The Company We Love To Hate…

…Who else but Microsoft?

Yet another of my "shooting fish in a barrel" posts, but this time I’m not taking aim at Microsoft, but at the lazy thinkers who have tut-tutted over the story that Microsoft is "Helping China to Censor Bloggers". At first blush, you might think that the protesters have a point. I mean, just look at the opening of the story in The Guardian, for heaven’s sake:

Civil liberties groups have condemned an arrangement between Microsoft and Chinese authorities to censor the internet.

The American company is helping censors remove "freedom" and "democracy" from the net in China with a software package that prevents bloggers from using these and other politically sensitive words on their websites.

The restrictions, which also include an automated denial of "human rights", are built into MSN Spaces, a blog service launched in China last month by Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, a venture in which Microsoft holds a 50% stake.

Gosh, open and shut case, right? Nasty Microsoft! Linux rocks!

Well, let’s just read on shall we…

Users who try to include such terms in subject lines are warned: "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them."

Er, what was that? The "subject line"? What about the body text of the blog, then?

Even the most basic political discussion is difficult because "communism", "socialism", and "capitalism" are blocked in this way, although these words can be used in the body of the main text.

Ah, I see, so Chinese bloggers can actually use these words in the body text? So perhaps it’s not quite as simple a story as it might seem? As Dare Obasanjo points out on his blog, this "story" is not new – every localised version of MSN Spaces has its unique list of prohibited words for the subject line of blog entries. And while US bloggers are pointing the finger at the Chinese version of MSN Spaces, they could do well to ask themselves why the list of prohibited words for the US version of MSN Spaces includes such dangerous words as "Chicken" and "Thrush". Clearly there’s something about those words that Microsoft felt would, in the current US political and legal climate, be asking for trouble.

To my mind, there’s a good case here of "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" – a point well made by Shelley over at Burningbird.