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Yahoo Confirms Beijing Blocking Flickr

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:19 AM
from the well-isn't-this-awkward dept.
Censorship
slashthedot writes "In another instance of censorship against websites about anything anti-establishment in China, Flickr, popular among a growing class of digital photo enthusiasts in the world's second-largest Internet market, has not shown photos to users in mainland China since last week, amid rumors Beijing took action after images of the Tiananmen massacre in early June 1989 were posted. "It is our understanding that Flickr users in China are not able to see images on Flickr, and we have confirmed that this is not a technical issue on our end," a spokeswoman for Yahoo Hong Kong said in an email in response to a Reuters inquiry."
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[+] China Censoring Flickr 218 comments
An anonymous reader writes "It would appear that the Chinese government is currently censoring all photos on the site Flickr. A notice has been posted in a Flickr help forum about this, but the service currently doesn't have a fix for this. It would appear that China has turned on their Golden Shield Project to censor the site. 'Jain Hua Li, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he hadn't heard of Flickr until told about it in a conversation with a Chronicle reporter, and then suggested that the blocking may be because Chinese authorities are trying to protect children from racy images. Lucie Morillon, the U.S. representative for Reporters Without Borders, a French group that promotes free expression, said that the Beijing government often censors Web sites under the guise of protecting children or national security. She called the blocking of Flickr "one more blow against the free flow of information online by Chinese authorities" and added that it is particularly lamentable in light of promises by China to loosen restrictions before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.' Thomas Hawk has a well-considered opinion to offer on this issue."
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  • Forgive my ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pojut (1027544) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:26AM (#19492791) Homepage
    But I have never used Flickr...is it owned or partially owned by Yahoo?

    Only reason I ask is why would Yahoo be saying it isn't something technicaly on their end unless they own/run it...

  • China Evil or Not (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jshriverWVU (810740) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:31AM (#19492849)
    I keep hearing to many Pro's Con's about China. On one side you have the people bashing the government for it's internet filter system. Then on the other side I hear about how China is the new super power, with the greatest economy growth and potential. Even where I live (semi-major city) the news is ridden with (Businesses start deals with China, China Buying out more than Japan during hte 80's, China best business partner, Outsource to China, China Could Save local economy, etc, etc). Even the local college have signs "China #1 growth market, succeed in the future take Chinese 1 this semester" So is China Evil or Not?

    • Re:China Evil or Not (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:38AM (#19492971)
      That is kind of like asking if the US is evil or not. The answer is both yes and no.
      • My original post wasn't really to get a black/white answer. More to spark discussion. Because over the past 2 years I've read countless "China Filter" posts. It's a fact, so what's next? What I find more interesting is what are the real pro's con's of China. I'm a realist, and I know just like many countries tried to cut deals with the US because we were the superpower, China is quickly replacing us. Is it really true, it could be useful to learn Chinese, especially if you're in a technology or business rel

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You'll find it useful to shed yourself of your current worldview as soon as you can. Start dividing things up differently. What does the word "China" even mean, and does it make sense to prescribe the words "good" or "evil" to it? What does "good" and "evil" even mean? Stop thinking about things in absolutes, and realize that all judgements you come to are done through your own lens. Value judgements are increasingingly arbitrary. Also, everytime you use the word "or", ask yourself if you're creating

    • Re:China Evil or Not (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pantero Blanco (792776) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:49AM (#19493169)
      Being a superpower with a great economy and being evil aren't even close to mutually exclusive.

      At any rate, if you're judging countries by the same standards as you judge people, all or nearly all of them lean towards evil. The few that are very strong tend to oppress the rest, and those aren't really "good". They just don't have claws.

    • AC on purpose (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm dismayed that everything for us in the US (and the western world) has to always be boiled down a simple question of either good or evil. These sorts of simplifications then become the basis of policy for a broader audience even though they neglect to see the subtleties in an entity as massive as a country. So to answer your question... China is no more or less evil than the United States is evil. We just tend to be evil in different ways. How you weigh those differences is based upon your nationality,

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by operagost (62405)
        Equating the brutal murder of citizens in a peaceful protest with some of the recent faux pas of the US government is not going to get you very far in a debate. Neither will your bizarre view of history-- as if the previous thousands of years of moral philosophy before 1 AD didn't exist! Ever hear of the Ten Commandments, Hammurabi's Code, or any Greek philosophers? Start reading! [wikipedia.org]
    • Hey, here's a neat idea. Why not stop thinking about people, places, and things in terms of "good" and "evil"? Last I checked, the world wasn't an old west novel or a space opera, despite what your media or politicians might tell you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gstoddart (321705)

      So is China Evil or Not?

      China, the country, is by no means evil.

      The political leaders of China have some policies which border on evil, or at least not very nice as it can be quite repressive and the like.

      The individual people in China are probably, on balance, rather quite nice, hard-working people.

      China, as an economy, can't be ignored, no matter your stance on the behaviour of their government. It's simply too big, and too significant.

