Slashdot Mirror
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!
I have no problem with not pissing off the chinese. Have you ever seen a Bruce Lee movie? I ain't f'n with those peeps.
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
A lot more information on this story can be found at Rebecca MacKinnon's RConversation.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
when companies who claim to take pride in living in a "free" country facilitate repression abroad.
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords!
Rational discussion may now resume.
"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," the representative said.
1 9newworldofwork.asp
I am sure George Orwell's '1984', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', and even Bill Gate's 2005 article 'The New World of Work' would be banned as well.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/05-
Quote: "Improving personal productivity: One consequence of an "always-on" environment is the challenge of prioritizing, focusing and working without interruption. Today's software can handle some of this, but hardly at a level that matches the judgment and awareness of a human being. That will change -- new software will learn from the way you work, understand your needs, and help you set priorities." (Bill Gates 5-19-05)
Unless you live in China.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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?
The articles insn't really very clear on exactly how the blog was removed from MSN Spaces.
Was it simply the case that Chinese IPs were blocked from accessing it, or in fact was the entire blog simply removed from MSN Spaces altogether.
Either way is shameful, but if private companies begin to censor the web for everyone, worldwide, at the (implied) behest of autocracies, where will that leave us?
May the Maths Be with you!
They have. As an example, in Japanese it's now quite common to break down the (Cbinese) characters of a sensitive term into its component parts where possible and write them with separate characters, or write it with characters that can be read the same way but which have a different literal meaning.
Nothing could be more true!
...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.
Problem is Microsoft has always had trouble obeying the laws and avoiding illegal practices in the US and Eruope so why now suddenly start being all law abidding in china?
Because China is soon to be one of the worlds largest markets, and no company can afford to lose its foothold there, lest their more unscrupulous competitors use the China advatage to squeeze the life out of them.
Besides that, secretly, corperations love the Chinese Government. It's essentially a kind of facist state, which by and large means a corperate dreamland where workers have no rights, regulations are lax, corruption is the accepted means of business and there is stil a large enough rich people at the top to ensure that luxuries can be sold. In the case of China, these rich people often outnumber entire countires in former markets.
I fully expect unscrupulous corperations to be hugely successful in China. So successful, that the Chinese model will be lauded as superior, and we will all be pressured to convert to it, becoming dictartorships instead of democracies.
Greed is Good.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
Is anyone else reminded of the Amatuer Action BBS prosecution? Back in 1994 a California man and his wife ran a for-pay BBS (yes dial-up) with downloadable porn. A Tennessee postal inspector downloaded some porn from them and when he got it, he shipped THEM some child porn and then charged them with obscenity and had them extradited to Tennessee. If I recall correctly, they were convicted and the man at least served time. All for material that was perfectly legal in California but apparently not in Tennessee.
At the time there was a lot of concern about the net becoming regulated by the laws of the most restrictive state. Funny how that seems to be the case nowadays, except it is the corps doing the 'regulation' and not the governments per se.
(PS, for some reason there is very little record of the whole Amatuer Action BBS fiasco in google's database, very odd for what was such a big deal at the time.)
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Well yes.. opression will happen again.. and again.. as people do not seem ever to listen to the first signs of trouble.. and wait until it is too late.
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?
The longer that Microsoft manages to stay in China, the longer the Chinese military will have to put up with bluescreens (redscreens?). Works for me.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
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.
Move along folks. There's nothing to see here. The user deliberately terminated their post for humor value. No government, private or foreign agency was involved in the truncation of the parent post, or for the poster's completely voluntary relocation to Syria.
Go back to your homes, watch some football and have a nice fast food meal, secure in the knowledge that whatever the government does, it's for the purpose of protecting your rights and ensuring your safety from TERRORIST!!!!!!!
9/11, 9/11, You all must remember 9/11.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
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 ]
1st 4+ post: That's just business..(Score:5, Insightful)
2nd 4+ post: No, it isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are worng, there was a discussion similar to this one.
My city: Barcelona.
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.
It's not bad form to compare Communist China with National Socialist Germany. Both are non free countries which engaged in systematic censorship and murder.
It is bad form to co-operate with either and Bill Gates should be ashamed. Richard Nixon's policy of engagement was more a case of Machiavelli's help the weaker of two enemies than co-operating with a murderer. With the stronger of the two gone, the remaining enemy should be shunned. Co-operation with China today is a classic example of selling the rope to your executioner. Bill Gates, by shutting down a US cite at China's request, is saying that he's willing to subject US citizens to Chinese publication law. That does not make Bill Gates a murderer, but it does make him someone who's willing to violate your rights to help a lawless regime.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I find it so odd. If a US company that does business with a foreign government ignores the laws in that company it gets nailed for being an all powerful multi-national evil mega-corp unless you don't agree with that countries laws?
I happen to agree that Microsoft should not have pulled it but I often considered US centric in my opinions. How should a company act when faced with a country that doesn't respect the core values of that companies home country?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Microsoft... Where Don't you wan't to go today?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Secondly, what do you actually know about whether the Chinese feel free to speak their mind? I suspect you've never actually been there and spoken to ordinary Chinese. I have, many times, and I can testify that they are not in the least afraid of having an opinion or speaking it in public
Where, when, with what group of people? As someone who's been to Shanghai, I can tell you that my girlfriend and her friends FEAR talking about chinese politics. When you you bring up subject that even remotely come close, they just shake their head and say it's best not to talk about it. When I ask her why at least, she said "I don't want trouble, I want to be a normal citizen without troubles".
Ya...she really likes to speak her mind freely. Sounds like total oppression to me!
Life is not for the lazy.
I remember back some years ago during Apartheid, Polaroid got raked over the coals for selling products to the government of South Africa for making ID cards. All they did was sell product to a government and that got them accused of facilitating oppression. Now, Microsoft is an active and willing partner in oppression and the reaction in the mainstream media doesn't approach that earlier firestorm.
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.