Great Firewall of China

[ZIM]

General interest:

The ongoing Internet censorship of China has been remarked on in the news (http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/china_internet_2524.jsp) previously, and now microsoft is joining in (http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/14/technology/microsoft_china.reut/) by censoring independent writers:
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp.'s new MSN China Internet venture is censoring words such as "freedom," "democracy" and "human rights" on its free online journals, Microsoft said Tuesday, putting itself in the middle of a major Web controversy.
If anybody has a website with available space to host, here's an interesting venture (http://projab.jot.com/WikiHome) that won't cost you anything.

From the site:
Especially since April 2005, when the law on non-profit website registration became effective, website owners are required to submit their real personal information when they register their websites. The annual registration process as well as hefty penalty for failure in compliance have angered many website owners that use an independent virtual server and domain names.

Therefore, many bloggers in mainland China began to consider moving their blogs outside of China. But because of language barrier, financial, payment and other issues, the cost of moving is rather high and the situation is not optimistic.

It is based on the belief of free speech that we started the Adopt a Chinese blog project. We hope that we and others on the internet who shared the same belief, can share resources and help bloggers who want to freely express themselves and find a safer space for blogging, so that they can continue to blog without retribution.
Overview on Chinese net censorship here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China)

[Shaolinlueb]

thats pretty interesting. but thats the way china does things.
usa is taking a step by making all XXX sites get .xxx instead of .com or .net. which is a step in the right direction for blocking this from kids. other then that its the usa. it would be too hard to control the internet here. or maybe not but still we have freedoms the people in china dont. we should consider ourselves lucky.

[David Jamieson]

it's not that it's hard to control the internet, It's that for the most part, what's involved is to difficult to understand for those folks who want to control it. :p

And those who do understand the technical aspects with depth are few.

there's only so much geek to go around and the government can't afford the paycheques the gambling and porn sites can. :D

money talks, and morality takes a slam...every time. (and his little bro ethics is tied up and gimpin in the basement)

[omarthefish]

there's only so much geek to go around

lol. That's a good way of putting it I guess. I always figured it had to do with their just being to much content to filter effectively. It's nearly imposisble for me to find something I can't open. Basically I am only "blocked out" from Anglefire and Homestead sites on account of they always load about half way and then time out.

But MANY sites require me to go into my browser settings and use the proxy server I have configured. Often also one proxy will stop working for the site I want and I have to find another one. So I guess I'm just enough of a geek to get through the curtain. But it still has it's effect because unless someone has specifically told me about a site or I am really hunting for something it's generally not worth the trouble to go through my list of proxies trying one after another untill I get one that opens the page. I also am highly skeptical of how many people would be able to do this. It's not complicated but it's also not common knowledge.

[omarthefish]

p.s.

A lot of myths surround this. Like this one from Wikepedia:


The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particularly objectionable sites (such as the BBC) are requested.

This site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ comes up fine for me using the DNS server configured for me by China Telecom.

So does this one: http://www.cnn.com/

What the hell ARE they censoring? I mean, I took it for granted that they WERE but cnn.com, Guardian.com, bbc.com, NewYorkTimes.com, every western news site I can think of comes up for me without any special configuration. Heck, on the anniversary of tiananmen I even downloaded the footage of the kid stopping the tank that was on the CNN.com site along with it's recap of the original story.

What's up guys?

[ZIM]

What's up guys? Don't rightly know. I'm not a Chinese citizen, so I'm nowhere near experiencing this.

Overall, I think the concern is for the independent websites of Chinese, rather than the ability [or lack thereof] to access outside stuff. And, if I've got this right, the firewalls are more used in public access points than private [so, internet cafes, universities(?), libraries, etc.].

The bloggers are a special case only insofar as these aare private citizens speaking their mind, which might be considered subversive either in specific speech or as a collective movement. The addition of microsoft into the picture is troubling to me when I reflect on MSs tendency to build clunky software atop whatever sh1te code they've got laying around. :rolleyes: ;)

I just wanted to make the project known, in case anyone's sufficiently interested to offer some bandwidth-y help. Cross-cultural connections are always fun & sometimes handy, after all.

Maybe Gene can find a blogging Monk to adopt. Heh. :)

[SimonM]

I haven't had a single site blocked yet. Not CBC (which always has some news about China due to the huge Chinese Canadian population), not BBC, not any other random RPG site I visit. No blockages.

[ZIM]

Just curious: Could you look up stuff critical of China? Like "China democracy movement" or some such? Tianamen Square?