Blogpulse says that Rebecca MacKinnon’s post about the Chinese blog censorship issue
is the most linked-to in the blogosphere. With good reason.
I was ashamed not to be one of those links earlier! On a related
topic, here’s an article in Ethical Corporation.
Big props to Scoble for his take on it.
Read also what MSN Spaces Product manager Michael Connolly has to say
about it: “In China, there is a unique issue for our entire industry:
there are certain aspects of speech in China that are regulated by the
government. We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to
do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws. This is
not unique to MSN Spaces; this is something that every company has to
do if they operate in China. So, if a Chinese blog on MSN Spaces
is reported to us by the community, or the Chinese government, as
offensive, we have to ask ourselves: is this blog adhering to our code
of Conduct? In many cases, the answer is ‘yes, this site is
fine’. But, in some cases, the answer is ‘no’. And when an
offense is found that actually breaks a national law, we have no choice
but to take down the site.”
An extraordinarily hard ethical problem, worthy of close study.
