Yes this doesnt surprise me that the Chinese government demands censorship what does send chills up my spine is that MSN and Google go along with this crap making them as oppressive as the govt's themselves. If GWB and his patriot act extension passes do we look forward to the same with terms like neocon, occupiers and other definitions we use to describe our illegal war?

Something tells me that Chinese users will find foreign sites with those forbidden words. Setting up foreign operations is possible as well. Many people attend colleges overseas.

And 9down.com is a Chinese website much like this one with software updates, news items and a place for member comments.

Heck, we even got our local Russian who does computer work and constructs homepages. He's beyond the reach of the KGB in sunny California...

Originally I was thinking that these companies should stand up for free speech; I then realized that China doesn't give a crap if Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo arn't available to its citizens. If these companies choose to boycott China, it will make no difference.

By just self-censoring and allowing them selves to operate in China, these companies are assisting free speech and are able to make money. The censoring of a few words will not stop people from expressing their opinion. If people in China are able to blog and share their opinion (with some odd word choices), free speech will exist greater than it is now. Ideas will be spread within China, concepts such as Democracy and Human Rights; more people will become aware. Maybe someday people having this knowledge will have some impact and China will open up more.

""This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity" - gotta love it when freedom and democracy are profane words

"In March, the Chinese government mandated that all Web sites based in China must be registered with the government in order to stay online. Those not registered by the end of this month will be shut down." - lets see them TRY to shut down all the underground sites that are smart enough to use IP masquerading and other nafarious means while ruinning their websites on their home computer.

what it comes down to is the internet is a global community, governed by noone. You dont like the information superhighway, then dont drive. It is my pet peeve when ANY government thinks they can set some of their morals or rulesets on the global community. The USA is the biggest offender - boo hiss to the usa. united states of airheads!

Sucks to live in China.

The server for msn china is in china if they do not comply you think the chiniese government would even hesitate to shut it down maybe three seconds tops.

Excerpt from
"The Principles of Newspeak"
An appendix to 1984
Written by : George Orwell in 1948

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing. The leading articles of the Times were written in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist, It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile, it gained ground steadily, all party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of Newspeak dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the dictionary, that we are concerned here.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

To give a single example - The word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispenses with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly created words, would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary, and the C vocabulary. It would be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories.

It truly amazes me that so many people actually believe that Corporate America operates under a democratic principle. :) Their only loyality is to the almighty dollar and if anything gets in the way of this it is done away with. Many of these companies have many employees, and growing, over in China. It is the very fact that China has a very poor human rights record that these moved much of their operation overseas since they don't have to worry about actually paying them a real wage or any benefits at all.

Lots of shortsighted people here...I can't really blame the companies for operating under those laws. They might be able to do more good in the future than harm by complying. If the Chinese government does open up, even a little, having already in place searchengines, blogs, etc. will allow quick opening up of ideas. I consider it more *waiting* on the part of the companies, and seeing if/when the government will be ready to remove such censorship.

I find it funny though with all these strong-headed Americans. Clean up your media first - it brainwashed you into wanting a war in Iraq. Most Canadians living in the US wanted a war in Iraq too, but most Canadians and Americans living in Canada(with Canadian media) did not.

Simple results based on peoples' oppinions clearly show there is something up with American media aswell...just much more insidious and harder to spot. British also did not want a war in Iraq(partly due to their media, I imagine), but I've seen some of the stuff that gets on the BBC, so usually believe Canadian stuff more than it.

Now let the flames come to me and watch Americans bite my head off. :P

lol. I'm not going to bite your head off, but consider this:

Maybe Canadian media was brainwashing too in order to turn people against the war in Iraq.

Brainwashing with images...ugly and horrible images.

Better to be safe, than dead.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft: You disgust me.

Most of my ire is directed at Google, though. Hey Google, "Do no evil" is incompatible with disrespecting human freedom, you blatant fraud!

And, no, I'm sorry, no company has to respect the Chinese government's laws. An ethical company would want no part in it. See, turning humans into Soylent Green or using slave labor might be really profitable, but it's downright evil. An ethical company cares about profit but profit is not their only concern.

I shudder for the future of this country where turning a buck trumps all other considerations.

Censorship is evil.

Period.

End of discussion.

Agreed, but I don't think MSN was wrong. They should, by all means, observe the laws in every country they operate in - like they said.

It's the Chinese government that's at fault here IMO.

Yes it is - and MS' for knuckling under to those despots.

