I haven’t said much of anything yet about MSN Spaces, but it’s been amusing to watch the reaction to their lame attempt at censorship of blogs.
Even Scoble is joking about it, but I’m surprised he doesn’t talk about what a dumb decision that was (the lame attempt at censorship.)
By far the best coverage was Xeni’s seven deadly spaces post on BoingBoing. I noticed that even Graeme Wearden picked up on it in MSN bloggers try to foul up censorship tool over at CNet.
“Getting a blog with a dirty name past the MSN Spaces controls may be fun, but it also illustrates the tensions between the traditionally free and open world of blogging and the more corporate approach of a software giant like Microsoft.”
Yup, Microsoft is always providing controls that people feel compelled to sneak past.
“”If you can’t speak freely on a blog, what’s the point of having one?” BoingBoing pointed out.”
Depends on the blog, I think. I can pretty much speak freely here, but not over there. Why? Because my paranoia is less that theirs. Maybe Scoble is in the same boat?
“These tensions are also apparent in Microsoft’s approach to blog content. Unlike rival services such as Blogger, MSN Spaces forces new users to grant Microsoft permission to “use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat” their blog postings.”
This is the part that really surprises me. Did they think nobody would notice? Haven’t they (or Scoble) ever noticed the way bloggers latch onto stuff like this and blow it out of proportion?
Well, I suspect they’ll learn sooner or later.
Update: I see that Scoble responded. It’s too bad there’s no TrackBack on his weblog. 🙁
Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.
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