MSN helps Chinese authorities silence blogger

By Pandia Guest Writer Lars Våge

Michael Anti’s real name is Zhao Ying. He is one of the most outspoken bloggers in China.

His blog is appreciated by people worldwide and has quite a lot of Chinese readers.

To give an example of the type of stories he is covering: In December the daily Chinese newspaper Beijing News acquired a new leadership, and a large number of its journalists started to strike. Anti reported about this very unusual incident in China.

He works as a translator and has been doing work for both Washington Post and more recently New York Times. His good reputation caused the Deutche Welle to invite him to be one of the judges in their Best of Blogs competition last fall.

MSN censorship

He used to have his blog hosted at BlogCity, but when the firewalls run by the Chinese authorities started to block access to BlogCity, he moved over to MSN Spaces, which is still accesible to regular Chinese surfers.

On New Years Eve, Anti’s blog dissappeared from MSN Spaces. The blog had been deleted by Microsoft without warning. Anti had no backup and so all he had written was gone.

Early in January Microsoft admitted that Michael Anti’s blog had been removed because it contained political discussions and that such content was illegal in China.

International reactions

The reactions were strong. The Chinese blog pioneer Isaac Mao, the best known blogger in the country besides Anti, urged to boycott MSN Spaces.

The blogger Roland Soong, the man behind the English language blog EastSouthWestNorth in Hong Kong, expressed his sympathy.

Xiao Qiang, the main editor of the China Digital Times, probably the most important alternative source of information concerning Chinese development outside China, did the same.

Even Robert Scoble, Microsofts own uberblogger, was upset and initially offered to publish Anti’s blog. He seems however to have simmered down by now.

The story gets wide coverage

By way of Rebecca McKinnon on Global Voices Online the news finally reached mainstream media, including Pressens Tidning in Sweden and the New York Times in the US.

In the New York Times article ”Microsoft Shuts Blog’s Site After Complaints by Beijing” of January 5th 2006, the reporter writes that Antis’ blog was deleted after the Chinese authorities demanded this through the MSN office in Shanghai.

If this is the case, did Microsoft just do what the Chinese authorities told them? There are some that do not believe this version. But still it is very unlikely that Microsoft came up with the idea themselves, isn’t it?

American search engine companies give in

American Internet companies are known to give in to demands from the Chinese regime.

Last fall, for instance, Yahoo! reveiled the identity of a dissident, Shi Tao, to the Chinese authorities. Last summer MSN Spaces installed a filter that made it impossible for Chinese users to use words like ”democracy” in the titles of blogs. And Google is censoring Google News in China.

The search engine companies have simply (and conveniently) argued that they have to do so in order to comply with the laws of mainland China.

In the MSN Spaces case, does this makes any sense at all? Are the MSN Spaces servers not located in the US and not within the jurisdiction of Chinese authorities?

Anti back at Blog-City

Anti has resumed blogging at BlogCity. However, Chinese citizens cannot read this new version, whithout using proxy-servers or anonymization services, limiting access to the most technology savvy.

Rebecca McKinnon: Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger
Comparing Yahoo and MSN Spaces (EastSouthWestNorth)
Danwei.org: MSN Spaces: blogs for the kindergarten set
NewYork Times: Microsoft Shuts Blog’s Site After Complaints by Beijing
Forbes/AFX: Microsoft faces backlash after site of prominent China blogger is deleted
Michael Anti’s new blog

From the MSN service agreement: “Microsoft may terminate this Agreement, or terminate or suspend your access to the MSN Web Sites at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.”

This article was originally published in Internetbrus, a Swedish blog on search engines and Internet searching that has been online since early 2001. It is written for both searchers and educators.

Internetbrus is owned and edited by Lars Våge and Lars Iselid. Lars Våge works as a librarian at Mitthögskolan and a programmer for JL Informationsteknik. Lars Iselid is a librarian at the Umeå University Library, freelance journalist for the computer magazine

Datormagazin. He can be found blogging under the pseudonym Cyrille at Iaslash.org.

Lars and Lars are co-authors of a book on Internet research: Informationssökning på Internet.