speak it and all. So, to all of you people out there that speak both Chinese and English, what did the guy say that was so controversial?

  • as quoted from his blog (Score:4, Funny)

    by jaimz22 ( 932159 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:00AM (#14408513)
    this is a straight quote from his blog...
    "????,???MSN???????????,???"
    Nothing could be more true!

    // yes, i know it's all ?'s
  • ...why does MS obey the laws in China when they don't obey the laws in America?

    Perhaps we can learn something from the Chineese.

  • Google, Yahoo, Cisco and others collaborate also.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rmpotter ( 177221 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:05AM (#14408552) Homepage
    but keep bashing Microsoft as the personification of evil if it helps you forget these things:

    Google Bows to Chinese Censorship [wired.com]

    How about Yahoo:
    Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison [rsf.org]

    and there is this on Cisco and China:
    China's Internet: Let a Thousand Filters Bloom [yale.edu]

  • How is it Censorship? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by midicase ( 902333 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:08AM (#14408572)
    Maybe someone can explain to me how it is called 'censorship' when a private company voluntarily block/removes content. It is my understanding that censorship is practiced "often by government intervention" according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship [wikipedia.org].

    So if someone illegally paints a swastika on my house, is it censorship for me to remove it? I hope someone could explain the difference to me.

    • Re:How is it Censorship? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:23AM (#14408668) Journal
      Read the writings of Justices Hand and Holmes. I suggest "In Perilous Times" [washingtonpost.com] by Geoffrey R. Stone. It treats the history of free speech in the US, but gives great insight into the theory behind it as well. According to US political theory, anyway, government acts that would cause people to censor themselves are acts of government censorship.

      It doesn't matter of MSN is pulling the blog voluntarily (in order to avoid negative repercussions with the Chinese government), or if the Chinese government orders them to do so. Either way, it's a government-caused limit to free speech.

  • But of course, only those laws that might cause it to lose substantial business, or cooperation on reducing piracy of it's products. And hey, if those laws result in the loss of some individual's basic human rights, what does Mr. Bill care?

    As a nation, we should stand for freedom, most especially for freedom of speech, because that's the one freedom from which all the others come. As long as we can all talk, we don't necessarily have to resort to violence to bring about change.

    Any corporation organized in t
  • By quasi silencing this blogger MS has now given his blog much more significant publicity than he could ever have got had MS not taken any action. It shows how "censorship" seldom works.
  • MSN is committed to ensuring that products and services comply with global and local laws, norms and industry practices

    Good luck, then, because that's unpossible.

    Helpful tip: Laws from other countries often conflict with each other!

  • Tough situation! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:27AM (#14408692)
    Microsoft is making a public forum accessible in a place where it's extremely difficult to say controversial things publically. Like it or not, with a population in the billions, China's a major market segment for any company, and no one wants to get shut out of that.

    I wonder what things would be like now had the Soviet Union managed to stay intact in the "mass media" Internet age. Surely there was some net access available to a select few behind the Iron Curtain, but I can't imagine it would be easy for, say, East Germany to control their media completely.

    I think they did the right thing on this. Our country's laws are not necessarily the world standard, and other countries are free to follow whatever policy they please. They're also free to block access to things they see as dangerous. We do this "in reverse" all the time...other countries are much more liberal in terms of what can be seen on TV, etc. To please the religious crew, we censor broadcast media and let people who want to see more subscribe to cable. The problem opens up when you inject a stateless medium such as the internet.

  • Remember Amatuer Action? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:31AM (#14408730)
    Is anyone else reminded of the Amatuer Action BBS [google.com] prosecution? Back in 1994 a California man and his wife ran a for-pay BBS (yes dial-up) with downloadable porn. A Tennessee postal inspector downloaded some porn from them and when he got it, he shipped THEM some child porn and then charged them with obscenity and had them extradited to Tennessee. If I recall correctly, they were convicted and the man at least served time. All for material that was perfectly legal in California but apparently not in Tennessee.

    At the time there was a lot of concern about the net becoming regulated by the laws of the most restrictive state. Funny how that seems to be the case nowadays, except it is the corps doing the 'regulation' and not the governments per se.

    (PS, for some reason there is very little record of the whole Amatuer Action BBS fiasco in google's database, very odd for what was such a big deal at the time.)

  • Oppressive regimes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hkb ( 777908 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:52AM (#14408868)
    Yeah and the nazis had "unique" local laws and practices, too. I'm sorry, but China oppressing its people and killing off dissidents goes a little beyond that. But hey money talks, and I'm sure China dumps a lot of it into Microsoft. Why would they want to lose that profit?

  • Chinese Law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposerNO@SPAMalum.mit.edu> on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:09AM (#14408996) Homepage

    This isn't simply a case of a company complying with local law. China's censorship of Zhao's blog is actually illegal under Chinese law. It violates article 35 of The Constitution of the People's Republic of China [people.com.cn], which guarantees freedom of speech and article 41, which specifically protects the right to criticize the government. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Microsoft acted in response to the order of a court. What we're talking about here is compliance with an illegal request. There may be an argument that Microsoft could not afford to refuse to comply, but any moral argument that Microsoft has an obligation to obey local law is bogus.

  • TO save time replying to each one.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @11:20AM (#14409083)
    Those of you rushing to Microsoft's defense are doing more damage than good. Alone, this could eventually blow over as an oversight or mistake or a bad judgement call. But when the Internet's discussion is interrupted by a few "bystander" posters who each rush in to flame us all and declare Microsoft innocent, then it's only too obvious that you're the paid "clean-up crew" hired by Microsoft, and that makes the action premeditated.

  • Polaroid and South Africa (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @02:56PM (#14410800)
    I remember back some years ago during Apartheid, Polaroid got raked over the coals for selling products to the government of South Africa for making ID cards. All they did was sell product to a government and that got them accused of facilitating oppression. Now, Microsoft is an active and willing partner in oppression and the reaction in the mainstream media doesn't approach that earlier firestorm.

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Close