Broadening China's year-old crackdown on Internet porn to censor nonporn content as well has begun raising new hackles, since Microsoft reportedly agreed to obey certain political and social content restrictions at the behest of its Chinese partner, Shanghai Alliance Investment.
The question arose at the news that Chinese webloggers using a new Microsoft messaging/blogging service were getting automatic, bright-yellow warnings to delete "the prohibited expression" whenever they posted messages with titles that included "democracy," "liberty," "human rights," or "capitalism," among other terms.
Published reports this week indicated that the limits to which Microsoft agreed have provoked new debate on threats to free speech when a software emperor does business with and agrees to the political sensibilities of the world's largest remaining Communist regime.
"There's a spectrum here," said Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society founder Jonathan Zittrain to the Los Angeles Times. Berkman wrote a recent report on Chinese Internet censorship. "It's one thing to provide a regime with steel, another to provide bullets, and another to serve as the executioner."
Microsoft, for its part, has argued that they are doing nothing more than adhering to local laws, with disadvantages outweighed by the benefits users get from Microsoft services and products. Company spokesmen have told reporters that even with the Chinese content restrictions, Microsoft helps millions communicate, which the company considers the key point.
The company also pointed out that its home country, the U.S., blocks several words used in content titles like "whore" and "pornography" when used by American bloggers using Microsoft applications.
China, of course, blocks its citizens online from accessing pages or receiving email on subjects the regime considers sensitive, which encompasses a very broad spectrum as it is and also invites police activity for repeated violations at least—and charges of threatening "national security" at most.
