China Blocks Typepad, Prompts Weblog Blackout

dcm writes "As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet, democratic dialogue, religious expression,' the regime continues to block discourse.On Friday, China began blocking access to Typepad, a paid weblog hosting service in San Mateo, California. The communist regime previously blocked access to BlogSpot, Blogger's free hosting site. Yan Sham-Shackleton filed a report on the Glutter weblog, mentioning China is '...now using blocking software to stop information from leaking into the county via personal sites, an increasingly vibrant China Internet community, and a place where users are slipping in banned information. Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident.'"

Re:Please help us

As long as China supplies lots of cheap labor and plays ball with the world's corporations nobody's going to impose anything on them. The world's governments could care less about human rights and all that. They just want cheap stuff and big profits.

Holding Back The Inevitable

Block the web or not, information still floods into the PRC and it's like the dutch boy trying to hold back the north sea with his finger. Newspapers and magazines flourish which the CCP have been hard pressed to stop. It's like swatting flies with a hammer.

Q: Why are the chinese communists so afraid of free exchange of ideas and criticism?
A: They're afraid they'll have to give up power and find real jobs.

It's not the security of the country tyrants desire, it's their own security. It's unfair to call them leaders.

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

Q: Why are the chinese communists so afraid of free exchange of ideas and criticism?
A: They're afraid they'll have to give up power and find real jobs.

That's exactly why communism looks great on chalkboards but never pans out in reality. It becomes hard to avoid eventual corruption in the leadership... a stable government requires a way to overthrow the leaders with a fair election.

Not Indefinitly

A properly constructed communist state would only require the dictatorship of the proletariat for a generation or so. After this time, no one would own any goods any more, and the only formalized government required would be for lawmaking and policing. The "communist" societies of the former Soviet Union and China are not really communist at all, as the parent poster said. They're really just state sponsored capitalism, and there are still people hoarding the wealth.

Re:Not Indefinitly

A properly constructed communist state would only require the dictatorship of the proletariat for a generation or so.

Only!

Well, let's see.. The first Emperor of the Red (as in blood) dynasty in China, Mao Tse-Tung managed to off about thirty million people in the ten years or so of the so-called "Cultural Revolution". I suppose after a mere 'generation or so' of this, you could form any kind of society among the dozen or so people left alive.

-jcr

Re:Not Indefinitly

You can't damn an entire political system because of a few bad eggs in history.

The hell I can't!

Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Kim (Both the elder thug that Stalin hand-picked, and the snotty little elvis-impersonator who's currently trying to get his hands on a nuke)? The only commie I can think of who I would give *any* credit to would be Tito, since he was keeping a lid on a powder keg of ethnic hatred.

If that were the case you'd also have to damn democracy ( The first French Revolution, Nazi germany, both examples of extremely violent ( even genocidal ) rulers elected to power through democratic states.

Not exactly. The French Revolutionaries didn't hold an election before they offed the king, and it's not clear that they ever bothered to *count* the votes that were cast during the terror. At any rate, votes cast when anyone who voted "wrong" was in danger of the guillotine are hardly an example of democracy at work in my book.

As for Hitler's rise to power, I'll give you that it's the saddest example I can think of where a democracy voted to abandon their liberty, nevertheless I don't condemn democracy because one democracy comitted suicide.

-jcr

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

When did communism ever look great on chalkboards?

During the design phase, before it was actually implemented, communism sounded great. Utopia here we come! Not that it hasn't suffered from lack of trying. Kind of like Death March programming projects.

To be fair, capitalism, also great looking on the chalkboard, grows warts over time. And much for the same reasons as communism does; the actual implementation involves Real People that care zero about other people. It's hard to program around that.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

a stable government requires a way to overthrow the leaders with a fair election.

And a fail safe [findlaw.com] for when "fair elections" aren't, as well.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

Communism does not preclude fair election. Communism is just socialism in the extreme. There are plenty of contemporary democratic socialist countries. At the same time, democracy (traditionally the "enemy" of communism due to Cold War propaganda) is not immune to corruption, either. It wouldn't be hard to argue that the "politician for sale" lobby problem is not evidence of corruption in the United States.

