Microsoft might be censoring, but not in the way reported by AP.

I Got the link from JD Lasica's post.  The news titled "Microsoft Censors Blogs at Chinese Portal" says Microsoft is helping censorship in the Chinese blogosphere. Microsoft just launched its Chinese portal three weeks ago. According to the story, when MSN Spaces users attempt to input sensitive Chinese words like democracy, human rights, Taiwan Independence, a scolding message saying "Prohibited language in text, please delete" will be prompted.

I have doubts about this report since words like democracy are so commonly used in the Chinese context. It is ridiculous to block democracy simply because it might be used in a "subversive" way. As a matter of fact, the three words frequently show up on Xinhuanet.com, the state-owned news agency portal [I just did a simple google site search with those keywords and hundreds of results were brought up]. If Microsoft has the nerve to mask those words, surely it will touch people's nerve too.

Just out of curiosity, I tried this out and found it was not the case. Nothing special happened when I tried typing Chinese words like democracy, human rights, and Taiwan independence into my MSN Spaces [both in the subject line and body text] and publishing the post. Isn't the censorship working because my IP address is in the States? To assure myself, I asked a friend in Shanghai, China for help. Same thing happened. I'm just wondering how the report did the online tests as she wrote:

Online tests found that apart from politically sensitive words, obscenities and sexual references also are banned.

Below are screenshots of my test post and my friend's. Special thanks go to colorjd.