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Microsoft Bans 'Democracy' for China's Web Users
Doc Ruby writes "As reported, paradoxically, on MSN, 'Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words 'democracy' and 'freedom' from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.' MSN China says it must comply with local laws, but there is no Chinese law against the use of these words."
Remember Pastor Ken Hutcherson, and how he leaned on Bill about the whole gay issue? Where the hell is he now?
Surely, if he and his band of fundies can kick up that much of a fuss about homosexuality, they can certainly flex their muscles in the defense of human liberty and dignity.
C'mon, Ken...you've still got Bill's number...and here's a cause actually worth fighting for.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The more heinous laws may never be written down.
cuz they must be hating freedum and stuff...
C2lick her3e for our dailey s1pecial on d3mocrazy!
"Does that mean we can invade Microsoft now, cuz they must be hating freedum and stuff..."
That would be consistent with the Bush administration policies, i.e. invade Microsoft even though China is the real threat to democracy and freedom.
Vote for Pedro
...Microsoft will ban the word "monopoly"
No. The Chinese language does have an 'l' sound (Shaolin monks?). You're thinking of the Japanese, whose language does not.
Microsoft agreed to ban "innovation" from its international search portal to filter any potential self referential promotions that might run afoul of stricter false advertising laws in other countries.
Anyone else think it's odd that this is being reported by MSNBC?
Hey! Check this out! The company i work for is being immoral!
No, that would involve freedom.
MSN China says it must comply with local laws, but there is no Chinese law against the use of the use of these words."
Law? You don't need law to enforce the will of the party in China.
PS. Before this is mark flamebait- I am a chinese.
Is Microsoft saying, in effect, that if Beijing ever decides to crack down on democratic movements Microsoft will be happy to provide dictionaries and spellcheckers with the proscribed thoughtcrimes removed? Boy they really have learned a lot about lobbying since the antitrust trial.
Last I heard China was working on their own operating system to supplant those of the West, so Microsoft might be wasting their time.
-- thinkyhead software and media
As I recall, RedHat was criticized a few years ago for removing the Taiwanese flag from their distribution to appease potential customers in mainland China. Let's face it, China is a huge market to get into; if a company that refused to ship an MP3 library with their distribution can be seduced by the Chinese market's potential, what good is a little democracy or freedom going to do to prevent Microsoft from acting in the same manner? It's all about money.
The World is Yours.
Can't one place be free of McDonalds, MTV, Democracy and Coca-Cola?
Apparently not. I was in the Forbidden City in Beijing a few months ago. Bearing in mind that, after The Great Wall, it would have to be the most famous historical site in the entirety of China. What do you think is smack in the middle? A Starbucks.
I wish this post was a joke, but, I am very sorry to say, it isn't.
Ah - just noticed that wikipedia article above mentions it is there too, so I wasn't just seeing things.
They want our money but not our beleifs. That's their right. But what are we getting from them in return?
How does it benefit OUR citizens? As you can see... China's priorities clearly have nothing to do with our beleifs, our products or our labor force. China only wants our dollar, and corperate America just wants slave labor?
Why do we allow this to continue? What is the real benefits of allowing our US based corperations, to exploit the world and devalue our country?
Okay, the most annoying part of this article is that they never bother to LINK to the new website. What is the point of talking about a new website in a news article and not linking to it?
My quess is this is what they are talking about.
Of course, I don't know how to spell "freedom" in Chinese, but if you compare these two searches:
US
China
You can get a pretty good idea of what they block. And to think, we have U.S. companies helping them to achieve this....
STOP IT! All that's left of that horse is a half-dozen bloody ribs!
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
Can't one place be free of McDonalds, MTV, Democracy and Coca-Cola?
One of these things is not like the other.
Idiot.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
..coming from someone named "Jackie Chan Fan."
Clearly, the benefit for American citizens is cheap products. Benefit for American corporations: higher margins.
Yep, not a lot of long term thinking going on here in America. Buying everything on credit, spending money on high school football instead of advanced courses, etc. We're on the brink of getting our asses royally kicked.
That said, most Chinese I know really like America and Americans, just not our politics. As for me when I am there, I happen to like living in a god-less country, but I'm not so enamored with the totalitarian part. There isn't a perfect country to live in- when I live in China, I have simply traded one kind of stupidity for another.
