Update (12/5): New stuff!
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What does the head-geek-in-charge think he’s doing? Censoring Chinese bloggers just like communist China does? What goes on here?
Microsoft’s MSN Spaces is censoring bloggers. American blogger Rebecca MacKinnon has the scoop:
On December 16th I created a blog and attempted to make various posts with politically sensitive words. When I attempted to post entries with titles like “Tibet Independence†or “Falun Gong†(a banned religious group), I got an error message saying: “This item includes forbidden language. Please delete forbidden language from this item.â€
However I was successful in posting blog entries with non-controversial titles, but with politically sensitive words in the text body. For instance, a blog post titled “I love you†had “Tibet independence†in the text body, and a post titled “I am happy†had “Falun Gong†in the body, like so…
Bill, your innovative work with the personal computer was revolutionary and made possible by living in a country that allows a free market system and free expression of ideas. Pay attention to what’s going on in your company and stop the censorship now!
Related:
- How Beijing Censors the Blogosphere
- China’s web censors struggle to muzzle free-spirited bloggers
- Chinese Blogosphere: Year in Review
Everyone here knows the Scobleizer, right? Oh…just us business bloggers? OK. He works for Microsoft and adds his views to the discussion.
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Wow! Now if Tom Cruise can drag Bill Gates into the L. Ron Hubbard land of “other reality” we can watch Microsoft swallow itself whole.
He makes way too much money off of China to do anything about it.
Bill, your innovative work with the personal computer was revolutionary…
… in the area of creative manipulation (alternating with defiance) of the legal system, but certainly not in technological innovation.
I hear Google is coming out with its own operating system…
I am against this kind of censorship. I’d move my blog if I were her.
This is old news. And Microsoft is hardly the only offender in this camp. It has been reported in the past that Google has worked with the Chinese to stop certain items from showing up in searches when the searches originate in China. It has also been reported that Cisco sells routers and other equipment to help the Chinese government find these people.
With regard to Bill Gates, “innovative” is not a word I’d attach to him. He is or has been very ambitious. But innovative is not something I’d credit him or his company.
Thanks for invaluable input, “Grump.”
slashdot and digg has plenty of stories archived about American companies helping the Chinese govt censor the Internet. The list is long and shameful.
A brief but enlighting article on censorship, China and the almighty dollar.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051220-5809.html
Microsoft has to satisfy the China customer.
I wonder if it was just to be taken off of Chinese access areas and there was a “mistake” made.
Bill Gates innovative? Nah! Master manipulator of the justice system? Yes! Really rich-as in the amount of personal income he is reported to have could easily re-build the City of New Orleans? Yes. Revolutionary? Nah! That one person could amass such an amount of money is evolutionary.
As Gates and his wife as well as Bono were on the Time cover, wonder what Bono has to say about this…
La Shawn
I hate to poop on Rebecca’s scoop, but I wrote about Gates’ scandalous dealings with the Chinese last August…
http://www.theipinionsjournal.com/2005/08/for-some-doing-business-in-china-means.html
Grumpy is dead on. Bill Gates capitalized marvelously on the work of others, turning those ideas into a hugely successful enterprise. He earned his money and gets high marks for dogged determination. But innovative? Give me a break. I’ve suffered under the many versions of MS technological failure for years. Billy’s products are pathetic. Whenever possible I’m off into the Unix or Mac worlds, places where things actually work right most of the time.
Off the subject a bit, but perhaps relevant tangentially, I recall someone saying that Bill Gates has fewer friends than Saddam Hussein. Nice legacy for Billy, being a purveyor of lousy products and being a world-class jerk at the same time.
I don’t know if anyone’s told you this lately, but you’re really boring. – Admin
What this proves, again, is that it’s “all about the benjamins” for Gates. He’s in it to expand his empire and global reach. If it means cooperating witht he Chinese govt. in the manipulation and terrorizing of its own people, well, they’re not his people, right? His generosity and worries about human suffering only extend as far as it doesn’t affect his bottom line.
And RedBeard, spot on about Microsoft products.
I’ve read Rebecca’s work ever since the North Korean train wreck/explosion incident. She’s what the media should strive to be like. Her intention seems to be to get the facts and report them. Anyone like Bill or his company censoring her stuff is something I can only judge as WRONG.
BTW, I’ve not used GOOGLE anymore ever since it was pointed out to me that if you type in “failure” and then hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button you’ll get the President Bush’s biography on the Whitehouse.gov’s website. It’s been over a year and I just tried it again and it went somewhere else. But until I hear an apology from Google, I’ll just PASS on using them.
Bill Gates what he trying to pull sounds kind of rotten to me
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