M$ to Beijing: We hate free speech too
January 7th, 2006 by herichon
Need any more reasons to dislike Microsoft? Here’s one – they cheerfully assented to a request from Chinese authorities to delete the blog of perhaps China’s most well known blogger, journalist Zhao Jing.
It was bad enough last fall when Yahoo handed the identity of Chinese journalist Shi Tao to authorities on request, resulting in his sentencing and imprisonment on political charges. And Microsoft has already been voluntarily censoring the blogs of Chinese citizens for quite a while. (To be fair, Yahoo and Google are similarly complicit in political censorship of search results in China.) But again, in their continuing effort to smooth relationships with the Chinese government and secure their position in the market, Microsoft went above and beyond the call. They didn’t just block access to the site from China, or maybe redirect the site to an explanatory page – they immediately, without notice or warning, deleted the entire contents of the poor guy’s blog.
Good going, Microsoft. What’s next? You know, what with the Patriot Act Redux and the continuing War on Terra, our own government may be making similar requests of you before long – glad to see you’re so ready to step up and defend democracy.