The European idea of democracy is that it is a *universal* right of people. It's not some product to be sold, it's a right to be defended by one's government. Or the people suffer, and revolt, though not always obviously. It's not some racist idea that nationalities and cultures are so different that our fundamental humanity is not the same, including rights to freedom. Even the Chinese mafia government recognizes this dynamic, as it's used the impulse to freedom in all its propaganda, way back to its revolution against its monarchy, even when using the propaganda to destroy freedom.
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make install -not war
You must be new here. Eventually they'll tan the hide and hold a drum circle.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
In the Vietnamese Wikipedia, where I'm a sysop we actually had a discussion about how to translate the motto The free encyclopedia into Vietnamese. Many people were against translating the word "free" literally because it would throw off a lot of readers and the Vietnamese authorities and make it a target for the filtering software installed by the authorities. So we finally reached a compromised and used "open" instead of "free".
wait a second...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That's an awfully un-American action for such a large American company. If we're so committed to spreading democracy throughout the world, then it seems that every individual and corporation ought to act like we really do believe in the values that we profess. Otherwise, they're just words, and we really do prove who we are by our deeds.
And because I'm a left-wing radical like Justice Rehnquist, I can't help but wonder how long before the same thing happens here?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
So what will they call our soon to be built, Freedom Tower in NYC? :)
The F****** Tower?
[Note: Think of a colorful medaphor that fills the missing letters :)]
China: we like money....
Microsoft: pay me....
China: we can get it for free...
Microsoft: WE can ensure your communist rule by limiting freedom.
China: wha? freedom? There is no freedom... only work!
Microsoft: Let us show you the way..
China: Deal!
D
I know this is pretty cynical, but Microsoft can't change China. I think it's unreasonable to expect them to burn all their bridges there in a futile attempt to change things that they can't.
As a nation, we (the US) have decided to look the other way about whatever problems China might have, in exchange for money. A huge proportion of the stuff at Wal-Mart is made in China. We swallow our principles and take the cheap prices.
Why should MS be better than anyone else?
China is really big and really powerful. They're so big and powerful they can tell MS to shove it. And they can tell the US to shove it. If or when China changes, it will be because Chinese people do it. No one is going to push them into doing anything they don't want to do.
After all, I am strangely colored.
There's lots of people criticizing Israel in the US. And lots of people criticizing the Palestinian government. The American corporate media doesn't cover it much, because it's *their* game, that they're playing with the Bush government. All the American media corporations have stakes in the global weapons business, and their relationships with the Pentagon, which gives out the money. They like the game, because they get to control the people who pay the bills for their profits.
This is certainly not unique to the US, or China, or anywhere else. Even in Israel, the media coverage of the government's perpetuation of the war with Palestinians is inverse to the people's criticisms of it. It's even worse in Palestine, where the government's thugs, who embody the word-of-mouth media of the street, kill Palestinians who criticize their goverment's perpetuation of the war with Israel, as "collaborators".
None of this is necessary, but it's easy. And as long as its profits keep the government/media corporate cartels (fascism) in power and profits, it's going to stay that way.
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make install -not war
Back about a decade ago, one shell executive was quoted as saying that what any corporation needs, is political stability, and a compliant, cheap workforce == and dictatorships are really good at providing that.
Capitalism does not embrace democracy. It simply tolerates it in the context of western societies. In other countries where there is no need to push for democracy, why should a company do so? The linkage between the two is pure political sugar-coating. This is part of the reason for the tension between capitalism and Free Software (and why 'Open Source' seems like a compelling compromise). Free Software is about Freedom, choice and equality -- none of which really serves the purposes of your average corporate meta-entity.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I find some of the points on your linked article to be grossly rather misleading.
When referencing "The Constitution of Taiwan", one must realize that the name of the document should technically be "The Constitution of the Republic of China".
When that document insist that "Tibet is part of China", it meant "Tibet is part of the Republic of China."
Thus when saying the constitution of Taiwan says Tibet is part of China when the Chinese army are killing Tibetan nuns, the first reference to China and the second reference are pointing to different entities.
