Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Shared bodily warmth..



Microsoft seems to be proposing winter survival tactics in approaching the deep freeze of blogger opinion in which it finds itself in China after its decision last month to block dissident Zhao Jing's site on the MSN Spaces China site. Perhaps it takes some small comfort from Google's own embarrassment on similar issues

The Financial Times reports that Bill's boys in Redmond are proposing "a common approach to dealing with official publication restrictions in China and elsewhere". General Counsel Brad Smith is reported saying:

"This is not a single-company issue, or a single-country issue - we need principles that will drive our industry as a whole,"

Under what Mr Smith called a "more robust" policy on responding to official requests to censor bloggers, Microsoft said it would only remove blogs when it receives an official legal order. However, it said it would continue to publish material that was blocked in this way outside the country concerned.

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