Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers Test New MS China Filter
earthbound kid writes "Rebecca MacKinnon at Global Voices Online has set up a test of Microsoft's censored blogs on MSN China (see previous Slashdot story) with screenshots. It seems that MSN rejected titling a new blog 'I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy' (in Chinese) because 'The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity.' MacKinnon managed to use a workaround and got a pro-freedom blog up, for the moment."
Why not use pornsites' tactics in here?
Like for example, "dmeocarcy" instead of "democracy", "frit psot" instead of well youknow, etc?
Why are you getting so hot and bothered about this?
I couldn't care less.
When words are outlawed, only outlaws will speak.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The United States censors more than China does, actually, so I don't know why it's not being reported as much when it happens in this country. Obviously, communist countries are going to censor your stuff. But when "democratic" countries do it, now that's the news that should be reported. What about those kids who got in trouble with the SS (secret service) when the sang a parody of a song, containing words "kill" and "clinton", etc? Bah.
Is that everyone knows you are censoring. It only truly works, when ala 1984 everyone is convinced that it isn't happening.
Welcome to the internet China, and Microsoft, claiming you are "just enforcing local laws" is just a bad a defence of the freedoms you enjoy as the traditional "I was just obeying orders defence".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
by drawing it to Microsoft's attention by posting it on Slashdot, one of the sites that most every Microsoft employee monitors for news.
Shhhhheeeyit.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I hope Chinese people do not use MSN blogger, the other bloggers must e checked too.
All we need to solve this problem is to convince China to broadcast Dallas reruns as a method of showing how decadent the American lifestyle is. Hey, it worked for Romania, didn't it? ;-)
More seriously, an AC a bit higher up had a good point. China is a sovereign nation and has full rights to what goes on inside their borders. We in the US may not *like* it, but their laws are their laws. No such laws exist to _allow_ for free speech. Now If the citizens decided to overthrow their government, then I'm sure you'd see the US right there to support them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There isn't a dynamic content filter available right now that's 100% accurate, or even close to it.
Turn off safe search on Images.google and search for pornography through any content filter you have available and see what gets through.
If I made a cartoon of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, or any of dozens of other fairy tales that are in the public domain, do you really think I'd get them released with Disney fighting me?
Is it that different if the government blocks free speech directly or allows companies to do it?
Wonder what happens if you try a title like "I love open source and hate microsoft"
...the bloggers were hungry for testing again.
MacKinnon managed to use a workaround....
/.ed.
Which promptly got submitted and
Who are the editors working for, exactly?
IF YOU DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH:
* You must have a HotMail account...
Isn't writing these instructions in English a bit like having drive-up ATM's in Braille?
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
...that they are actually contributing to the detriment of mankind.
:D
Oh wait I forgot about Internet Exploder...
But seriously, if China wants to censor a website, all they need to do is submit an article to slashdot with link to the site...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Honestly, if Chinese bloggers start using this method ie: "dmeocracy", "fredeom"...etc, are we going to see a NEW method of spam filtering come out of China from on high? Would that be considered action through despotism if it actually happened??
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Nice to see Gilmore's Law is still in effect.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hello. Go to the sofa and look for change.
Your Uncle Mildred is happy to see you.
Galvanize the subway on Thursday.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Sorry for the spelling, I had to get past the slashdot profanity filters.
The people, as a majority, on the other hand, seem to always be the outspoken critic that takes the back-seat. How can the people choose a government above them that doesn't correspond to reality? Simply because all government today is implemented in corporate form. I've looked across the Constitution for China, and it is verry sadenning to see it explicitly dedicate powers to various entities that perhaps could not be immediatly changed but by revolution, and worse is it bares false witness of itself by saying China is a "Socialist Republic" every other sentence.
United States, however, is separate from the United States of America because according to Title 28 Section 3002 15a, "United States" is a Federal corporation. And thus the struggle in America is just this; you have federal government and then you have a federal corporation called "United States" in that federal government. About 200 years ago, after the Constitution for the United States of America was written, it was declared by Benjamin Franklin to be a Republic simply by observing the text: not WE THE PEOPLE of the such-and-such STATE of state, but "the people" hold all authority and power and can assign duties to statesmen. Then, a certain "We, the People" emerged, separate from the people.