The referenced link makes it sound like Taiwan believe Tibet belongs to a murderous government, when in fact that very document (the "Constitution of Taiwan") deny the legatimacy of the Bejing government to whom the nun-raping Chinese Liberation Army belongs to.
Because the "Constitution of Taiwan" still think R.O.C. is the rightful ruler of mainland China, any reference in it that talks about "mainland China" also means the R.O.C. government, which in fact no longer rules the mainland.
The misleading nature of your reference makes me doubt the validity of the other information on that page (even if the numbers or the quote are true, the context might have given completely different meaning).
Remember, when the "Taiwanese" government say that anything is "Chinese" or "belongs to China", they mean their little government located in Taipei that only has effect soverignity over a few island. More often than not, it is more accurate to replace what they are saying to "Taiwanese" or "belongs to Taiwan", where Taiwan technically means the Republic of China.
Numerous American groups were and are engaged in a boycott of Chinese products and have demonstrated loudly and vociferously against the occupation of Tibet.
Numerous Taiwanese groups have done the same thing too.
If the actions of many captalist corporations of a certain nationality/ethinicity is sufficient to charactize a people, as you have done using Taiwanese companies to characterize the Taiwanese people, then I can also say the American are no better than mercenary pigs. Slashdotters should be all too famaliar with a few examples.
The majority of the Taiwanese population would be outraged to find any Taiwanese company profiting from China in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square. Realize, most Americans actually don't know how Starbucks exploit the environment and coffee workers, about the Nike sweat shopts, etc.
This response has the biase of an individual who identifies himself as being a "Republic of China" Chinese who was born and mostly raised in Taiwan. Individuals who identify with the R.O.C. are actually closer to being the minority in Taiwan, compared to the people who identify themselves as strictly "Taiwanese". The referenced link stated Eighty-five percent (85%) of the people of Taiwan are Chinese. Only fifteen percent (15%) are Taiwanese. without any reference, and probably uses some biological ancestry demographic data instead of using what the people actually identify themselves with.
Warning: Sig Fault. Dumping warp core.
However, the KFC in the Imperial Park didn't have their lease renewed. There is some hope.
What about the freedom Microsoft has to run (or not run) whatever content they wish on their web site? You can't have true freedom if you force people to extoll freedom and democracy.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You also couldn't talk about "freedom" and "democracy."
Oh wait, the joke doesn't work like that, does it?
"With rare exceptions people cannot use that picture to masturbate, therefore it is not the internet."
Keep in mind, when google pulls a stunt like this, its ok.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I find this odd and interesting. Most Chinese I've met feel they are free. Also, democracy is as old in China as the Communist party: Mao Ze Dong's little red book has a whole section lauding the advantages of democracy. In fact, this seems to be a move against the government by Microsoft. The best way to censor would be to not bring up any pages when someone searches for "democracy". Letting them know they entered a forbidden word will make them more aware of things they can't do, and will make them feel oppressed.
Qxe4
I don't see the point. Take a look at http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/ for an example of Chinese debate on various topics. Although articles can be pulled if deemed too offensive (this is a newspaper, whose existence dependes on the party's benevolence), there are no simple words like democracy or freedom that are forbidden. Chinese censorship simply doesn't operate on that level.
On the site you can see examples, mostly in English and sometimes in Chinese, of pretty straightforward debate on most sensitive issues, and my impression is that anything goes as long as you are informed about the matter you are discussing.
Furthermore, I don't understand how you could ban words. It is easy to circumvent this, because you can just use similar-sounding characters to fool the system; people will still understand that ziyou means freedom, regardless of what characters are used. You could also write it backwards, or use latin letters. Or why not l33t.
The Great Firewall of China actively monitors incoming data for keywords. There's no set list, and red-flag words will vary from city to city (Shanghai tends to be strictest) and time to time. It's not at all unimaginable that 'minzhu' (democracy) would set it off, causing the Great Firewall to stop the transfer and return a fake "server not responding" message.
So yeah, it's lame that MS is doing this. But why do they have to? Because Cisco and other American companies provided router, firewall, and filtering tech to China, showed them how to set it up, and still maintain an active role in restricting the browsing of 100 million internet users. What MS is doing is a symptom, not a cause -- follow the money.
