Microsoft Helping China Censor The Internet?

Agence France-Presse reports in its Asian section that Microsoft has aided China’s efforts to censor the Internet for millions of subjects of PRC’s autocratic rule. MSN’s China-based Internet Spaces has started blocking specific words tied to political liberation:

Users of Microsoft’s new China-based Internet portal were blocked from using the words “democracy”, “freedom” and “human rights” in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing.
Other words that could not be used on Microsoft’s free online blog service MSN Spaces include “Taiwan independence” and “demonstration”.
Bloggers who enter such words or other politically charged or pornographic content are prompted with a message that reads: “This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item”.
Officials at Microsoft’s Beijing offices refused to comment Monday.

Many blogs, including mine, took Eason Jordan to task for deliberately enabling oppression in Iraq by misreporting the news, a charge Jordan admitted in an op-ed to the New York Times. It seems to me that Microsoft’s actions here, if true, amount to a similar sin. Microsoft has touted its entry into the blog market in part as a way to expand free speech and personal expression. Instead, it looks like it has sold out the principles of freedom that allowed Microsoft to flourish in the first place in order to gain access to the Chinese market. Bill Gates has sold the oppressed Chinese people out in order to allow Beijing to extend its oppression — and all this at the same time that the world noted the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, where that same government that Gates supports slaughtered peaceful protestors looking for liberty.
Yahoo! and Google have also signed onto the official Chinese plan for keeping the peasants in line while the corporate officers take their money under false pretenses. All three companies should be ashamed of themselves. I’m normally not a Microsoft basher, but this smacks of nothing less than collaboration with an oppressor. If this is true, I’d encourage people to use any other paid service than those offered by these three companies. (hat tip: CQ reader Bruce K)