      Tremendous amounts of manufacturing take place in China of products d

  • will people post the pictures all over in a rebellion, a la AACS? or will all the image providers cave a la google.cn, where an image search for tiananmen massacre returns pictures of puppies and gerbils [google.cn]...?

    • will people post the pictures all over in a rebellion, a la AACS?

      What's the worst that happens if publish the AACS key? You get sued? And even that is unlikely.

      Discuss Tiananmen Square and post pictures in China? I suspect you'll suffer a much worse fate.

  • Who are we to say that our way of life is better? Don't we have rising illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, rapacious corporations and wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?

    Let's be tolerant of other points of view, please! (There may be a large cynical but friendly emoticon attached to this message. YMMV, but TMTOWTDI.)
    • Sorry, but no - I won't be tolerant of repression.
      • Define repression? Talking about people who are homeless and hungry, or children in the street hungry, sick, dieing, living off scraps found in dumpsters, people rummaging through landfills, eating fish from polluted streams/ponds/rivers because they can't afford otherwise? Where does this sound like? Try West Virginia, that's where I grew up and I've seen all of this.

        So it's not just isolated to China. I agree some of the things going on in China are horrible. But I'm tired of people being elitist (not y

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MightyYar (622222)
          Both poverty and repression are bad things, but that doesn't mean that you can't take action against one without first correcting the other. I have no problem simultaneously helping the rural poor and fighting overseas repression. I also have no problem with someone who has decided to attack one and not the other for whatever personal reason they have.

    • Re:Their country, their choice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian (840721) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:57AM (#19493337) Journal
      If the Chinese people truly want to live under technocratic tyrants, then so be it. What I don't like is Western companies, who blossomed in an environment of political liberties who happily shed any notion of those liberties to make a buck. If that's what the Chinese want, then they shouldn't get help from Google and Microsoft, and those companies should be fined substantial amounts of money every time they help the Chinese authorities jail someone. Let China develop their own tools of repression. Why the fuck should we let Cisco do it for them?

      • If the Chinese people truly want to live under technocratic tyrants, then so be it.

        By and large, they don't - but when they try to demonstrate (or these days riot) they are suppressed with the military. People in power do not let go of power easily. The only thing the people of China can do is either wait for the powers that be to fall into disarray (which will eventually happen), or for outside forces to force change (which is not currently happening). I think that the event that will change China is the next economic recession or depression. I don't think that China can exist in its pr

        • What I'm responding to is the standard apologetic "They think differently than we do, so we shouldn't bother them". I personally do not accept this, though I do realize that Chinese society has a very long history of this sort of social ordering (I mean, whether or not the Communists like Confucius, they have, in fact, largely modelled the justifications for they're power upon that model, just going to show that what is new is, in fact, old again).
            • I'm not denying that there have been repressions and abuses in the West, and that we're probably not done rooting them out either. However, there is a difference in how Western and Chinese society are oriented that go back some way. While I think notions like "Anglo-Saxon freedoms" have been substantially overstated over the last hundred years or so, I think there is something to the notion of the non-monolithic society and its origins in Germanic tribal law.

    • Re:Their country, their choice (Score:4, Informative)

      by Pantero Blanco (792776) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @12:04PM (#19493455)
      "Their country, their choice" doesn't work when, for many of them, it's neither.

      Who are we to say that our way of life is better? Don't we have rising illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, rapacious corporations and wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?

      They have rampant illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, (the same) rapacious corporations, tens of millions of intentionally murdered civilians shoved under the rug, and censorship that dwarfs the crap the FCC tries to pull.

  • Seems logical (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dekortage (697532) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:46AM (#19493091) Homepage

    For some time now, China has been blocking [wikipedia.org] sites [wikipedia.org] like BBC News, CBS News, Wikipedia, WordPress, LiveJournal, U.S. Department of State, etc. I am surprised Slashdot is not on the list, bunch of freedom-loving Linux-huggers that we are.

  • Wow, I feel bad for the developers who spent time incorporating Traditional Chinese into flickr. now no one who speaks it will see the site. Terrible timing!

    http://blog.flickr.com/en/2007/06/12/flickr-intern ational-launch/ [flickr.com]

  • Yahoo shouldn't mind. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:55AM (#19493297) Homepage Journal
    Yahoo has often said it's better to provide the Chinese partial content rather than none at all. Therefore, shouldn't they be perfectly happy that Chinese users are at least seeing the big white webpage with some text scattered around a broken-JPEG icon, rather than no Flickr at all?
  • Tiananmen Square: The PRC's worst-kept secret.

    • Tiananmen Square: The PRC's worst-kept secret.

      They don't really care if we know about it.

      They just don't want their own people to know about it. They've done a pretty good job of making the public ignorant about it in their own country -- many of them have no idea it ever happened.

      Cheers

      • Re:Ah, yes (Score:4, Informative)

        by HungWeiLo (250320) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @02:29PM (#19495843)
        many of them have no idea it ever happened

        That's a bit simplistic, don't you think?

        I've had work meetings/visits to Beijing and other parts of China. Not only have I not met anyone who has not heard of it, I've met coworkers who openly tell me that they were at the protests themselves when they were at university.

