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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."
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!
...Microsoft will ban the word "monopoly"
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.
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.
The unfortunate truth is that neither fanatics nor capitalists care much about the concepts "human liberty" and "dignity".
This has nothing to do with IBM or Microsoft. Both are publicly traded corporations. They are not human beings with the ability to be moral. To expect the end result of a collection of managers and paper shufflers to be concern for human liberty and dignity stretches the imagination. If Congress cannot do it, even though they're supposed to, how the heck can an artificial corporate entity ever possibly hope to?
A private corporation might be able to, only because it has one or two actual leaders at the top. But public corporations do not. They might have figureheads like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but the inertia created by several layers of management prevent them from doing much more than giving speeches and approving of the quarterly report. And even if they did try to step in and take hands-on control, they're still employees able to be fired by the board of directors. And the board of directors can get replaced. The entire company can get sold. Ultimately no one is accountable at a public corporation.
Do you really expect every moral employee at Microsoft to quit their jobs over this? To you really expect every Microsoft stockholder to dump their shares over this? Do you know how many millions of shareholders there actually are? Have YOU checked that your pension or retirement fund doesn't have any Microsoft stock in it? And if it does, are you willing to dump all of it today?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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?
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".
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.