Microsoft partners with China on censorship

Microsoft joins the bandwagon of MNCs co-operating with China on internet censorship. Others already part of the internet propaganda system include Google and Yahoo!.

Apparently Altavista has been blocked by China because it has yet to join, but the article I got that from was written in 2002 so who knows, they would be missing out on a big market if they don't sign up on China's terms.

Taipei Times reports:

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp's new China-based Web portal get a scolding each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as "democracy," "freedom" and "human rights."

"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says. However, the restrictions appear to apply only to the subject line of such entries. Writing them into the text, with a more innocuous subject heading, seems not to be a problem.

Hmm, talk about big brother.

Ok, so if people are sitting at their computers trying to type the word "freedom" - not even in the political sense... e.g. "my folks aren't letting me go out with my friends tonight, I wish I had more freedom!" and they'll get a popup saying they're not allowed to use the word freedom. Then even the apolitical teenager may wonder why the hell I can't enter the word "freedom" without bloody Microsoft scolding me off as if they were my parents?

Also, what if you wrote "d e m o c r a c y" or "D3M0CR4CY"?

Noting that this little slap on the hand message only applies to the subject line.

Seriously though, this is one of the more stupid internet filtering techniques I have come across.

The other ones have been quite clever though, having thousands of employees sitting at computers deleting "unacceptable" posts on the ChinaDaily forum, filtering out searches on Tibet, Taiwan, democracy, freedom, Falun Gong, pornography...

EastSouthWestNorth has an entertaining and educational list of filtered searches in China.

It's really quite amusing, I urge you to go through them. I noticed they blocked the word "condom" as well, but that seems to be counter-productive to the whole campaign against AIDS... how are people suppose to find information on safe sex? Does the CCP provide sex-education?

Anyway, back to the Microsoft article:

The Chinese government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to ban access to material or Web sites deemed subversive.

A search on Google for such topics as Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the banned group Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama or the China Democracy Party inevitably leads to a "site cannot be found" message.

The consequences of defying government limits can be severe: At least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed subversive.

Internet-related companies are obliged to accept such limitations as a condition of doing business in China. And government-installed filtering tools, registration requirements and other surveillance are in place to ensure the rules are enforced.

The government has recently demanded that owners of Web sites register with authorities by June 30 or face fines.

So it seems recently the CCP have been paranoid about internet and blogs, which have become rather high profile ever since the 2004 U.S elections. They're probably realising that they can try their hardest to filter out stuff they don't like, but there will always be bits leaking in... they have left out heaps of words which could be used in searches to defy their purposes. However, the CCP have proven to catch on fast. Government run websites and forums such as ChinaDaily and People's Daily shows just how savvy they are at using technology to push their propaganda. It probably doesn't matter too much then if a few stray websites manage to leak through the system.