Some Chinese bloggers have said that they were able to set up Chinese language MSN Spaces blogs using the “forbidden” political words. To clarify the situation I tried to set up my own freedom loving Chinese blog. I went into the MSN Spaces Chinese interface at: http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=zh-cn, and tried to set up a blog titled 我爱言论自由人权和民主, which means “I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy.”
SCREENSHOT DETAIL:
I got the following error message: 您必须输入您的共享空间标题。标题不能包含禁止的语言，例如亵渎的语言。请键入一个不同的标题。Which means: “You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.”
SCREENSHOT DETAIL:
I guess Microsoft considers “human rights,” “democracy,” and “freedom of speech” to be profanity.
This censorship can be circumvented with Bennet Haselton's Freedom Hack Instructions. Using the instructions I was successful in creating the Chinese blog called “I love freedom of speech, democracy, and human rights.”
Portnoy in Taiwan has translated the instructions into Chinese.
FURTHER UPDATE:
I played around with the freedom & democracy blog I created through the hacking instructions and was able to create posts with politically sensitive headlines like “don't forget June4th 1989″ and “Falungong” without trouble:
So the filtering of MSN Spaces China appears limited to the blog's title only. Titles of individual posts and within the body of posts do not appear to be filtered.
71 comments
Mike,
Your words smack entirely too much of the simpering folk who feel anything attampted by the USA or any of its residents that tests evil intent elsewhere in the world is probably going to offend someone.
Who cares?
Time for people to stand up and shout about the disgrace of Micro$oft and their pandering to the Chinese.
Duke of DeLand
What’s the point, mike? Well, if you look at the top left of this page, you’ll get a clue:
“Global Voices is an international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to help make these voices heard.”
Did that help? :-)
Yes, mike, I too welcome our new ChiCom Overlords!
“What’s the point of testing whether you can do it?”
Because now she can tell somebody how to bloody well do it themselves. Which she did
Sheesh.
I for one am glad that Rebecca performed this test. For one thing, it is useful to know how far Microsoft has collaborated with a tyrannical regime. For another, it is useful to know that freedom-loving Chinese people can find a way around the wall that Microsoft and their tyrant friends have built. Shameful.
Are there any known repercussions for getting around the title filters?
Have there been any other Chinese spaces created that include the “forbidden” words, either in the title or the body?
Dang! Out of my mouth and straight into your brain! I suggested that someone might try this a few days back and here’s the result. That’s one tight OODA loop–well done.
MSN/China Censors
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/?p=238
…
What we are trying is to say freely, but if what we want to say is still be prohibited by the GFW, and the words cannot be heard by those who we want to speak to, isn’t it meaningless?
I guess that individual MSN space might be blocked by the some certain institution soon.
They need a code word that can spread and everyone will know it means Freedom. I suggest Linux or Apple or perhaps Taiwan or Tibet if someone wants to be daring.