Man, I HATE communism.
Communism is an economic philosophy that the current Chinese regime no longer adopts. What I suspect you dislike is not the economic policy but the political policy adopted by the Chinese government (single party, weakly enforced civil liberties, etc).
Oddly enough, this isn't too different from the current politcal situation of the USA (PATRIOT Act, two party duopoly, etc)
So, did the people flaming microsoft today also note that Google the Wonderchild Company basically did the exact same thing a few months ago? Somehow, i don't think you'll see half the outrage over THAT incident, if only because this one involves "M$"
You need a FREE iPod Nano
All this pandering to the Beijing government for distribution rights, as low-down it may be because of the same's treatment of the people the company would like to distribute to, will only be a temporary measure. This period is "China's education" and it won't last long. Once it's over and the floodgates open, the Chinese economy will steamroll the world's.
Since it decided to open up, its people have been "getting used to" newer technologies - and how to make them for themselves. The textile industry is already ripe and just-opened - and not a month after Europe's quota on Chinese textile product imports was lifted, its market was flooded with a 200% increase of low-cost products, sparking a drop in the sales of more "local" companies. To compete, the local companies claim they have to relocate their factories to developing countries.
But here's the thing - even here the Europeans can't compete because China already has all the low-cost hands it needs, and to boot, it already has most of the machines and technology too. Its economy isn't one where everyone in a product's production chain, from raw material to store shelf, is aiming to make a 100% (or more) profit - which makes everything cheaper for them. What's more, since they're a bit 'behind' for the time being, they don't feel the 'need' to create new ideas when they can just dip into the existing market's and make them at a cheaper price. Bill Gates is only adding to this - just wait until the above hits the computer/software industry.
Unfortunately with the floodgates of trade already opening it will be soon too late to protest the Beijing Government's treatment of the Chinese people - the only to protest this is to refuse to have anything to do with its function, meaning cutting them off and not dealing with them - but already it's too late for that. The Bush administration is drooling at the aspect of billions of petrol-consuming new cars and they won't be turning back at any price. Not until the damage is (already) done, anyway. Beijing is full today of "western" businessmen wanting to sell planes, weapons and other technologies - but don't ask me what any of this has to do with "government" - the government's freinds won't want you to. But I digress.
The market eventually will "balance" itself, but before then, in the first decade (at least) after the Chinese floodgates open, we're gonna be in for a helluva ride.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Remember that, according to the story, there is no Chinese law against the use of these words. Microsoft is doing it "proactively" (eh).
The story is naive. How much business have you done in China? When a representative of the government expresses concern over some issue that is as significant as something on paper. Reality is far more complex than academic arguments.
Isn't it odd that a gung-ho American company that's all for free market capitalism can so very easily make itself look like a soul-crushing, freedom-hating, communist-friendly entity by just removing a couple of words from all its websites?
Kind of says something about the state of affairs in America these days.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I thought I might test the thing, to see if the article is right, and I decided to write about the process here while I do it.
First of all, my chinese isn't very good. I study chinese, but I started last september, so I don't read that many characters...
But first off when trying to create a msn.com space, is the passport account. So I decided to create a chinese hotmail account, with the data of a young student living in Beijing. That was only a little tricky. The two obstacles I ran into was finding the zip code of Beijing, and finding out what I had to do in the text box on the last page next to the email address I just created. The zip code was quickly solved after finding the homepage of European Centre For Chinese Studies at Beijing University, and their address... The text field, I found out after numerous tries, was just a reconfirmation of that same email. Having the email address and passport account created I was sent back to the My Space creation page.
I decided my space should be called 'ziyouheminzhu', being the words 'freedom' 'and' 'democracy'.
Just to check, I entered that in Chinese characters as the name of the blog and clicked continue. A fat red text popped up saying "You cannot use forbidden words!".
So the article is right, but for the sake of maintaining a critical view to journalism, I thought I had to prove it...
