Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Microsoft censor sensitive words

Rebecca MacKinnon has a passionate response to Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble's defence of Microsoft's filtering of politically sensitive words on MSN China.

"I lived in China for nine years straight as a journalist, and if you add up other times I've lived there it comes to nearly 12. I don't know what students and professors Scoble met with, and what context he met them in. But to state that Chinese students and professors have an "anti-free-speech stance" is the biggest pile of horseshit about China I've come across in quite some time. And believe me, there are a great many such piles out there these days."

US companies have been helping to build the great firewall of China for some years. It's good business for them. Pious public relations about defending American free speech values is just that - pious empty PR.

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