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Adopt a [Chinese] Blog

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Jun 21, 2005 08:59 AM
from the amazing-uses-for-the-internet dept.
Censorship
malorkus writes "Here's a great way for bloggers and others with decent web hosting to help fight internet censorship in China and other restrictive countries. Adopt a Chinese Blog aims to match up censored bloggers with volunteer hosts."
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  • Block (Score:5, Insightful)

    by turtled (845180) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:01AM (#12871722)
    Wouldn't their government then just block access to certain servers / sites / blogs?

    • Re:Block (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Crimson Dragon (809806) * on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:04AM (#12871746) Homepage
      Yes, but the point of this seems to lie in the fact that enough people doing this will hassle the powers that be and bring attention on a larger scale to the rights violations going on there.

        • Re:Block (Score:2, Interesting)

          by wrf3 (314267)
          And therein lies the tale of moral relativism. Freedom isn't better than tyranny; life isn't better than death; bravery isn't better than cowardice; and truth isn't better than lies. So let's stand for nothing, since we have nothing on which to stand.
          • What is morally relative about a government denying its citizens rights they purport to give their citizens in their very constitution, as was insightfully stated?

            • What is morally relative about a government denying its citizens rights they purport to give their citizens in their very constitution, as was insightfully stated?

              ... in which case there isn't a single government that isn't guilty. So we're back to moral relativism. You have to make a judgment call at *some* point. Some things are more evil than others, from a human perspective.

              Besides, these chinese bloggers ... an hour after you've eaten one, you're hungry again ... (there. someone had to say it. sat

              • Re:Block (Score:5, Interesting)

                by Intron (870560) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:47AM (#12872115)
                Nobody gives you rights. You have rights. There are only people trying to take them away.

                If all people exercise their right of free speech, free press and free association then those rights will persevere. If you back down, then you will cede your rights. Its easy to promote a popular cause. Its the unpopular ones that define your character.

                Anyway, I'd like to help, but my ISP won't let me host a blog on my server. And I have to wash my cat this weekend.
                • And I have to wash my cat this weekend.

                  Seems like a very good idea for a blog!

                  • Re:Block (Score:3, Interesting)

                    by Rakishi (759894)
                    Why not, answer me. You claim that because they're value system is different we cannot interfere. However, by saying that you're forcing YOUR value system onto me since there is no universal right or law preventing me from interfering with someone else's value system. Why can't I condemn them? Why can't I interfere? What are you basing my actions as being "bad" on? They have no inherent universal right to anything as you claim, which also includes the right to keep me from interfering.

                    You're a hypocrite,

        • Re:Block (Score:5, Informative)

          by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman@ g m a i l . com> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:22AM (#12871904) Homepage Journal
          There are no rights violations. It is Chinese law that is, in our opinions, flawed, but what gives you or I the right to say so?

          I thought the same thing, but several very intelligent posters pointed out that there *are* rights being violated. Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution [usconstitution.net] states:

          Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

          Now I realize that the Chinese Constitution may not be worth the paper its printed on (I know of many violations of the constitution, including friends who fled China due to religious persecution - read: arrest/jail - directly in contradiction to article 36), but that shouldn't stop the Chinese from fighting for rights they've been explicitly granted.

          A good writeup on the situation from a Chinese Law Professor is here [typepad.com], with a well reasoned rebuttal here [listlesslawyer.com].

          Let's hope the Chinese people are able to fight for their constitution. If only it was as easy as taking the case before the Chinese Supreme Court. :-/

          • Re:Block (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Khuffie (818093) <khuffie@khuffie.cAAAom minus threevowels> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:51AM (#12872142) Homepage
            And the US constitution isn't being violated by the Patriot Act?

            • Re:Block (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Ryosen (234440)
              So what you're saying is like "I enjoy chocolate, I'm just not entitled to it". Being a bit literal, aren't we?

              From dictionary.com [reference.com]:

              Enjoy:
              v. tr.

