There is a quotation unverifiedly attributed to both Lenin and Stalin which boasts: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Microsoft has joined Yahoo in selling rope to the Communist Chinese regime. Rebecca MacKinnon reports that on New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the Michael Anti blog written by Zhao Jing. What you get when you attempt to visit his blog now is this. (The Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd is here.)

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Microsoft will, of course, have to go a little further to equal Yahoo, which earlier this year assisted the Chinese government in identifying and prosecuting the journalist Shi Tao, and sending him to prison for ten years.

The NY Times reports on Chinese workers paid for playing online multiplayer games in 12 hour shifts in order to accumulate early level advances in rank, wealth, skills, weapons, and artifacts for people in more affluent countries who prefer to skip the slow and laborious process of developing an advanced player persona. The practice is known as “gold-farming,” a name referring to the accumulation of imaginary on-line currency used for purchasing training and items within the universe of the game by repetitive tasks.

There have got to be worse jobs.