Cites,
Title 28, Section 3002
Title 28, Section 1746
without prejudice
For once Microsoft is not the bad guy here. I don't understand why people are faulting Microsoft for cooperating with a government that could keep them out of a huge market. It is not Microsoft that is deciding that these things should be censored, it is China. Microsoft is just trying to make more money, just like every other American corporation would do. It is China that is trying to keep a lid on ideas that would threaten the way of life for those holding power in that country. And for all of those out there who keep saying that you would never bow to such a request, that's only because you will never have the chance to. If somebody told you if you cooperated with the laws of a country you did not agree with you could make millions or billions more dollars, you would do it. And if you were a public corporation, you would have a responsability to your share holders to do it. If you want to fix the problem, stop talking about how Microsoft is so evil because they are suppressing free speech (which they are not, that's China) and start talking about how the Chinese government is denying peoples rights, and how people and governments can influence China to change.
After all "China is a sovereign nation and has full rights to what goes on inside their borders."
And don't you dare complain about Tibet or what happened to the chinese democracy movement.
Seriously, you disgust me. Claiming China (or rather those in power in China) can do whatever it wants because it' a sovereign nation (so what?) is really taking the easy way out and choosing not to care about your fellow human beings.
I've got one (pardon the translation):
m
The real horse is your mother.
Get it?
In spoken Chinese (or rather, the group of languages collectively called Chinese), each syllable is given one of four "tones". The meaning of the word changes if even one syllable is mis-toned. The whole language group is one big pun waiting to happen!
See http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_spoken.ht
for more details.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Can it synthesize meaning out of a collection of words appearing in context? Like, instead of writing "democracy" in the blog, could one simply write "a form of government based on popular vote?"
Or maybe go the 1984 route: everwhere you want to write the word "freedom" write "slavery" instead.
Oh, poor China is in trouble and the Chinese people are suffering. Don't worry, Americans to the rescue!! Aren't we all glad that we have Americans? They're the reason why everything good on the earth happens.
They may well be using simple rule based filtering today, but if the developers are remotely motivated they'll end up with something like Bayesian filtering built into the system. Then it becomes extremely difficult to create workarounds.
Deleted
America, for all its faults, is nothing at all like a totalitarian country.
The U.S.A. on the other hand is creeping closer and closer to becoming a police state.
They are obviously using smart filtering for profanity, and misflagged 'freedom' as a reference to free software.
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
It's not the least bit surprising the bloggers have just made a big deal out of what the rest of the technology community has known for a decade (China censors the internet, aka the Great Firewall) and society has known for decade(s) (China is a communist regime, hell-bent on censorship to protect itself).
What disappoints me is that nobody realizes how self-righteous we are. For example- there was an ABC news story recently about China sending in thugs to beat up people and chase them off their land when the government wants their land- which doesn't even really belong to them, anyway.
How horrid, right? Except the US government does virtually the same thing, and it's called Emminent Domain. Your house in the way of that shopping mall? Sorry. Your house belongs to the government now. And then a week later, the government sells it to that land developer who wanted to build the shopping mall. I suppose one could stretch it that we're more "civilized" about it, and spin it such that the law was originally intended to prevent one hick from standing in the way of society- but it's being used every day for exactly what it really was meant to do- give corporations a free lunch over the common man. In Boston, they razed entire neighborhoods, and split in half others, to build the northeast expressway- that hideous raised highway which is finally going away. There have been a lot of plans floated about what to do with all the prime downtown real estate this just created- everything except giving it back to the people it was stolen from in the first place. One of the more popular ideas was a park. Yeah. Great. That'll really console the people who were evicted from their own property by force.
Oh, but this is CENSORSHIP you say. Well, I tell you what? Mention a certain head of the executive branch's name in the same sentence as a chemically powered metal-launching device on the internet, and see how fast it takes for a polite gentleman from the government to knock on your door, and have a nice chat with you about not ever doing that again.
We proudly spout many of the very same things China does now. Secret searches, arrests, detentions? Check, check, and check. Government monitoring of what you read? Check, although the legislature seems to be getting around to working on that one.
My absolute favorite bit was when Rumsfield recently said that military spending for China was the 3rd highest in the world. Something like $50BN. Except guess what the US DoD budget is? THREE HUNDRED BILLION PLUS. We're #3 in the world per-capita, #1 in the WORLD total!
Please help metamoderate.
You are sorely, sorely, stupid. Have you missed the entire past 250 years of history?