        People there just don't care because they're too busy making money.
  • Criticising Google and Yahoo for capitulating to the Chinese govt. seems to be "the thing" to do on Slashdot these days. But let's see if it is indeed clear what the "right" thing is here.

    1. Can we really blame Google and Yahoo for following the law of the land ? What gives an American (or any foreign) company the right to decide which laws are fair in China ? Even democratic countries have different opinions on what exactly freedom of speech is. Should google decide whether it agrees with German holocaust-

  • If you were not going to like them posted, (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unity100 (970058) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @12:06PM (#19493493) Homepage Journal
    you should NOT have done it.

    people will be seeing what crap you "people's" republic have pulled on people despite your muzzling attempts. get over with it, "party".

  • Massacre? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bullfish (858648) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @12:18PM (#19493689)
    There was no massacre in the square. That is just a theory like evolution. Many say it was a rave by drunk students. They don't know what happened to their friends because they were drunk. Pay no attention to the lies! Especially since now HD-DVD players that cost $20 will come soon due to the efficiencies of Chinese labor! You want this, and to help your ailing relatives, a new crop of prisoners are eager to repent for their crimes by offering their organs to you and yours at very low cost.

    "The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope." - Karl Marx
  • So they say Flickr was disconnected because images of Tiananmen Square were posted. Who knows if it were even a Chinese national who posted them? Now I'm thinking, we could have us some fun, and help to highlight Chinese net censorship at the same time.

    Post pictures of Tiananmen Square EVERYWHERE. Upload photos to Flickr, send video to Youtube and its 100 clones, post accounts on blogs, news sites etc. Let's see them disconnect their populace site-by-site until there's nothing left. Only then might it prom

  • Good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by m0nkyman (7101) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @01:24PM (#19494895) Homepage Journal
    As always, I'm happier when the Chinese are blocking things than when the companies self censor....

    • Re:Old News... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian (840721) on Wednesday June 13 2007, @11:26AM (#19492779) Journal
      Nothing like a country terrified of its own citizens, or the companies out of the supposed Free World who won't pull the plug to prevent their technologies from being used by these kinds of pathetic cowards. It's alright, though. Investors are making money, so fuck liberty.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mypalmike (454265)
        the companies out of the supposed Free World who won't pull the plug to prevent their technologies from being used by these kinds of pathetic cowards

        Filtering IP addresses is hardly the cutting edge of technology. Which companies are you referring to?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dslbrian (318993)

          Filtering IP addresses is hardly the cutting edge of technology. Which companies are you referring to?

          He's probably referring to Cisco and such. What, do you think the Chinese gov't designed and built their network and censor infrastructure themselves? Of course not, they had US companies who value dollars over human rights [un.org] (specifically Article 19) to build it for them.

      • Nothing like a country terrified of its own citizens
        Indeed, I wish it were more often the case that the government feared its people. Unfortunately most regimes (including, increasingly, those of the First World) have the opposite problem.
        • Right cause that whole thing in 89 was really a picnic! The Chinese people have a memory which is *allot* longer than westerners they view 1989 like we view 2005 and they have not forgotten what happens when a group of people get uppity.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by superbus1929 (1069292)
          They don't know any better. They don't know that their wages are horribly below what they should be getting in a global market. They don't know that their government treats them like pawns. They don't know that American capitalist companies are giving them table scraps for jobs simply because they're so cheap and expendable. They don't know ANYTHING other than propaganda and lies and what the state tells them. Younger people don't even know anything happened in Tienanmen Square on June 4 of 1989. They simpl

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by N3WBI3 (595976)
          And in the US when the government did that there was sound objection from within the government and many many political protest about it. Next time someone is run over with a tank for protesting the Bush administration you wont have to wear your captain hyperbole decoder ring to post such a message.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by billysara (264)
      Flickr itself is hardly free from censorship problems either...

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/theunholytrinity/5439 96259/ [flickr.com]

    • AFAIK, they own all the network infrastructure, so it's a trivial task to set up IP filtering on the incoming/outgoing routers for the country.
        • Well, I don't know exactly how the Flickr system is set up, but I imagine if they pull from an image server (or 10) they could just block the IPs of the image servers. Flickr still works, but the images don't load.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by kebes (861706)

      I think of the experiments they've done sending quantumly-entangled particles across some distance X, trapping them locally, and then pinging them to communicate faster than the speed of light.

      You've mis-understood those experiments. Quantum entanglement establishes instantaneous correlations between distant particles, but you cannot use this to communicate information (the 'wavefunction collapse' is random). There is no way to transmit information faster than the speed of light (according to modern relat

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by kebes (861706)
          The effect is instantaneous, but no information is transmitted.

          Correlation means that the outcome of the wavefunction collapse on the two entangled particles are strongly related to one another. So when you "compare notes" later you'll find a high degree of correlation between what states entangled particles wound up in.

          However the hidden assumption in your train-of-logic is that you can *control* wavefunction collapse and pick out whatever state you want (and then the entangled particle will have the corre

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