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
corps. will do business. This is a good thing. Peeps will get around it. If its not MSN they will find someone to do a better job (corp.). People will get around that too.
Personally, I don’t see why this makes Microsoft so terrible. Who are we (or who is Microsoft) to say that China doesn’t have a good thing going? Just because you and I like our freedom of speech and freedom of information, doesn’t make it inherently better than censorship and communism. Most Europeans probably think we’re crazy for having a government that censors nudity out of television.
reaper—for the millionth time—this has nothing to do with the law. It is not illegal in China to use those words. Microsoft is kissing the government’s ass with extra-legal concessions so that it can get more business, and that’s it.
NO FREE SPACE AT MSN IN COMMUNIST CHINA
UPDATE 06/17/05: Go to Global Voices Online and read the post, Screenshots of Censorship, if you want to set up a MSN Spaces blog in Chinese and be able to use “forbidden” words like “freedom” and “independence for Taiwan”… [Via Gus Van Horn’s…
“I like our freedom of speech and freedom of information, doesn’t make it inherently better than censorship and communism.” – Lee
It’s not the speech and freedom of information that make our system inherently better. It’s the millions of corpses piled up to keep communist regimes in power that make our system inherently better. The freedom of speech and freedom of information are just part of the whole.
Tom: Bill Gates donates billions of dollars through his foundation to charity. He is FAR from being evil and without morals. Before accusing somebody of being a heartless bastard, look closer.
Those who have noted that the censorship is not Microsoft’s fault are correct. It’s not the only company doing business with China that is doing it. Google amongst countless others face similar charges: http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/china_internet_2524.jsp. Post Tiananmen, the world piled into China with billions of dollars of foreign investment. The justification was that foreign investment would lead inevitably to a more open society. This Microsoft furore is simply one reminder among many–defection of a Chinese diplomat in Australia last week, a Singaporean reporter under arrest for spying, hundreds of internet posters under arrest for writing on prohibited subjects, threats to invade the democratic island of Taiwan, the list goes on–that so far this has not worked. China is as repressed as it was a decade ago, even though a growing minority are better off. It’s important that people discuss this and try to find ways around the censorship–it’s in the best interests of the Chinese.
And the funny thing is, many of the people complaining here are using computers and other things Made in China.