"We hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT..." You should complete the rest. If you haven't memorized it already, go search for "Declaration of Independence" on Google.
Man is sovereign. God gave man their rights. Man gives some of their power to form a government. Their rights do not come from the government, and the created beast called government has no rights to turn on their master. Instead, it is the government who may have their powers revoked at any time by a displeased population.
Governments are instituted by men for one purpose - to PROTECT (not intrude) on the rights of men. When governments go beyond this and begin intruding on their rights, man has a right and a duty to overthrow the government.
In the US, we have a system of constant revolution. Every 4 years we choose a new "king "and every 2 and 6 years we have a brand new "parliament". Should the majority of the people become dissatisfied with their government, they rise up and rebel at the ballot box, and a completely new government is formed with completely new people and possibly new rules. Our bloodless revolutions have been occuring for quite some time now (with only minor hiccups that were quickly resolved), and is the model for the rest of the world.
The Taliban was a tyrannical regime. Thank God every day that they are fallen and scattered and busy trying to find a new place to sleep each night rather than a someone new to persecute and torture. The USSR was a tyrannical regime. Thank God that they are gone as well. China, North Korea, and every member of the "Axis of Evil" has their days numbered. One day, their people will rise up (perhaps with some assistance) and overthrow their governments and remake it in their own image.
You represent an ancient artifact of outmoded thinking. Your kind and your beliefs are so outmoded and so useless that we forget that there are people who still think like you. What do you think has happened to the world for the past 250 years? Why do you think there isn't a nation in Europe run by a dictator or king anymore? Why have the great dynasties of Asia fallen into a distant memory? Where are the conquerors and emperors and dictators of yester-year? Where is their glory and their armies and navies and power? They are in the trash-bin of history, along with the backward notion that they somehow have a divine right to oppress people. One by one, tyrannical regimes are replaced with peaceful democracies. The march has been constant since 1776, and it won't stop until every nation is free. It won't even stop then, as each nation has periodic peaceful revolutions to remind their governments that the people are not slaves but masters.
This revolution of the world hasn't been stopped or slowed at any time in its histories. Great Brittain, the super-power, couldn't stop it when it was contained by 13 small colonies, barely able to raise a navy. Hitler, in control of over half of Europe, couldn't stop it when it was in the hands of a small island-nation and an agricultural nationa in economical ruin and for all purposes disarmed. Imperial death troops from Japan couldn't stop it despite the fact that the nation guarding it was busy in two wars spread across the world. The great USSR couldn't even slow it down when it claimed minor victories in pockets of the world. Do you think it will be any different in China or Iraq or Syria or Iran or North Korea?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Hello? MS has just showed that they're willing to kowtow to China to prevent Chinese citizens from exercising free speech. So, if you're Chinese, using MS online services like this or hotmail is totally stupid, because when China starts asking for IP addresses and logs of your activity, you now know MS will give in. What the hell is the point of a workaround? Use services that don't have that kind of financial stake in the Chinese government if you want to say anything restricted!
--Chag
What about changing the plain text "freedom" or "democracy" to multi-part images of those words (or the characters that represent them in Chinese) that are lined up? Couldn't that get past their filters? Just a thought.
The Republic of China, whose capital is Taipei, has democracy and free speech. Those Maoist insurgents on the mainland are illegitimate. There is only One China!
To bypass the filters, rather than using text, why not just use a giant .png as your website?
(the following is an actual post after being censored and released for public consumption)
~April 17~
Last year, Zhyang and I went to visit New York in America, the land of xxxxxxx. We had a xxxxxx time! We learned so much about xxxxxxxx and xxxxxxx, we realized it was a xxxxxxx country. We even got so see the Statue of xxxxxxxxxx. I want to tell all my fellow citizens to xxxxxxxx as soon as they get to xxxxxxxx. There, a person will translate English for you and give you xxxxxx. They also know alot about Microsoft and their products, they even have legal copies to purchase and take home.
Come back next week and learn more about my trip to Amsterdam in Holland! You won't believe all the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx there!