              1. To receive pleasure or satisfaction from.
              2. To have the use or benefit of: enjoys good health.

              I believe that the intent of the Chinese Constitution is under definition #2.
            • If you're a product of the US education system, go ask for your money back, because you didn't get what you paid for. Rights are not granted by a constitution. Rights are inherent (at the 'certain inalienable' ones).

              Man, I'm glad I didn't go to your education system. You have a pretty warped view of history.

              Our declaration of independence says the following:

              We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, th

              • Re:Block (Score:3, Insightful)

                by bnenning (58349)
                You'll note the suspicious lack of "Freedom of Speech".

                Gosh, and it doesn't say anything about the freedom to eat chocolate either. It does however say "Liberty".

                Something else to note is that the US Constitution went into effect in 1789. Yet the First Ammendment (the right to free speech) was not added until 1791!

                Statist fallacy #43. Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights grants rights to citizens. They grant powers to *government*, and in theory government can act only in accordance with th
        • Depends what school of morality you subscribe to, some preach that such rights are in essence unviersal. We have every right to say whatever we want about those laws, it's called freedom of speech. As for changing them; we again have every right to, given China's involvement with the world, try to influence Chinese politics by aiding certain factions.
        • I'd like to point out what the above statement says about the parent. It seems that he believes we have no rights to do anything unless specifically given to us, it seems that some other entity (government?) must give said rights to us. This, of course, goes against the Western point of view which gives me all rights unless I decide to give them up (say because my government says so, China is NOT my government may I add). See it's funny however if you say that using the Western view of things to justify som

      • Re:Block (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tomhudson (43916) <hudson&videotron,ca> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:11AM (#12871811) Journal
        that, plus if they post in chinese and you can't understand it, you may very well be hosting a government "agent provocateur".

        ... or, if they post in english (or ingrish) then they aren't really communicating very effectively with their own countrymen, so it becomes just another political statement w/o much impact.

        IOW, a cute idea, but not very practical or logical. Perhaps we're being trolled?

        • Re:Block (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Belial6 (794905) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @10:47AM (#12872677) Homepage
          "plus if they post in chinese and you can't understand it, you may very well be hosting a government "agent provocateur"."

          That should be just fine with the adopters. Free speech is free speech. If you start deciding that only certain kinds of speech should be allowed, then your no better than the government censors.
      • They wouldn't need to once they found out who it was and did away with the subversion personally.


        I thought it was Visual SourceSafe that we wanted to do away with...

  • In soviet Russia (Score:4, Funny)

    by farker haiku (883529) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:04AM (#12871750) Journal
    Hrm... so,
    In Soviet Russia, Bloggers host you!

  • Adopt... (Score:5, Funny)

    by British (51765) <british1500@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:05AM (#12871758) Homepage Journal
    *Sally Struthers walks on*

    For just 5 megs a month you can adopt a Chinese blog. You will recieve letters, a digital camera picture and more from your sponsored blog. Your blog will recieve bandwidth, FTP access and encryption...

    Just 5 megs a month. Isn't that worth it?

  • Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ch0p (798613) <ch0pstik@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:06AM (#12871765) Homepage
    What's to stop the government from arresting people who are trying to get around their censorship?
  • Is there some law in China against circumventing the censorship laws? Like.... What is the potential punishment that you are probably incurring upon whatever China-person you "help out"?
    • Both persons should agree on something like this:

      1. The blogger (in China) pretends he just sent the content of the blog in a personal email and that

      2. the host published the content of said email without permission.

      IANAL and IANC (Chinese), but this seems to make some sense. This or something similar...
  • I'd be scared shitless to visit China if I let some dissident bloggers use some of my hosting space. The Chinese govt. is probably paranoid enough to start putting together a list of individuals who have helped these "dangerous" individuals.

