CHINA: Microsoft Shuts Down Blog Potentially Offensive to China
by Kathy Chen and Geoffrey Fowler, Wall Street Journal
January 5th, 2006
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13038
Microsoft Corp. has shut down a popular Chinese-language blog that has run
edgy content potentially offensive to Chinese authorities, amid China's
continuing efforts to control information on the Internet.
Microsoft's MSN Spaces, which lets users create their own websites, known as
weblogs or blogs, closed down the blog, written by Chinese journalist Zhao
Jing under the penname Michael Anti, on Dec. 30.
The site had criticized the government's firing of top editors at a
progressive Beijing newspaper late December. Efforts to access the site from
inside and outside China trigger a notice that "the space is temporarily
unavailable.''
Brooke Richardson, MSN's lead product manager, confirmed in a statement
Thursday that Mr. Zhao's site "has been blocked at this time.'' "MSN is
committed to ensuring that products and services comply with global and
local laws, norms, and industry practices in China," the statement said.
"Most countries have laws and practices that require companies providing
online services to make the internet safe for local users. Occasionally, as
in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique
elements.''
Chinese regulators' efforts to retain control over information flow across
the country's growing number of Internet news sites and blogs are putting
foreign technology companies in a dilemma, as they seek to balance business
interests and ethical issues like free speech.
In some cases, the Chinese government has issued rules aimed at tightening
its control over the Internet: It is now shutting down blogs and other sites
that have failed to register with local authorities. Last fall, Beijing
issued rules prohibiting bloggers and other online publishers from posting
content that "goes against state security and public interest.''
But industry executives say self-censorship is also widespread among both
Chinese and foreign players, who don't want to risk a revocation of their
operation licenses. "Everyone is very careful. This is what you do in
China,'' says Anne Stevenson-Yang, a partner of Blue Bamboo Ventures, a
China-based Internet company.
Some big technology companies have drawn fire for accommodating the Chinese
government. Cisco Systems Inc. has been criticized by free-speech advocates
for selling equipment to China that helps censors block Web sites. Cisco has
said it doesn't participate in government censorship but acknowledges that
its equipment can be used to filter access to Web sites.
Human-rights activists have condemned Yahoo Inc. for helping Chinese police
identify a Chinese journalist who allegedly used his Yahoo email account to
relay to an overseas Web site the contents of a secret government order. The
journalist is now serving a 10-year prison sentence. (See related article.1)
Yahoo has said that it seeks to "balance legal requirements against our
strong belief that our active involvement in China contributes to the
continued modernization of the country.''
Before being shut down, Mr. Zhao's blog, which featured his sarcastic and
bold commentary on Chinese political and media developments, attracted more
than 7,000 visitors each day on average. In December, he criticized the
government-mandated shakeup at the Beijing News, according to his posting,
in which he urged Beijing News readers to cancel their subscriptions.
This isn't the first time Mr. Zhao, 30 years old, has had a run-in over his
blogs. A former reporter for the 21st Century Global News, a liberal
newspaper that was closed by authorities in 2003, Mr. Zhao first set up a
blog on Blog-City, owned by a Scottish company. That site was blocked after
he commented on an internal conflict at another Chinese newspaper.
Mr. Zhao declined to comment on the shutdown of his MSN Space, saying he was
seeking clarification from Microsoft.
Blogging has quickly become a mainstream activity in urban China. Duncan
Clark, managing director of technology consultancy BDA China Ltd. in
Beijing, estimates that the number of Chinese blog sites is about three
million and is doubling every five months or so, in line with the global
rate.
Unlike the U.S.'s feisty online political discussions, most of China's
bloggers "mainly write about their own lives,'' says Fang Xingdong, founder
of Chinese blog portal Bokee.com.
Popular sites include one started by two college students calling themselves
the "Back Dorm Boys'' and featuring videos of them lip-synching to songs by
the Backstreet Boys. Now they perform their act on Chinese television, too.
But some Chinese bloggers have become political, especially the increasing
numbers of professional journalists who post their field notes on their
blogs, even if the information gets edited out of newspapers. Largely
because of blogs, news of everything from riots to excess formaldehyde in
Chinese beer now spreads despite government attempts to limit discussion.
To stop this sort of activity, China's censors, estimated by free-speech
activists to number as high as 30,000, employ a sophisticated net of
filters. Typing forbidden phrases such as "human rights'' and "democracy''
into some automated blogging systems, including MSN Spaces, will net only an
error message.
Chinese web portals have their own in-house censors who work with government
minders to take down posts that are deemed inappropriate, and sometimes
block entire websites.
Many Chinese bloggers say it is difficult for them to find a reliable
blog-server host because a bad post by another blogger using the same system
can cause the government to block access to the entire server.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a research fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center
for Internet and Society, says her attempts to set up blogs via MSN Spaces
with content that might irritate Beijing - such as references to "Tibetan
independence'' - have been blocked or removed.
"In the short term, [acquiescing to China] gets you into a market you
perhaps couldn't be in otherwise,'' she says. But "in the long term, is this
good for your corporate global image and your image in China, that you go
along with censorship?''
Microsoft currently has two joint ventures and more than 900 employees in
China. MSN, its online-services division, has enjoyed strong growth in
China, with the number of its Messenger users jumping 25% to nine million in
four months after the Chinese version was launched in May 2005, and the
number of visits to MSN Chinese-language websites up 133% over the same
four-month period, according to Microsoft.
--Cui Rong and Robert A. Guth of The Wall Street Journal contributed to this
article.
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