Microsoft bans "democracy" for Chinese users.

Posted by salparadise on Jun 12, 2005 5:04 AM EDT
MSN Money; By Financial Times
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Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors. [Note from Dave: it's a slow news day so here's something to read. Better than nothing, I say!]

Users of the 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".

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MS is engaging in censorship in exchange for cash... r_a_trip 2 2,522 Jun 12, 2005 3:57 PM

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