Bingfeng Teahouse has written a provocative article in support of Microsoft’s unilateral decision to prohibit words such as "freedom" and "democracy" from the titles of blogs hosted on the MSN Spaces China service.

…Bingfeng dismissed the accusation that Microsoft’s behavior harms Chinese bloggers as simplistic and naive. Bingfeng told us his story with the Microsoft Groups, in which he was actively involoved into a movie fan club and later the fan club evolved into a virtual self-governing organization, with club chairman, CTO, CFO (for off-line activities), etc. are all elected by club members. This story, Bingfeng says, shows how important to offer such places to young people in China instead of chanting for several nice words to appear on the web. On-line communities offer the Chinese youngsters a golden opportunity to learn the skills that are critical to building a civil society in China. Given the current circumstances and constraints, Microsoft did something good to Chinese bloggers, not the opposite.

I’ve heard similar arguments from mr brown, vis-a-vis Singapore blogging, and they are worth debating. Still, I doubt mr brown would defend the banning of specific words.

Nor, for that matter does the Communist Party require it. Microsoft is going well beyond what the CPC demands in terms of censorship.

Does it make business sense?  Maybe, there is the mythical ‘China market’ to consider. Microsoft has to always keep in mind that there are 1.3 billion people over here in need of a single copy of Windows XP to pirate.

But given that Microsoft’s biggest market is in the US, I think the company made a disastrous slip with this. Sure, Cisco has been supporting China’s censorship for years - but they never banned ‘freedom’

Americans are ‘a bit sensitive’ about such things. I doubt many will find this excusable.

I certainly don’t.

(Full disclosure: I use a Mac, I browse with Firefox, I do own an xbox but I think I’ll switch to playstation rather than upgrade with the 360.)