Microsoft removes swastika from software
(Filed: 15/02/2004)
 

Microsoft has been forced to apologise after swastika symbols were found on new copies of a popular software package.

The swastikas appeared as options for users within a font called Bookshelf Symbol 7 - one of a large number of character choices available in Office 2003 which went on sale at the end of last year.

The company said that the Nazi symbol had now been removed from the latest version of the software and procedures designed to prevent the use of potentially offensive symbols had failed. Microsoft is unclear how the symbols made it into the software but say the Bookshelf font is not their creation and is used elsewhere.

Jewish groups called the inclusion of swastikas in the software as "regrettable". Dr James Smith, co-director of The Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire, said: "It is good that Microsoft are withdrawing the swastika symbol but one has to ask what it was doing there in the first place. "Including it in a word symbol collection encourages casual use by people who have not stopped to consider the issues it raises and is therefore deeply inappropriate."

A Microsoft spokesman said: "When we found out about this we pro-actively contacted groups who might be offended to tell them there was a problem and that we were trying to get it fixed in the short and long-term. "We have also apologised for it being in there in the first place."

Comment:
As if this were of great import.
The problem is the history of use of the symbol, for centuries, in India and elsewhere, as a sign indicating prosperity.
And the fact that there are writers and others that have a genuine need for such a symbol for use in proper work or research.
The illustration includes one of the two symbols of the swastika that are included in the Bookshelf font.
You might wish to visit this page, which expands on my viewpoint, but in a social sense, concerning freedom of speech and the use of symbols.