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Beijing (pte038/16.06.2005/15:29) - Since launching its MSN Spaces http://msn.spaces.com in China on 26 May, Microsoft has come under fire from bloggers for censoring free speech words and phrases.
"Freedom," "democracy" and "human rights" are a few of the words censored on its free online journals; also "Taiwan independence" and "demonstration", for which an error message was sent, saying "prohibited language, please remove".
Matt Rosoff, analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm in Washington, defended the company by saying that, compared with the wider Chinese government censorship over all Internet activity, Microsoft's online service vetoing was relatively insignificant.
"If Microsoft wants to do business in China they have to obey the laws set by the Chinese government," Mr Rosoff said. He added that "they've done the calculations and decided this was worth it".
MSN lead product manager Brooke Richardson said: "MSN abides by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates," commenting on the fact that MSN Spaces was conforming to local laws. It operates outside China, which allows users to set up blogs and online journals.
The Chinese government has recently cracked down on Internet censorship, calling last week for the registration of all China-based domestic websites and blogs. Reporters without Borders http://www.rsf.org say that about three-quarters of the domestic websites have since been registered.
However, Microsoft's Spaces is not the only web portal to acquiesce to Chinese censorship. Its rivals such as Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com and InterActiveCorp, which have expanded operations in China, have also been censoring content in the country.
Despite the censorship, however, Microsoft says that about five million blogs have been created with their MSN Spaces service since it was launched.
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