Microsoft chooses China business over free speech in blog censorship?

A-First Amendment / Free Speech / Press
Microsoft chooses China business over free speech in blog censorship?
By Bill Densmore
Jan 10, 2006, 20:48

Also see Media Giraffe Profile of Bill Xia.

Microsoft Corp. appears to have made a deliberate choice to favor a continued business relationship with China over free speech after it shut down a Chinese blog hosted on MSN Spaces. Now a proposal is circulating in Washington, D.C. -- should the U.S. forbid such decisions?

Rebecca MacKinnon of the Berkman Center at Harvard University first noticed the move last week, and since it has been covered by the New York Times and others. MacKinnon first noticed the takedown and blogged about it on Jan. 3. A former CNN China correspondent, MacKinnon wrote that the censored blogger, Zhao Jing,

" . . . is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.)

"His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China"

The Camden, Maine-based Institute for Global Ethics also is following up and posted here, observing:

"The action came amid criticism by free-speech groups, which have accused Microsoft and other major technology companies of helping China suppress free speech in exchange for entrée into that nation's enormous Internet market."

On Jan. 10, at the British site journalism.co.uk, contributor Robert Andrews wrote:

"Bill Gates' company is one of several to operate filters in China that censor blog posts containing words like "democracy" and "Tibet independence"; last year, Chinese authorities also jailed a journalist for sending a Yahoo! e-mail about human rights violations after the portal giant divulged the writer's account details.

"Now Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF), an organisation that protects press freedoms, has handed Washington DC legislators a code containing "six concrete ways to make [American] companies behave ethically" in repressive countries."

The Institute for Global Ethics post provided several other current and historical links to the controversy:

Sources: AFP, Jan. 7 -- New York Times, Jan. 6 -- Wall Street Journal (free feature) Jan. 6 -- AP, Jan. 6 -- Australia Sunday Times, Jan. 6 -- Melbourne Herald-Sun, Jan. 6 -- ZDNet (U.K.), Jan. 6 -- London Telegraph, Jan. 6.

For more information: Related Newsline story, Jan. 2 -- Related Newsline story, Nov. 14, 2005 -- Related Newsline story, Sept. 26, 2005 -- Related Newsline story, Sept. 12, 2005.

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