Microsoft Shuts Down a Blog in China

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1 Response

  1. Chris Farris says:

    “This action by Microsoft infringed upon my freedom of speech.”

    So are we talking the freedom of speech as provided by the PRC constitution, or by the Republic of Microsoft. :)

    Seriously, digging a bit futher the article states:

    “The MSN Spaces sites are maintained on computer servers in the United States.”

    Well, that is more disturbing. If I as an American citizen say something negative about the PRC, will my blog be taken offline too?

    What the article doesn’t make clear is if the blog was deleted from a global MSN Spaces or a Chinese MSN Spaces. If they deleted the blog from a global service – that is really bad.

    However, if they deleted it from a Chinese service – that just happened to locate the servers physically in the US – while that is bad, it is SOP for doing business in repressive countries. Overall I think the long term connectivity companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft provide outweigh the short term harm that comes from assisting a government with censorship.