Good searchers can get around this and find secondary words.
Leetspeak (l33t5p34k) might work.
> Is money more important than democracy, freedom and human rights?
We'll see...they indicate they will follow up: "An RSF spokesman said Monday the group was checking to see if Microsoft had followed suit." It's still quarter to six in Redmond...too early to wake up Mr. Bill.
Microsoft deserves a swift kick in the ass.
I forsee a revolution in China in the next 20 years whether the ChiComs like it or not.
Meanwhile, China remains the primary source in the world for pirated software.
Sick
I see a Chinese version of spanglish. Changlish . . .
This brings more media into the closed nation, and the work arounds for the list of “banned words” will certainly become a big joke on the Chinese Communist Party.
The New World Order = A global system of governance in which markets are free and people are not.
Ever since the days of Mao, the Chinese Communist authorities have given people two choices: My way or the highway. You either do what they say or leave, with all your prior investments expropriated.
Maybe this is just sheer greed. Or maybe Microsoft figures that half a loaf is better for Chinese internet users than none. There are ways to get around these limitations, and meantime Chinese users have more access to the internet.
For instance, instead of "freedom," they could use the code words "pigs fly." The censors are always a step behind the censored.
Washington liberals are still looking for an English speaking country to test their broad-based radio "Fairness Doctrine" as well as a narrow (one cable channel only) TV version of the "Fairness Doctrine." Canada is the odds-on choice to be the one.
I wonder how much microsoft censors about themselves.
The problem is not the portal companies, it is the government. The portals, regardless of restrictions, promote the ideas and attitudes that will eventually solve the problem, in Viet Nam, at least. The availability of a portal enables several folks I know to operate businesses that deal with the West. They actually make good money doing it, even though their money has to stay outside the country. One fellow has a brokerage business that deals with exotic woods furniture made in Thailand and Indonesia and customers all over the world. He is even arranging some importation to Viet Nam. Another constructs websites for international companies, mostly in Europe. One woman sells shrimp from independent shrimp farms on the net. They could not do this without that portal. You don't deal constructively with the restrictions by cutting people off altogether. The increasing use of the net for business of all kinds, official as well as not so official makes the net harder and harder for the government to do without and harder and harder to effectively deal with unapproved content.
I suspect the Chicom effort will have little practical effect as the users learn to get around the restrictions. I do not talk about democracy, etc. by name in my emails, but just casual conversation about what people do and don't do normally, about travel and family, about whether or not one chooses to vote for something, conveys the information.
Is ANYone surprised that Microsoft would participate in this?
ANYONE?