The Chinese government made the rules. Microsoft has the option of providing, in China, a blog service that conforms to Chinese law or of providing no service at all. I fail to see how NOT PROVIDING a blog service for the Chinese market would be a more positive action than providing as much of a service as the local government(s) permit.

Virtually all programs include the ability to "censor" web content to exclude specific content. It's called the "privacy filter" and is most likely part of your own browser - even if it's not by Microsoft. The usual implementation simply blocks all access to any site that contains any instance of whatever "offending language" you choose to list in the filter settings. It would appear that, for the Chinese, Microsoft has significantly extended this filtering capability so that some communication can be provided, and the opportunity is presented to "clean it up" and continue to have some contact with the rest of the world. The alternative would be to allow the Chinese to shut down any blog that ever, even inadvertently, used any word or phrase that THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT found offensive.

Failure to provide the service as described would be to yield to the intent of the CHINESE GOVERNMENT to completely silence anyone who might - innocently or intentionally - talk about some forbidden subject. That would be better?

John