Thanks to Bennett Haselton of Peacefire.org for the following public service instructions for Chinese users wanting to circumvent the word filters on MSN Spaces China to put e.g. “democracy” in the title of their blogs.
If somebody would like to translate these instructions into Chinese, please feel free to do so, post the translation on your blog or website, and please give us the link in the “comments” section of this post. Alternatively, if you don't have a blog or website, you can post the whole translation directly into the “comments” section.
UPDATE: The Working Man blog in Taiwan now has a translation.
ALSO NOTE: Doubleaf says he has tried using MSN China Spaces and the sensitive words are no longer blocked. Are other people out there having the same experience?
FURTHER UPDATE (9:15PM June 16th) - I just tried setting up a Chinese Spaces blog myself using the Chinese characters for “democracy” “human rights” and “freedom,” and got an error message telling me I could not use forbidden words.
Also, if you're in China and try this, if you have problems, questions, or if it doesn't work, please also let us know in the “comments” section.
——————————————————————–
How to put banned Chinese words in the title of a blog on MSN Spaces China
WARNING! Even though you can use these instructions to insert banned words into the title of your Chinese blog, Internet access in China is still monitored and controlled by the government. If you use these instructions to post banned material, you should not publish your blog from an Internet terminal where your actions could be traced back to you personally, and you should not publish anything on your blog that could be used to identify you. You should also use a HotMail.com address that doesn't identify you by your real name (create a new HotMail.com account if necessary).
To use these instructions, you will need to create a new MSN Spaces account. Unfortunately these instructions cannot be used to remove the filter settings from an existing blog. If you have already created an MSN Spaces account using your MSN.com or HotMail.com address, you will also need to create a new MSN.com or HotMail.com address, since each existing MSN.com or HotMail.com address can only be associated with one MSN Spaces account.
To create blog where you can post banned Chinese words in the title:
IF YOU SPEAK ENGLISH:
- If you speak English, go to http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=en-us
Use the English interface to create a new MSN Spaces blog. - Then once the blog has been created, go to the URL http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=zh-cn to switch the interface back to Chinese. You can now publish your blog in Chinese and use banned Chinese words in the title. As long as your blog is *created* using the English interface, the word filter will not be applied.
IF YOU DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH:
- You must have a HotMail account. Create a new HotMail account if you don't already have one, then go to www.HotMail.com and sign in to your HotMail account. Make sure you are signed in before proceeding.
- Go to this URL: http://spaces.msn.com/?mkt=en-us
The interface will display in English. - Click the “Sign Up” button in the middle of the page. [Note: if this document is translated into Chinese, the words “Sign Up” should remain untranslated, since this is how the user will see the button.]
- On the page where you enter settings for your new blog:
In the field marked “1.”, enter a title. You can enter banned words in the title here, or you can change the title later.
In the field marked “2.”, enter the URL you want.
Leave “3.” the way it is.
In section “4.”, check the checkbox (which indicates that you accept the MSN
Terms of Service).
In the bottom row, click the button on the left labeled “Create your space” [note, if this document is translated into Chinese, do not translate the words “Create your space”] to create your MSN Spaces account. - The next page that comes up will say (in English) that your MSN Spaces account has been created. In the bottom row, click the button on the right labeled “Go to Your Space” [note, if this document is translated into Chinese, do not translate the words “Go to Your Space”] to proceed to the page to edit your MSN Spaces account.
- Once you are viewing the page to edit your MSN Spaces account settings (in English), add the characters “&mkt=zh-cn” to the end of the URL in the browser.
- You can now edit the title of your blog to enter banned Chinese words.
(However, you still will not be able to enter English words like “ass” that are banned from the English interface.)
This will switch the interface back to Chinese. However, since you *created* the blog using the English interface, the Chinese word filter will still not be applied to the title of your blog.
If it’s not necessary to use Hotmail, I’d suggest they use hushmail (hushmail.com). If I’m not remembering wrong, hushmail doesn’t keep track of anything at all.
You dirty american pigs; when people say ‘Fuck Bush’ on their blogs, your secret service arrives and interrogates them. Clean up your own running dog mess before you ‘help’ the Chinese.
However, The secret service can still not enter without a warrant. And can not stop us from saying “Fuck Bush”, They can only investigate to assure that we are not a physical threat to the president. That is all. Do you have that luxury in china/Wherever?
If it’s all the same (and I don’t know if it matters or not), use SAFE-MAIL.NET instead of hotmail. Safe-mail uses https/ssl encryption from the browser to the web based mail server. It’s free (up to 3 meg of mail). I’ve used them for years. If both users have safe-mail accounts, the entire transaction is ssl encrypted.
You got the kahoonahs to actually try that, Dustin? You threaten King Bush and you will be in a sorry state of affairs. Ho Lee Fook is dead on the money: We monkeys need to wrestle our own out-of-control patriot act guantanamo torture indefinite incarceration without charges or legal representation or warrants pile of dog shit into a plastic baggie before we are in any position whatsoever to criticize other governments. The days of us being able to feel smug and superior are gone, just like our freedom. If you doubt that, try flying from California to Montana without taking off your shoes and being logged in 18 different databases.
You are free to do as you’re told.
Before telling them how to publish words like “freedom” and “democracy,” could we first get them to stop asking us if we want “flied lice”?
Also, since most Chinese don’t have computer access, why is no one suggesting to them that they publish their freedom manifestos in fortune-cookie messages, rather than waste our post-dinner moments with ambiguous one-liners like “Kindness paid repeatedly gains interest”?
Instead of namby-pamby, likely temporary filter dodges, you should be organizing MASSIVE PROTESTS outside the American headquarters of the TWO-FACED, LIAR COMPANIES who are ASSISTING CHINA’S ENSLAVEMENT OF ITS PEOPLE: Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, etc.
>Why does china even do this? Are they SO corrupt and such a shitty country >that they ban the use of certain words?
>What happens if you’re caught yelling “I LOVE DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS!” >in the middle of a police station, are you tortured or what?
>Man, George Orwell’s 1984 couldn’t have been more true as it is today.
>How long have these barbarious laws been in place?
Yes. They will arrest you, and torture you, or maybe just kill you. You are very naive. Perhaps you have never heard of the Tiananmen square massacre? Go ahead, Google it. And be glad that you can.
Or maybe you should go out in the middle of the street and burn a US flag. You can do that you know, although it won’t make your neighbors particularly happy with you. It is a perfectly legal activity. Go ahead and try to do the same thing in China, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan… basically in most countries it is treason.
Official and unofficial laws like this have been around for quite some time, in China since the Communist takeover. They were also quite common in the USSR and Nazi Germany (perhaps you have heard of the Russian purges and pogroms? The Nazi holocaust? Gulag ring a bell?) You should really go read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s _The Gulag Archipelago_, or, for a shorter read, _One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich_. Or how about a history book?
PS. It’s barbarous.
to the guy who called the people on this dirty americam pigs fuck you asshole,
these people are just trying to help the chinese people gain some freedom online.
as for the livejournal article you linked, i admit it’s fucked up but at least he wasn’t reprogrammed and tortured by american officials for it as would probably be the case in china.