A story link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032302487.html
A major sea change with western businesses no longer enforcing repressive rules or a minor tiff in an otherwise cozy relationship?
For those of you following China more closely then I do: is this a sign of a more repressive China, or really nothing has changed?
I can't imagine a more open ended commitment then censoring undesirable content. In the case of China, this could be virtually anything. At that point, the company is an arm of government. Although it may have seemed reasonable at the beginning, with some admittedly large collection of filtered terms, the ease with which people route around censorship by inventing new terms (take a look at drug terms) must mean this operation grew exponentially. And now the Chinese government seems to be censoring themselves - which is likely what they should have done all along (assuming, of course, they are going down this bad road to begin with).