Look -- let them do it. Just like always, freedom will find its way around. Maybe they'll use words like d3m0c|24cy. F|233d0m. L1B3R7Y. Who knows. But it's better to have it there, let the web proliferate, and eventually the barriers of government censorship will not be able to stand up to free speech. I imagine it'll kind of be like the RIAA trying to bottle up Napster.

Should we censor ourselves because a country like China doesn’t want its citizens to hear nasty words like “freedom” and “democracy?” Should we “cave” to such requests? In a word, “No!” We shouldn’t refrain from saying exactly what we think. That is the beauty of the Internet, and blogging, specifically… if you don’t like what I say, you can comment, or you can write your own blog… but such “ominous” concepts as freedom will still get through to Chinese readers even if the ‘net at large does try to appease China’s oppressive government. Freedom is like a virus… it is communicable, and it spreads!

We should continue to say what we think, be free to speak our minds, and engage in critical thinking! “Big Brother,” whether in China, or any other country, has no right to force “his” thoughts on the citizenry. I have found technology to be a force for freedom, and freedom of expression. The Internet, and its related technologies certainly is! And, by quickly, and efficiently, disseminating information, I believe it will continue to “spread” freedom of thought… even if some try and use censorship as the “cure” to it!

So, come on American corporations… stay on the side of freedom… don’t take a stand against it!

They're only censoring it for the Chinese service - not everyone's. It's China that's at fault IMO; not MSN.

I agree with Reporters Without Borders - it is a great shame that the companies Yahoo, Google, and MSN caved to the Chinese government. It's the same as telling Chinese internet users that these firms are okay with the government's policy of limiting speech.

Don't act as if China is a free country. It is the price of doing business. Google and Yahoo isn't regulating what you say in the U.S. They are regulating what the chinese users say. That is a law of the Chinese Government. MSN, Google and Yahoo made a sound business decision to comply with the government mandates so that they weren't shut out of those countries. Maybe we should go in and liberate China after we are done in Iraq???

"The price of doing business" It's no excuse.

"Large sealed rooms and high capacity furnaces? Right away Mr. Hitler!"

So what else would you sell for twenty pieces of silver?

What a joke.

Screw China, and their dumb policies. The internet should not be regulated.

If other governments don't like it then screw them. The company is a United States company and should not have to obey the rules of a communist crap country.

**idiots**
----------

umm... MSN isn't just a U.S. company:

"Officials at MSN's Beijing offices were refusing to comment to the press on Monday."

The website that got censored is a Chinese company. Therefore it HAS to follow Chinese laws. It sucks for everyone, but MSN isn't at fault here.

"The internet should not be regulated"

That's an extremely dangerous statement. There has to be at least some regulation, or 1)no one would make any money because everything would be free, 2) legal systems would go down the drain as everyone can access and do anything they want as long as it's legal *somewhere*, and 3) no one would get off their butts because we'd all be sitting in front of the computer all day long (ok that one was a joke).

They'll be blocking anything to do with nuclear warhead counteractive measures next ...

No, remember, they want to make bombs. It is ironic in that everything that the web stands for (freedom) they want to have in china, but they cannot use the word freedom, democracy, and civil rights. Makes you wonder what sites you can go to though and how they regulate it. Might be like looking at those "top secret" papers from our gov't where every other word or sentence is blacked out.

Though you cannot search, can you just type in the address and get it? If not, they are tracking many bits of information to do so.

You never know how good you have it until something like this comes up.

I lived in China for two years and the government bans IPs with anything resembling independent thought. Almost everything with .co.uk is banned, websites for anonymous surfing are gone, geocities.com and all other free website services are banned, and even my own website (my little harmless art website) fell under one of the sweeping IP bans and was blocked, yeah! I'm a dissident!

For the average Chinese citizen however, if bbc.co.uk comes up with a 404, they move on. For the most part, they aren't even aware or interested that it's censorship, it's just another of the hundreds of DNS screens they see.

Note 1: I found certain areas are more restricted than others. The internet was entirely useless in areas of Zhejiang, but more functional in Guangdong, which I found odd.

Note 2: I should mention that it's not impossible to find what you want to see from within China, it's just that, while we're appalled at the 1984-ness of Chinese censorship of the internet, the average internet-conscience Mainland Chinese citizen really ... honestly ... couldn't care less.

They couldn't care less becuase they're unaware many sites are being blocked by their government.
At least I'd like to hope that's why they couldn't care less.
"Ignorance is bliss" and all that...