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."
Who writes the laws then?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
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
characters. But you can always post images of characters that can't be easily checked by a computer.
China is a sovereign nation. China is fully within her rights to say what her citizens are allowed to say on line and what they're not.
By your logic, Afghanistan under the Talibans was a sovereign nation, and they were fully within their rights to arrest, torture and shoot any woman who dared going outdoors without wearing a huge blue tent over themselves, or men without beards, or people who owned books. Similarly, Khmer Rouges had the right to deport people to the countryside and kill vietnamese, etc etc etc...
That's so stupid I think you're actually just a troll...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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.
The Secret Services job is to protect the President, his family, other high ranking officials and their families and foriegn dignitaries. They take their job seriously. They investigate ALL instances of possible threats because one of them just might be real. A guy I knew was pissed at a cop and said "I'm gonna kill the president!" The SS showed up at his door by the end of the week to find out if he was a threat or not. They found out he wasn't and left him alone.
So clarify what you mean by the kids or let the SS do their job.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Actually, there are 4+ meanings for every sound in Chinese. Depending on your inflection, the word "ma" can mean mother, horse, or hemp, among other things.
One would think that they'd actually have an easier time getting around the filters than their yingyu equivalents.
hang brain.
Don't be so unoriginal; make up your own characters.
... and secret agents in the restaurants listening to your every move.
Really, I think a lot of people who are against copyrights are simply too lazy to make up their own original stuff. Yes, I know, it's harder, but it's not theft of other people's ideas, either.
For example, many people complain about the extension of copyrights in citing Disney's efforts to retain the copyright to Mickey Mouse. Well, why shouldn't the Disney Corporation retain those rights? They developed and nurtured the character over decades. Why should people who had no stake in the character, who did not create it or make it grow, have the right to use it in, say, advertisements for some widget company?
And it's a lot different from China. This is an issue of political free speech, of dissent from their regime. If you were in China, you would not be allowed to say the regional equivalent of "Bush is Hitler!" We can say "Bush is Hitler" because this is a free country, and, quite frankly, because Bush isn't actually Hitler.
You might want to try visiting a totalitarian country someday. Try Cuba; a gorgeous tropical island, wonderful friendly people
America, for all its faults, is nothing at all like a totalitarian country. Those who say it is truly have no clue of what life under tyranny is really like.
D
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?
Um, yes, yes, and yes?
I don't know where you've been, but every time Disney releases a new movie to the theaters or video, there are a large number of knockoff movies that hit the streets around the same time.
It's the same thing with Barbie dolls. Hugh numbers of companies make a fortune off of selling cheap knockoff products that parents purchase because they don't know any better (or are cheap bastards).
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
Why the sudden change of heart? I don't seem to remember THAT little detail stopping US in the past 15 years while being the world's bull^H^H^H^H "policeman" and "taking charge" in Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq... Or perhaps it's because the Chinese are strong enough to seriously bite the US in the ass that all of a sudden people stop to think? I think a little honesty is needed here.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"U+6c11 U+738b" most certainly is not pinyin - it is a pair of references to Chinese characters in the Unicode character set. The pinyin following them was intended to tell people which characters they were without having to look them up.
To be precise, the first was the same min2 as in min2 zhu3 "democracy", while the second, wang2, is a character identical to the zhu3 of "democracy", except that it lacks one tiny stroke at the top. The idea was that this would be as close conceptually as you could come to misspelling a word within the Chinese writing system, see?
(If Slashdot would only get with the 20th century and permit Unicode in postings - or even just parse HTML entities instead of stripping them - then this sort of misunderstanding would never happen...)
China is also part of the U.N. and, as a member, subscribes to the United Nations Declaratio on Human Rights.
And, as a result, they should not be censoring their own citizens right to speak freely, etc.
Google for "United Nations Declaration on Human Rights" some time, read it, and then look at what is espoused in that document and what member countries of the United Nations are actually DOING. Particularly, countries that are members of the security council.
What is "said" and what is "done" (or not done) are two differen things.
Microsoft should not be assisting the Chinese government in this, even remotely, and the fact that they are, speaks volumes to me about what Microsoft management things is right and proper, ethical and "good for all".
Either that or money. Sad but true.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
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.
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.
And by your logic our form of government is the only valid form. Every other type of government is wrong and we should put considerable political pressure on them or just invade them right out and make it all better with 'democracy'. The grandparent isn't a troll, he's stating a fact. If you live in a country you live by the laws of that land. If you don't like the laws then move. I realize that moving isn't always possible for any number of reasons (financial, government, etc...), but that's life. The United States isn't, or shouldn't be, the big brother for every country on Earth.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for free speech, I just don't think we have a right to put our nose in China's internal affairs and tell them that they're wrong.
Actually no. The Taliban was left to it's own devices to systematically oppress women including all the horrible things you mentioned (as well as many you didn't). The US did nothing until the terrorists that they were harboring decided to attack us.
Genocide in Rwanda, and the US does nothing.
Genocide in the Sudan and the US does nothing (even though we fully admit that it's genocide this time around).
Zimbabwe is systematically destoying the homes of the poorer classes who didn't vote for the president in the last election. The US is doing nothing.
Saudi Arabia is listed as a violator of human rights by our own government, but we aren't doing anything.
The US has used the 'they are a soverign nation, and we have no right to intercede in their affairs' argument when it suits them, but use the opposite argument when there is something worth taking.
--Chag
> Your house belongs to the government now.
After you get paid for it.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
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.
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?
By your logic, Afghanistan under the Talibans was a sovereign nation, and they were fully within their rights to arrest, torture and shoot any woman who dared going outdoors without wearing a huge blue tent over themselves, or men without beards, or people who owned books.
So shall we just overlook the fact that the US government installed and supported the Taliban regime until they became inconvenient, at which point they were removed?
And don't try to claim that the US invaded Afghanistan to save the women, it was because they wanted to run a gas pipeline through Afghanistan to the coast and make a lot of money for the old boys network that runs America.