I have this horrible feeling; I'm sorry if it sounds xenophobic or racist, over here in Italy there's an ongoing campaign to blame chinese imports for our faltering economy and I don't want to sould like I'm supporting it. China's economic relevance is growing at great pace, huge amounts of investements pour into this country and nascent market. Corporate executives visit China and literally break into tears at the discipline and chockedness of the workforce. In the early '900 Italy's capitalists experimented with going without a liberal government; they chose fascism. A totalitarian regime that while touting a better form of socialism essentially used brute force and liberty suppression to coerce the population and stamp out dissent in favour of the priviledged. Today, I read about China, about our investors moving their operations in China, about these condescending corporations; I can't get this idea out of my head, that the CCP and investors from all around the world are trying the same trick. "What if there is a more efficient system, a social organization more attuned to corporate operations instead of this old, kludgy and costly democracy?" I hear them asking. Corporations have gone supernational for many years, during the Cold War they had a political restraint on how much they could go without breaking ties and embrace the "enemy". Today there's no such thing; the world is a giant supermarket where these amoral entities can choose what best suits their business plans and are now voting with their feet. It's depressing to see a billion human beings made to bear part in a global experiment without benefiting from it, and to fear that sooner or later we'll be told to live by the same rules...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
No, I don't think so. It does point out the fact that MS is lying when it says it must censor to remain within the law, because there is no such law. If it said "policy" rather than law, it would be more honest. If it listed the forbidden words in its TOS, it would be in the open. Contrast Google, which when faced with legal orders to remove links to contentious sites brings up documentation of why they are doing it, and a link to another site which does have the information linked. Though Google has I think chickened out on its Google.cn version from even trying.
China has many journalists in prison on unspecified charges for breaking such non-laws. (Anything the govt doesn't want you to write about can be declared a "state secret", and you become a spy &/or traitor.) Unfortunately the US has lost all its moral authority to argue against that, and China knows it can do so with little fear of embarrassment, let alone real pressure.
OK, that's pretty funny.. Sadly, I think I'll probably live to see that day.
Ask your mom, kid. Then ask her where you got your eyes.
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make install -not war
Communism is a religion because it is based on faith, on unproveable principles. And most people who live under it are indoctrinated into it as part of a complex of beliefs, provable but never actually proven. It is taught in the vacuum it creates by destroying traditional religions, which it replaces. Which is why its trappings of ceremony, ritual, and heroic leaders is so effective. Communism, as it is practiced, is a religion - very different from the historical/economic/political theory developed by Marx and Engels, which was scientific (even if not entirely valid). Science itself is a faith, its consistent practice a religion, but that's a topic for another post, with its inevitable debates about Logical Positivism and inconsistency.
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make install -not war
How surprising: an Anonymous Coward with a coincidence theory, unspecified as usual, but lurking under cover of hyperbolic exaggeration of the truth. And couched in squawks of "crazy", as their own insane denial is threatened by the truth.
Here's one example: NBC, one of the 3 majority American media networks, is just a subsidiary of GE, probably the world's largest corporation. GE makes nuclear weapons for the US, and all kinds of weapons systems and components globally. They're no different from their competing networks, in priorities or the news they publish.
Another example: amidst the chorus of denials that Bush was intent on invading Iraq, regardless of which necessary pretext, a British memo was leaked revealing that Bush's administration was "fixing facts around the policy". Lying about intelligence to justify war. Other evidence was produced to show that the US and British military multiplied their bombing of Iraq before the war, to goad Iraq into reaction that could be spun to justify invasion. Sure, it got published in British media. But in the US, which has almost all the exposure, responsibility and costs of the invasion (other than dead Iraqis and their destroyed country), our media doesn't cover it. The litany of politically sensitive, but extremely interesting stories our media doesn't cover is endless. Instead we get 24/7 coverage of OJ, Michael Jackson, disppearing white girls. That's our government/media cartel at work.
Let's have your coincidence theory that covers this "business as usual", rather than just empty, Anonymous Coward rants.
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make install -not war
From http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=36 318/
The paper said that attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration," "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence."
I personally think that this is an awesome compromise. Blatently reporting to a user that they are being censored is probably the most damning thing they could possibly do. Chinese censorship gets by because most of the time the people don't know that it is happening. They know that they are censored, but the when and where is what is in question. So, is it right that MSN is dealing with that government? No, but at least it is doing some less then subtle poking at it by blatently telling people they are being censored and writing articles about it.