I swear that there are days that I want to leave a flaming bag of dog shit in front Scoble’s office door, before knocking and running away. I’ve had a string of these days in a row now… ever since this whole “MSN Spaces pulled a Chinese blogger due to censorship” thing started.

What a mess.

Here’s the problem with this “controversy”: it’s not a black and white issue. People – Robert included – are running around with righteous smoke coming from their ears, screaming and yelling about first amendment rights and civil liberties and attempting to make it an open and shut case, but… it isn’t that simple.

In fact, I started this new paragraph eight times. To me, it’s that complicated.

First off, Spaces is a service. While people love to run around with “Freedom of Speech!” notions of what they can and can’t post to a blog, they seem to forget that they don’t own the blog engine. They are using a service of a company. They sign a Terms and Conditions document that binds them to certain rules and regulations. Amazing that writers can forget that. The classic content restriction is child porn, of course. Everyone bristles at that one. That’s an easy thing to come out against. But what about something that’s a subtle slight… like political anarchy?

Say you own a blog engine and you’re of a liberal mindset. Do you let someone publish ultra-conservative manifestos? Or what about a bunch of crap that enforces certain lifestyles? Let the KKK have a photo album there? More so, do you allow neo-Nazi’s to congregate and recruit new members? If you own the blog engine, it’s your decision. I’m betting that you might allow the first, but banish the rest, because that’s human nature.

So now look at China. In the real world, they restrict the press from top to bottom. They also restrict entertainment. [Religion too but we’ll skip that for now.] MSN Spaces falls into both of these categories… why would we be surprised that they’d want it censored? It’s their law. As Americans we don’t agree with it. In fact, we can barely contain our outrage over it, even though we also censor entertainment. But even so, it’s not our country. Our beliefs do not apply. And even though MSN Spaces is owned by an American company, that company is selling to Chinese customers that live in China.

Here’s a thought… price fixing is illegal in America. Price fixing is part of the economy in China, as well as other countries.. Can they sell and price fix their products when selling to Americans? Aren’t the bound by our laws? The law in China is that you can’t publicly speak out against their government. Do I agree with that mindset? No. Do I like that? No. Do my opinions matter to China? No. If I was going to do business with China, would the Chinese expect me to respect their laws no matter how much I personally don’t agree with them? Yes. Same way that I would expect a Chinese company to respect our laws when selling stuff to us.

The problem is that this is a hugely passionate part of American society. We had citizens die over the centuries to protect the right of free speech and we don’t want to admit that other nations don’t agree with us about it. We’re also still harboring this constant “communism is wrong” 1950’s mindset without even taking time to consider that there is no pure communist nation out there nor do we, as capitalists, have to fight against them. After all there’s no pure capitalist system either. Or a completely free society for that matter. The law says I can’t appear naked in public… and while I’m generally thankful for that it’s still a not-so-free ideal.

I don’t know if I agree with pulling subversive – or at least contrary – Chinese web sites from MSN Spaces. My American upbringing makes me righteously angery. My practical Geek side says “Who cares, you don’t live in China – worry about censorship in the US cuz we’ve got lots”. My logical Devil’s Advocate voice raises the issues above, because it’s easy to poke holes in the righteous American reaction, and even the righteous side has to acknowledge that. Part of what makes free speech so important to our society is that people have the right to disagree, yet here we are saying “China can’t disagree with us” over this belief.

Very complex. Very complicated. Not nearly as black and white as one would think if ya only read the headlines.

And very agitating to me that some people can publicly deride my company, simply for following another nation’s laws in that nation. Especially when they strip away issues or leave out “rational” points of view… that’s fine for personal opinion, but for someone public like Scoble, is his personal opinion ever his own after it’s posted? Not these days. When your personal opinion is given the “clout” of being company opinion, you need to tread a little lighter. Some responsibility needs to be heeded and influence your actions. When I talk here I’m never quoted by magazines as “speaking for the company” – Scoble is and he should know this by now. Yes, that’s a heavy burden to carry, but that’s part of his job now! Here’s to hoping that he remembers that weight more often while blogging in the public eye.

In the meantime, I’ll have a bag and lighter ready, just in case… the dog shit should be fresh, so I won’t grab that until I’m annoyed again.