Microsoft’s Cyber Censorship

Publish Date: February 2, 2007

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From Amnesty International

In December 2005 Microsoft cooperated with Chinese authorities to shut down the controversial blog of Zhao Jing (Michael Anti), a Beijing-based researcher for the New York Times, and an active critic of censorship in China.

The blog, which was hosted on servers located in the United States, was removed and was therefore censored not only in China but globally. Reacting to criticism, Microsoft claims to have implemented a new set of standards to ensure that they will only remove blogs when they receive formal legal notice from the Chinese government and that access will only be denied to users in China.

Microsoft’s search engine MSN China filters the results of searches for politically sensitive terms, displaying a message in Chinese which states Certain content was removed from the results of this search’. Searches undertaken in June 2006 by AI produced this message for the words ‘Falun Gong’, ‘Tibet Independence’ and ‘June 4’ (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre).

Furthermore, Microsoft has admitted that it responds to directions from the Chinese government by restricting users of MSN Spaces from using certain terms in their account name, space name, space sub-title or in photo captions. At the same time the company asserts that MSN Spaces do not filter blog content in any way. Amnesty International considers this claim to be at odds with the facts.

When Microsoft launched MSN Spaces in China in June 2005, attempts to create blogs with words including ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom of expression’ were blocked, producing the following error message (in Chinese): ‘You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.’ Tests by AI carried out in 2006 demonstrated continued blocking of certain terms including ‘Tiananmen incident’ in the title of blogs.

As a result of such actions, Microsoft users in China are denied the ability to access the full range of information available internationally on human rights topics, including websites and web pages of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.

Cyber: adj. related to computers or machines; relating to the internet

Amnesty: n. pardon, forgiveness

authorities: n. government people

controversial: adj. causing argument, at issue

blog: n. web log, internet diary or journal

censorship: n. banning (of information), preventing information from being published

servers: n. big computers that host software, accounts, etc.

censored: v. banned, deleted

globally: adj. world-wide, all over the world.

criticism: n. disapproval

implemented: v. used, done

to ensure: v. to promise, to guarantee

legal: adj. related to the law,

access: n. entry, admission

filters: v. separate, screen politically sensitive terms: n. words that make the government angry

displaying: v. showing

AI: n. Amnesty International

produced: v. created, made

Falun Gong: n. a spiritual (religious) group- that is often attacked by the Chinese government

massacre: n. killing (of many innocent, peaceful, or weak people)

admitted: v. confessed, agreed

directions: n. orders, commands

restricting: v. limiting, stopping

terms: n. words (or phrases), names

asserts: v. says, insists at odds with: idiom. does not agree with, goes against

launched: v. started, began

blocked: v. stopped, prevented

prohibited: v. denied, forbidden, banned

profanity: n. bad language, obscenity

incident: n. happening, event

the full range of: n. all of, every