‘Great Firewall’ - Arts Extra - MSNBC.com

‘Great Firewall’ - Arts Extra - MSNBC.com

With the number of Internet users in China expected to top 100 million by the end of this year, it’s no wonder U.S. businesses are eager to serve the second largest Internet market in the world. But in doing so, many technology companies have had to make some controversial compromises. Internet portals Yahoo and Google both filter (or allow filtering of) their search results in compliance with Chinese laws. And when Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, half-owned by Microsoft, recently launched a Chinese version of MSN My Space, a blog-hosting service, it ceded to Chinese demands to block words like “freedom” and “democracy” from use in blog titles. The Chinese are also using the powerful filtering tools in network routers made by Cisco Systems to restrict access to some Internet sites. (Cisco denies any direct compliance with Beijing.)

28 July, 2005 |

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