Microsoft Enters the China Fray

When I wrote about Google's policy and agreement to do business in China, I noted that there were other businesses involved [WalMart, GM, etc.] While folks are getting steamed at Google (GOOG), don't look now, but Microsoft (MSFT) is sticking its toes into the same morass - this time specifically dealing with blog content, which was one of the points of my original posting on the subject.

Well, this particular New York Times piece on Microsoft's policy gets straight to the issues I first raised.

Microsoft unveiled new company guidelines yesterday intended to spell out how it will deal with government censorship demands, in China and anywhere it does business, and limit the impact of its compliance.

It was responding to criticism that followed its decision to shut down five weeks ago, at the Chinese government's request, the online journal of a popular blogger in Beijing who used the Microsoft network.

Among the changes outlined by the company's general counsel, Bradford L. Smith, at its Government Leaders Forum in Lisbon yesterday were a commitment to block content — typically blog or personal Web site content — on its MSN Spaces service only when served with "legally binding notice from the government indicating that the material violates local laws, or if the content violates MSN's terms of use."

The company is also developing technology that would block content within the country making the request, while preserving the ability of the rest of the world to view it. Microsoft also said it would develop a system of "transparent user notification," so that users whose blogs have been shut by government order will be notified by message when they try to access their sites, rather than face an inexplicably dead link.

The new policies would not have prevented the censoring of the Chinese blogger, Zhao Jing, who also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

Now Microsoft thinks it's come up with a solution, but I'm not so sure:

Web surfers seeking to read blogs on MSN Spaces servers — which are located in the United States — will be granted or denied access based on their geographic location.

Had this system been in place after the government's takedown request last December, surfers in China would not have been able to view Mr. Zhao's blog, but it would have remained viewable in other countries. Mr. Zhao, however, would no longer have access to or be able to update the site.

He would see only a message that his site had been terminated by government request.

"One of the things we've looked at is, How far does a government's jurisdiction reach?"

This gets to the crux of the debate. Just how can or should a US company restrict the speech of others based on foreign jurisdictions. There will be the inevitable workarounds and other measures to avoid this corporate decision. But they don't deal with the issue directly, which is that if a Chinese person wants to blog using the MSN tool (or any other tool), they're being prohibited from doing so by the Chinese government. Zhao's blog would have essentially been frozen in place as the government would have frozen his access, and while the content would have been viewable in the US, it would have been blocked in China.

This is no way to do business.

UPDATE:
Bill Gates would like to disagree and claims that government attempts to censor Web sites or blogs would fail since the banned information could get out despite the censorship. However, he also notes that his company has to meet the legal requirements of the jurisdictions where his company does business.

There's the rub. Companies are rushing into places like China because of the market possibilities, but in order to do so, they've got to comply with those foreign jurisdictions, which can include restrictions that no one in their home jurisdiction would ever tolerate - namely censoring blog content. This isn't just a Google issue, but one that companies seeking to do business in totalitarian regimes must deal with.

UPDATE:
It would appear that some of these companies should have known better - Congressman Tom Lantos and other lawmakers specifically criticized Microsoft, Cisco, Google, and Yahoo for failing to attend a congressional briefing specifically dealing with doing business in China.

Lawmakers on Wednesday accused U.S.-based Internet companies of giving in to pressure from China and helping to censor Web users in violation of American principles of free speech.

They also criticized the four companies — Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc. — for failing to attend a congressional briefing that was staged to bring to light how Internet companies do business in China. (MSNBC.com is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

Curious. This issue will get more play as hearings will be held February 15. Subpoenas may be issued against the companies to attend. So far, MSFT, Google, and Cisco have said they would attend the meeting. Yahoo hadn't responded to the reporters thus far.

And the ire directed against Google isn't likely to be tempered by fact that Google wasn't alone, nor even the first to do this. They're just the biggest boys on the block - and that doesn't help their cause any. They've got to do better - and so do all the other companies that do business with totalitarian regimes.

Technorati: china, censorship, dictatorship, repression, google, microsoft, dont be evil.