-Yao
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
And when I quoted the requirements for instrumentatlities; oaths, affirmations, declarations, affidavits; tranceiver utilities:
What I intend to show is that if you are not in the United States, then you are in the United States of America. That USCODE is patent to United States, and it is only acknowledging that fact relative to the code; first citing United States requirements explicitly, then falling-through to acknowledge that it is chartered from the United States of America. Doesn't that seem strange to you? It's like there is a boat called the "United States" floating on the High Seas known as the United States of America; if you jump citizenship, then you're in the United States of America and all its sharks (the people). This explains all the admiralty flag law. I've found that the United States is foreign, not allowed anywhere near the United States of America, and is host to a corporation "United States" from within the Washington District of Columbia. Is Hawaii part and parcel to America?
To give some force that one United States and another United State of America are in admiralty, consider these two public notices...1, and 2. I'm just saying, it looks like fishy fishing. I didn't volunteer to be an employee or citizen of either the United States or the United States of America; I'm just born on soil at California; peace, love, groovy (not grovily).
without prejudice
That has got to be one of the funniest comments I've seen on /. for a while (and I read a fair majority of the articles posted).
Don't think America'll be running to China's rescue anytime soon though, think it'll take a revolution on China's part before that'll happen.
We all know what's going on here. Microsoft is not interested in Chinese bloggers. They are interested in selling copies of their OS and Office. They will be happy to sacrifice retail for government business (you have noticed this it true in the USA as well?).
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You didn't read. "United States" is being used as a noun, and is completely different from plural the United States. Is that I have greater comprehension that you lie that I am wearing a tinfoil hat? The USCODE authors have yet to acknowledge any error.
Then you start trying to define words other than their use in the Law of Nations. Then you try to redefine "federal" to somthing else. Use the etymology. When if I write "apple", it doesn't mean a computer; "Apple" is the construment for a computer that you are looking for.
Stop insulting for curses not written. I am not conveying anything than what is not already said and done; I'm only pointing that there is admiralty, equity, and law; If you can't comprehend the nature of a dispute, then you wouldn't know. A corporation is for limiting liability; if you think that is evil, then don't create one. I didn't say I hated corporations. If every word I've written is hate to you, then I hope not to offend. Think of me as an entomolgist; I just classify based on behavior; "United States" is a corporation, the United States approaches in admiralty, the United States of America is de jure. I didn't write anything with one element of hate.
I think it is becoming fashionable to the day for people to accuse eachother of hating corporations. I'm not the conspiracy theorist that you want me to be.
without prejudice
For the conservatives, it was not legally right to interfere with the Schiavo situation, but from their perspective it was morally right. I guess it works the other way, too.
Countries do not have any rights. Countries have powers granted to them by the citizens.
Luke-Jr
1st (in 2003) they give up the source code of windows, to their communist government...
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-990526.html
Now they work w/ the communist government to oppress the chinese people.
Another reason why open source products are NECESSARY in a free-thinking society.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Let's have some hypothetical fun and assume that there are some brave souls who live in, say, Beijing, and who decide to write about their views on Taiwan independence, or democracy, or freedom of speech, there are many ways to get around it -- just use different words! For instance, I'm sure someone would have no problem setting up a Chinese blog titled "Taiwanese People should decide their own fate", or "People are the master of their political future", or "Putting people in prison for their words is wrong" etc, I mean I can go on and on. Relax, Chinese people aren't dumb; they'll figure out myriads of ways to get around their stupid government's tyrannical rules.
I'm glad that the bloggers are blowing the whistle on this unholy alliance between Microsoft and the Chinese government. For those of you who are still cynical about the power of blogging, consider this: the struggle for individual freedom is being fought, not by politicians in Washington, but on a new frontline called "blogosphere".
Bloggers are everywhere, we are unstoppable. I've written a light-hearted piece titled "Invasion of Blogging Critters" on my blog at http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if anyone's interested.
Sun and Fun
But when google cooperates with the chinese government it's ok. Bunch of hypocrites.
Censoring speech is illegal in China. Read the chinese constitution. The 35th amendment guarantees a freedom of speech and assembly.
Microsoft's actions are entirely extralegal, but way to go pulling chinese law out of your ass. Next time, just shut up if you don't know what you are talking about.
Also, a lot of chinese people have tried to resist their government. They are dead. Microsoft will help the Chinese government cover up it's egregious violations of the chinese constitution. In other words, MS is going to help china kill it's citizens in secret.
And if you think that this kind of thing would be okay if it were legal, why? Are laws worth more than basic human rights?
You own Microsoft stock, don't you?
how humans love you
I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy
1 L0\/3 fr33d0m 0f 5p33ch, 6u/\/\4n r1667ts, 4nd d3m0cr4cy!!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can it be that the translation of love in Chinese might be considered profanity?