    Another concern I'd have is that a blogger might have lots of harsh words about some local official, but how do I know it isn't simply slander? And what would my liabilities be in such a case?
      • Eh, it might be rather more interesting from their point of view to let you in, but under constant surveillance so they can later investigate everybody you had contact with in case any of them happen to be dissidents -- or if it would be convenient to frame any of them as dissidents. Then, they can trumpet your involvement with this shindig as "evidence", and go drive up some good ol' fashioned anti-foreigner, nationalistic fervor.

  • Out (Score:3, Funny)

    by Capt James McCarthy (860294) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:08AM (#12871786) Journal
    I think I'll outsource my blog to India.

  • Outsourced (Score:3, Funny)

    by CorporateWhoremone (891177) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:09AM (#12871791)
    You can't outsource to the US. That just dosn't mesh with the United States' plan for global domination.

  • Not to rain on your parade but.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by matvei (568098) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:10AM (#12871802)
    what's stopping the Chinese secret service (or whatever) to register with this service as hosts, collect all the information needed to snatch the blogger and make an example out of him and his family?
    • Nothing really stops them except the filtering that the adoption agency does. Since they're probably not trained in intelligence procedures, I'd guess they can't stop this from happening.

      But if you're Chinese intelligence, the better method is to prevent people from getting to the adoption service in the first place. They don't want to throw people in lonely prisons after they publish damaging things, they want to prevent damaging things from being published. The best way to do that is to use the Great

    • ...collect all the information needed to snatch the blogger and make an example out of him and his family?

      What country/world do you live in?? You're really contemplating the possibility that the Chinese government is going to hunt you down, "snatch" you away, and do horrible things to you?

      Listen, America has a number of problems, but keeping its citizens safe from foreign aggression while on their own soil is not one of them. And I'm including "terrorism", even though that's not remotely the point

  • Great idea... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:11AM (#12871808)
    Would any chinese adopt my european CVS?

    That would be great! If I could move my project to a free country. Reading trivial patents is so boring you know...
  • This is great idea! What about hosting blogs of citizens of other countries where internet censorship run rampant? I guess the campaign does cover a lot of territory, given China's immense population.

  • Does anyone here appreciate the irony? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tigre (178245) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:14AM (#12871826)
    China is a safe haven for all sorts of internet activity which is illegal and reprehensible here, I guess it's only fair that we return the favor.

  • Adware hosting? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Donny Smith (567043) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:24AM (#12871926)
    The linked site does not exactly show how they plan to limit (ab)use to actual opressed bloggers and keep the spam and ads out.

    BTW, what is wrong with opening a (Chinese) blog account on one of Western sites and emailing blog posts via some foreign Webmail site that provides HTTPS encryption of Web sessions?
  • a secluded NOC was the target of what appears to have been a small nuclear strike. The only other traffic in the area was a Chinese cargo blimp twenty klicks south- southwest which also seems to have been destroyed in the incident.
  • This isn't about blogging. Its a somewhat rhetorical, outside-of-the-box question -- "What if the Chinese government is using the right approach?"

    Their economic growth has been much better than ours over the last decade. Their top-down economy can decide to build new nuclear plants when they need them without having to deal with environmentalists interfering for a decade or more. [One of the best prospects for eliminating dependence on foreign oil is relatively cheap electricity combined with hybrid and

    • Re:At the risk of being off-topic... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Daniel_Staal (609844) <DStaal@usa.net> on Tuesday June 21 2005, @10:10AM (#12872336)
      The democratic or republican forms of government are not designed to be the best form of government: a benevolent, wise, dictator/king is a far better system. What they are designed for is to limit the downside. While a good dictator/king is the probably the best form of government, a bad dictator/king is probably the worst.

      The point of a democratic or representative system is that the worst case is limited, because no one person has the power to totally screw everything up. Presumably, therefore, at least some people will be decent, keeping the system from total failure.

      So, yes, a planned economy can outperform a non planned one, if the planners are very good. A controlled political system can out perform a non planned one, if the planners are good.

      But you have to have good planners. And they have to stay good, and operate in the interest of the system, not themselves.

