Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Others Blocked In China 151
An anonymous reader writes "Two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square 'incident,' several high profile Internet sites have been blocked in mainland China. These include Twitter.com, Flickr.com, Live.com, and Bing.com. While Internet blocks are common enough in mainland China, blocking such high-profile sites is unusual. In addition, blog reports suggest even state-owned television broadcasts are suffering multiple instances of muting lasting several seconds (again, not unusual for some foreign stations broadcast over cable, but unusual for local state-owned media) suggesting state security, online or through other technology, has tightened significantly, perhaps in anticipation or discovery of protest plans."
Re:Retaliation (Score:2, Informative)
That's it, I'm going to block China
I don't know if you're joking or not but if you're not here you go [okean.com] (and other formats [okean.com])!
Here's a brief explanation on how to do it in Apache [parkansky.com] with Russian and Nigerian IP ranges also. You may be tempted to do what many other people are already doing but remember that language barrier aside, you're blocking your website from 1/6th of the Earth's population.
Re:People must notice the block. (Score:2, Informative)
They assume the government knows best and it's for their own good, for the most part.
Not High Profile in China.... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, almost no Chinese use those sites. Twitter doesn't even have a Chinese language version, and has barely begun to grow in China (though it may, there are already several Chinese clonewares out). Nobody ANYWHERE in the world uses Bing, and the Chinese use QQ, Sohu, Xinlang, or other IM/Portal/Blogging services instead of Live/Blogspot. Flickr is the only one Chinese might even notice, and there are plenty of alternatives.
The only Chinese that use these (now blocked) services are educated, and probably have decent English, and know how to get around these blocks. The vast majority of Chinese users use other websites, or have alternatives. The contrversial stuff has always been hosted on non-Chinese websites for obvious reasons, and people who want to see it are well aware of how to get around the blocks.
Far more telling was the 7 hours of downtime Xiaonei went through yesterday for maintanence. They've already been shutting down certain Xiaonei groups and blocking users for doing political stuff, I wonder if the maintanence included any updates to help with censorship?
Re:Unintended consequences (Score:3, Informative)
Re:People must notice the block. (Score:5, Informative)
Youtube is already blocked
Re:Like Facebook in Iran During Elections (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I've understood some young chinese don't even know that anything happened on June 4th and many others only know the cleaned up version: a small group of extremists tried to bring about civil unrest and the armed forces stopped these illegal activities with the least amount of violence possible. Why would anyone (consumer or not) object to that?
Re:Bad Logic (Score:2, Informative)
There are thousands and thousands of factories run by the PLA or by a direct proxy front man corporation.
And you know that. Funny you don't mention that. Maybe yours isn't,(how about your official chinese partner, you need one to be in business there, something else you failed to mention) but you know it goes on and a lot of bribery and corruption exists.
The same political gang that killed tens of millions of their own people is STILL IN CHARGE.
It is NO DIFFERENT from if the nazis were still in charge in Germany. Totalitarian genocidal murderers. Now they are just richer than 20 years ago.Richer and mnore powerful. I guess anything goes as long as you profit, right?
So yes, it is totally legitimate to paint with a broad brush once it comes to mainland China. We should have never normalized trade relations without an exact, carved in stone, due date by, quid pro quo and them loosening the reins and giving their people real freedom. There's still no freedom of speech, freedom of political expression outside of their one party rule, no real freedom of religion, nothing. Opening up trade to them hasn't resulted in one more iota of real freedom now than they had 20 years ago. And they seek to keep their people brainwashed forever, even to the point of censoring what is common knowledge in the rest of the world. So we made the planets largest military dictatorship richer, and near destroyed the US middle class by selling off our manufacturing infrastructure for pennies on the dollar.
Re:Selective Memories (Score:1, Informative)
Your point being? I never heard of these incidents. However, I doubt this page was ever blocked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Siege [wikipedia.org]