Microsoft Shuts Down Chinese Blog

Is Microsoft stifling free speech?

From the AP here:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/06/D8EV7CR00.html

Microsoft Corp. has shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese blogger that discussed politically sensitive issues including a recent strike at a Beijing newspaper. The action came amid criticism by free-speech activists of foreign technology companies that help the communist government enforce censorship or silence dissent in order to be allowed into China’s market.

Microsoft’s China-based Web log-hosting service shut down the blog at the Chinese government’s request, said Brooke Richardson, group product manager with Microsoft’s MSN online division at the company headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Though Beijing has supported Internet use for education and business, it fiercely polices content. Filters block objectionable foreign Web sites and regulations ban subversive and pornographic content and require service providers to enforce censorship rules.”When we operate in markets around the world we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms,” Richardson said.

A lot of people are going to scream that an American company is endorsing the censorship of a communist regime by abiding by this request of the Chicoms. In a way, they will be correct. Yes, Microsoft is helping to censor the writings of an activist.

But, this was a business decision. A capitalist move. A move that, in the long run, will bring wealth and prosperity to the people of the soon-to-be-former-Communist country.

In the world’s recent history, we have seen nations move from capitalism to communism. Whole books were written on how to achieve the “great peoples’ working paradise.” That vision has failed time and again. Microsoft and Yahoo and all of the other high-tech companies that are opening in Communist China are slowly but surely aiding in the glorious overthrow of an oppressive regime by bringing wealth and the dreams of prosperity to a nation of peasants.

Freedom in China will not be held in check forever. The most common detected attack that originates from the Chinese IP space are portscans for open proxy servers. This is both the Chinese populace-at-large and the Chinese Government, racing each other to find, for the former, freedom of information, and for the latter, an open valve that needs to be closed. The Chinese people want freedom, and they will certainly obtain it, and likely sooner than many people believe.

Microsoft and other companies that are forced to contend with the Chinese Government to apply censorship rules are still doing a great service for capitalism by expanding business in that region.