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CHINA TIGHTENS GRIP ON INTERNET

China is moving to curb expression on the Internet, and Microsoft is apparently collaborating, says Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF).

The central government has issued a decree requiring all websites in China to register with authorities by 30 June 2005 or be shut down. The decree applies mainly to individuals who run blogs, or online diaries, on their own servers.

Authorities have also launched a new surveillance tool called "Pa Chong" ("Night Crawler") that allows official censors to find and block unregistered sites.

Following the decree, Microsoft has banned users of its Chinese-language blog hosting service, MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=zh-cn), from using politically sensitive words in their blogs.

According to tests run by RSF, when a blogger in China tries to post a message containing terms such as "democracy", "Dalai Lama", "Falun Gong", "4 June" (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), "China + corruption", or "human rights", they receive a warning that says, "This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression."

The MSN Spaces service is operated by the joint venture, Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, in which Microsoft holds a 50 per cent stake.

Visit these links:
- RSF:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14010
- Analysis of "Night Crawler":
http://ice.citizenlab.org/?p=114
- Adopt a Chinese Blog: http://www.isaacmao.com/meta/2005/05/adopt-chinese-blog.html
- Report on Internet Filtering in China: http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/
- Microsoft Employee Defends his Company: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/06/12.html#a10366
- Former CNN Journalist Responds:
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2005/06/my_response_to_.html
- China's Net Effect: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jun05/0605cnet.html
- Journalism and the Internet in China: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/dialogue/
- China Cracks Down on Web and Expats:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0610/p01s02-woap.html