Wow - this is scary. Microsoft has a free internet portal for setting up a blog. The Chinese version has been altered in the following manner:
Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence".
This comes on the heels of the news that China is requiring all bloggers to register their sites with the government so that they can be monitored for "appropriate content". i.e. if anything is deemed politically offensive, the site will be shut down.
I realize that the Chinese internet market represents a huge financial opportunity for MSN, and that they are required to abide by the rules and regulations of the governments of the countries in which they operate, but perhaps boycotting the Chinese and not providing services for this type of behaviour would send a message?