Does Chinese even have a absolute concept of love or is the word for word translations something like "great sex", "sensual sex", or "bang, bang, bang"?
China is a member of the United Nations, and as such has signed on to certain human rights, among these the right to free expression of opinion.
China thus seems to be in breach of this charter.
Further, being a Chinese citizen (or citizen of most countries) is not like a business contract entered into of free will. For this reason, it seems to me that Chinese (or other countries') laws that could fairly be judged as severely unjust, or sometimes immoral, should not be considered binding on individuals who are citizens through no choice of their own.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
in other news, americans willingly hate democracy
YAZBS
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
If Microsoft does it, it's bad, but not if Google does it.
you could try just putting your post up as a big image. using some good image compression, the file might not be terribly big. just mix some normal text in there too, and then it requires a human (or some really super advanced algorithm) to manually censor the article.
show the world the idiocy of the slashcode maintainers!
The "woraround" link in TFA led me to this link. That persons situation and the MSN situation in China is not about assasination threats or even the law, it is about intimidation to silence dissent. We all know that anyone with a handfull of crayons can intellectualy threaten Bush, but how does someone posting on a blog physically threaten the president anymore than graffiti on a wall?
"We've had 44 presidents, 4 assasinated while in office. 4 more who have had attempts on their life while in office. That's 18% of the the presidents so far."
Thanks for the interesting stats on what is obviously a dangerous but very rewarding job but other dangerous and rewarding jobs don't seem to require an army of SS officers. From my brief experience on the planet it seems to me that political leaders do more to succesfully incite violence than all the blogs ever writen combined.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Much like Dubya Bush, I guess nothing that Bill Gates and his evil empire will do in pursuit of money should surprise me any more.
Thousands of Americans have recently died overseas supposedly to spread democracy and freedom (although if we can get some oil at the same time, hey, that's just great!) but meanwhile M$ will readily stoop to this just to please the Chinese overlords so they can bring in a few more millions from a web portal.
Is this a new low for M$?
Is there nothing they will not do to get more money, no matter how repulsive?
TWR
just type these words '×ÔÓÉÑÔÂÛ ÈËÈ ÃñÖ÷' (the chinese translation of 'freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy') at www.baidu.com (a chinese search engine),you can find there are many chinese site containing these words.
'I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy'
Why does the author assume that democracy goes hand in hand with freedom of speech and human rights?
Democracy has time and time again show itself the worst enemy of the most basic human right of all, the right to keep the property your create for yourself. (see graph on: http://haxor.dk/articles/denmarksucks.html ).
Furthermore, most democracies in the western world have anti-racism laws. But if you can only speak the "right" things, that is non-racist and non-blasphemous words, then you dont' have freedom of speech. What will it be - you can't have you cake and eat it too.
Does anyone actually realize that not everyone in China is actually against what's happening there? Sure, there are those who desire freedom of speech, but there are also many who don't. Many of us are brought up in a society that advocates freedom of speech, but we should realize that there are Chinese citizens who have lived without it their whole lives and simply have no interest in having it.
I suppose you are the strawman that made two other posts insulting the person I had been writing with.
I am writing with a defined scope and you confess to not comprehend; I'll explain in further detail.
There was an earlier motion that was assumed upon some representatives from certain colonies apparently: it was titled, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" and it was written to quash the absent colonies with States of those colonies. Never is defined at this moment the United States, but the thirteen united States of America.
It wasn't until the Articles of Confederation, that we can see not a transmittal of the united States of America, but the United States having existed it transmitted through "We the People" to confederate the Declared united States of America into the "stile" as written "The United States of America"; this is without the arrival of "United States" of the United States as apparent in USCODE. I am trying to show, by documentation, each step of the way that leads upto today, that every phrase is accounted for and bears significance.
I am saying the United States existed before the Revolution; there are "We the People" of the United States and then there are the people. I am never writing about the Confederacy known as "The United States of America", but am writing about the United States that existed before "The United States of America" and was never directly
administered until the fatefull Civil War.
An example that we all can agree upon is there are two known persons in this Slashdot forum that are known as either "slashdot.org" or "slashdot".
"slashdot.org" is of Slashdot.org, and "slashdot" is of Slashdot.org. If you can't comprehend what I am saying, then I have nothing more to say.
without prejudice