整個星期不在香港... 一篇遲來的轉載:
節錄自Wired news 的 Kevin Poulsen:
SHANGHAI, China -- Twenty-eight floors above the traffic-choked streets
of China's most wired city, blogger and tech entrepreneur Isaac Mao
sums up his opinion of Microsoft and its treatment of the Chinese
bloggers with one word. "Evil," says Mao. "Internet users know what's
evil and what's not evil, and MSN Spaces is an evil thing to Chinese
bloggers."...
...In a statement, lead MSN product manager Brooke Richardson said,
"MSN abides by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which
it operates. The content posted on member spaces is the responsibility
of individuals who are required to abide by MSN's code of conduct."
Mao dismisses that statement as disingenuous. The company, he says,
is going above and beyond official censorship practices, which deal
decisively with speech critical of the ruling communist government, but
don't outright ban words like "freedom."
"They could try to reach a balance, so the users will understand,
but the government won't try to make trouble for the business," says
Mao. "Instead, they're just trying to flatter the government."
Existing Chinese blog-hosting companies strike that balance by
policing their members' blogs for postings that might get the company
and its users in trouble: The phrase "China needs democracy," for
example, would set off a red flag. But "democracy" itself is not a
dirty word, says Mao. Likewise, text about human rights abuses outside
of China is not banned.
That Microsoft is using technology to impose new limits on Chinese
speech seems particularly galling to the entrepreneur. An engineer by
training, Mao lived for a time in Silicon Valley developing chip
technologies for Intel, then returned to China and started an
educational software business that he later sold to a publicly traded
company. He now spends much of his time working out ways people in
China can use the internet to communicate and collaborate more easily
and efficiently....