      An uplanned system, where everyone operates in their own best intrest, works fairly well, and does not depend on finding exeptional people to run it.

      (My personal feeling, by the way, is that their economic growth has been more the result of technology upgrades than anything else. The US/Europe leads the world in productivity-enhancing tech, and a country that can jump a few grades closer to us will grow a lot faster than we will because we have to develop the next steps.)
    • In short, no.

      Economic growth: growing from zero (china) has a better percentage gain than growth from peak (US). No news here. On the other hand, things that grow quickly have a higher risk. Put another way, a startup grows faster than GE or Microsoft. But they can also overheat/crash/fail for a lot of reasons that won't kill a stable diversified giant corporation.

      Your posting also interchanges economic and political concepts. They're not the same thing, and untangling them is necessary to talk effec

  • Webspace (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21 2005, @09:55AM (#12872168)
    I'm looking for a free, fully-managed, load-balanced hosting environment with unlimited bandwidth and space, free domain registration, SQL Server and the dotNet framework.

    In exchange, I promise to be scathingly critical about nation you choose.

  • Ah, the irony... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Woodworker (723841) on Tuesday June 21 2005, @10:00AM (#12872221) Homepage
    I've read hundreds of posts on slashdot that were wrongly modded down (censored) as trolls because people didn't like what they had to say, and others modded up as 'insightful' with content like 'MS SUCKS' and nothing else to say. Now this community is bitching about China?!! The looking glass is a mirror.

    BTW, -1 as a troll. To hell with my karma.
    • "Leave China alone for Christ's sake. You're not going to change things, especially if you are NOT IN CHINA!"

      No way. This [abc.net.au] has gone way too far [www.cbc.ca].

      If there is truth to these accusations that the Chinese government is intimidating citizens of my country in any way for something such as practicing Falun Gong [wikipedia.org], then we have a serious problem that need s addressing.

      I'm in no way in favour of military action, but this is clearly and act of war on their part if it is true.
      • Sorry to tell you this but its only an "act of war" if the US goverment doesn't like the country, just look at Israel and what they do.
        • "just look at Israel and what they do"

          This is true too. I am much less familiar with that situation than this one. I am however aware that the Jew -vs- Muslim war has tyrants on both sides. Buddhism is concerned primarily with having compassion for others. I do not believe you will find an example of Buddhists retaliating against oppression. I have no idea the depths of what happens in Israel, or to Muslims when they travel there, but this quote is what I am concerned about:

          Montreal resident Yi


            • They should consider themselves lucky that the US gives them billions of dollars of weapons to fight enemies that are equiped with rocks and primitive explosives.

              WTF? Do you think they use all of those weapons on the Palestinians? The best thing that can happen for Israel is for he world to acknowledge that it *IS* a war. The fact is, if they used those weapons in an all out war, the Palestinians wouldn't have a fucking change.

              And to describe palestinian as poor enemies with only rocks and primitive
        • "yet Saddam Hussein can kill 2 million people and almost all here on /. would say we should not have gone to war with Iraq"

          Excellent point. This is why I am also not in favour of military action against China. On this account, at least you cannot call me a hypocrite.

          I'm talking about diplomacy, and possibly outlawing trade with them.

            • A trade embargo is not going to make China change it's policy on internet content filtering.

              Exactly. Besides, the rest of the world couldn't even afford a trade embargo with China at this point ...

              And its not like other countries aren't doing the same ... (hello, France wrt louis vuitton auctions, Germany wrtnazi memorabilia, Microsoft wrt Mike Rowe Soft) ... oops, forgot, Microsoft isn't a country - they outsource that function by renting their politicians.

              • Yes, they're people will just suffer a lot more and lose whatever chance they may have had at goverment reform in the future (from everything I've read the Chinese goverment isn't stupid enough to believe they can keep their current system going once China become rich/capitalistic enough). Look at Iraq and North Korea, or Cuba.

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