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Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogger
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..."
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!
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?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
when companies who claim to take pride in living in a "free" country facilitate repression abroad.
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.
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.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
...on the same site? What happens if the Chinese govt. decides that a US blogger is violating their laws?
...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.
but keep bashing Microsoft as the personification of evil if it helps you forget these things:
Google Bows to Chinese Censorship
How about Yahoo:
Information supplied by Yahoo ! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison
and there is this on Cisco and China:
China's Internet: Let a Thousand Filters Bloom
Is this sig nificant?
The problem becomes where does the right to free speech stop? Slashdot has rules about posting; not many, but enough. Despite the fact that the Bill of Rights guarantees your right to say what you think, Slashdot is under no obligation to promote your ideas or encourage you to speak them.
For example, you may be a racist; you have a vaild right to be one and to say anything you like about any group that doesn't fit in your personal view of the world. Slashdot does not have to give you a forum for your ideas; in fact, it would probably be deluged with complaints about what you said and eventually forced to remove your words from the site. That's not censorship, but responsibility to the public. Because the individual has a right to free speech does not mean that society at large has to be forced to listen.
Do the Chinese people have a right to free speech? Inherently, yes. Does the Chinese government have the right to curtail that freedom? Yes, since they are the duly empowered government of the country. Do the Chinese people have to take this? No, in the sense that there are a 1.3 billion Chinese and I dare say the number in government is not that large. Of course, the government has the guns and bombs. In the end, we may rail against the injustice we see in China, but it is up to the Chinese people to change it, as we did when we were ruled by the British in the 18th Century.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Boy am I happy to be an American, but let's take a step back. We have certain rights and freedoms here in the USA, and we're proud of it. But we're a sovereign state and China is a different sovereign state. Should we be trying to impose our standards on another country? What if China pushed their agenda on us? YES, China's policies may be bad for the common Chinese person, but are we really encouraging those policies by doing business in China and abiding by Chinese law while doing so? Or are we helping to change the bad policies? All I'm saying is you can't be a missionary to a foreign country without GOING there.
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, 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.
The subbtle difference is that, above the countries and their specific laws, there are international laws and human rights.
Free speech is a human right. (It is stated in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and although it isn't a legally binding document, this right is reformulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (by coincidence also article 19) which is a legally binding document).
So it's not about enforcing american view in foreign countries (which is completly stupid, but is what the **AA are trying to do with the DMCA) or some specific weird views (your imaginary "tax are immoral" situation) in a specific country (tax must be paid in the USA), it's about trying to enforce fundamental human rights independently of local laws.
That's the difference between finding taxes immoral and fighting for freedom of speech.
(Note: Have no knowledge in internation laws except for the fraction we learned studying legal medicine)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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.
These kinds of issues are prevalent in many companies. You can't do business with a government most US citizens are trained to think is Evil, and NOT have incidents. MS just gets a lot of press because it's the evil empire, but the same disputes about the status of Taiwan, cryptography, sales tactics, labor useage, political affiliations etc. come up here and in my last job. In the end the agreement corporationst end to reach is to bow down to their government except when US law precluded it, in the interests of the almighty buck.
The way things are set up, maybe always have been, is that corporations are OBLIGATED to maximize shareholder value, at any cost...except they can't break US laws. No US law forbids MSN behavior, to not acquiesce to China is almost certainly going to cost money, thus you must acquiesce.
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 live in, rather than acting entirely to line their own pocketbooks.
It's not an ideal method of controlling corporations, but it's fairly effective nonetheless.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!