June 11, 2005

Not Microsoft's Finest Hour

Users of the [Chinese] joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label personal websites they create using its free online blog service, MSN Spaces.

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".

3 Comments:

Blogger JAB said...

I like the expression for this:

The Great Firewall of China

June 11, 2005 at 1:38 AM  
Blogger JAB said...

There was a Ford ad on a few years ago that said something like "we here at Ford are always working to achieve Henry Ford's dream."

An America free from Jews? I wondered.

For many years, Ford distributed an anti-semitic publication through its dealerships. Hitler and Ford even had each others photos in their offices.

The cult of profit tends to erode the moral authority to combat hegemonic ideologies.

June 11, 2005 at 10:43 AM  
Blogger VMM said...

Hey, at least they didn't block "Linux"...

June 11, 2005 at 11:59 AM  

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