The problem with "pure" communism (the reason why it doesn't pan out in reality) is that it doesn't provide personal incentives to produce - all production is seized and redistributed by the state. Similarly, there are incentives only to demonsrate need in order to obtain an undue portion of the redistribution. Under such a system, the dishonest are rewarded by not having to work according to ability and obtaining more than fair share of "need". The honest are punished.

Even the U.S. has adopted many socialist programs (Medicare, Social Security, welfare, public education), but it's difficult to determine where the balance between socialism and pure capitalism lies. Allowing the market free rein implies that there is no such thing as a public good, which is difficult to argue.

The more power in the central government, the more corruption, no matter what form of government it is. This is one of the reasons our founding fathers intended to limit the power of the fed, a lesson that not even the current Republican party seems to have taken to heart.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

Because, as Plato pointed out over 2000 years ago, democracy is a dangerous thing. The populace can be taken advantage of - note the cultural revolution was supported by the majority when millions were killed, so was the Russian revolution which supported Lenin's oppression and later Stalin's.

This seems like an odd tack to take in the argument--since neither China during the Cultural Revolution nor the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin had substantive democratic institutions. In point of fact, Lenin and Stalin and Mao each in their time took deliberate actions (such as the brutal suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, the dismantling of the Workers' Opposition, the creation of the secret police and the gulag, and, well, the Cultural Revolution) to crush local democratic power, concentrate power in the hands of party bosses, and create a totalitarian environment in which people do not dare to express dissent for fear of hearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

(In such an environment, by the way, it also seems to me to be rather tendentious, to say the least, to claim to have any clear knowledge of what people thought about the rulers -- since part of the purpose of the totalitarian apparatus was to keep people from honestly saying what they though about things.)

I thoroughly recommend you read some of the descriptions of the power struggles in post-Revolutionary Russia, such as Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia or The Workers' Opposition.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

"Because, as Plato pointed out over 2000 years ago, democracy is a dangerous thing."

I really don't care to take pointers on democracy from a guy that's been dead for 2 millenia AT HIS OWN HAND because his government told him to drink the kool-aid. Gimme a break.

And I don't care to take pointers on anything from a guy who doesn't know the difference between Plato [wikipedia.org] and Socrates [wikipedia.org].

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

Because, as Plato pointed out over 2000 years ago, democracy is a dangerous thing.

It definitely is. A democracy is, simply stated, a majority-dictatorship. The framers and founders of the USA created a Democratic Republic, that is not a democracy but rather a Republic with liberty and choice. Our republic made up of the populus, voted democratically by the populus.

Many people misinterpret the US government as a democracy when in fact it is a democratic republic. One of the strenghts is that people are believed to have unalienable rights, rights given to them by their creator that cannot be taken away by any law. The point of this is not religious, but rather that no one can take away unalienable [loc.gov] rights. Thus the formation of a body (the US goverment) to protect these rights, versus in the case of many systems (ie a democracy), a government that grants rights.

This is truly power in the peoples hands, rights that one cannot give nor take away, rights that we are created with. Thus the freedom we have is innate, not a privledge or amenity.

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

Communism in Russia was taken down due to glasnost [wikipedia.org] spreading to the populations, but perestroika [wikipedia.org] not spreading so quickly causing popular revolt due to the intellectual influence and the initial presess of glasnost. In China the transition contains more perestroika-like [wikipedia.org] benefits, perhaps because of the more aggressive adoption of a market economy and the more rapid spread of improvement of general standard of living (reducing the incentive to look elsewhere for political reform).

Re:Holding Back The Inevitable

I wouldn't consider the PRC to be particularly communist at this point. The party line at the moment is basically "shut up and we'll let you get rich". This leads to strange dichotomies where they wish to censor satellite broadcasts, but are making truckloads of the satellite industry.

The younger generations are beginning to be raised on capitalism and American consumerist "culture". It's unclear what that will mean for the political future of the PRC, but fascism and unrestrained capitalism aren't entirely at odds with each other.

Some other posts on this topic have mentioned the threat of the PRC to US global dominance. This is especially true in the economic realm as China has vast production capability while at the same time a relatively low standard of living. That gives the PRC tremendous economic clout.

Not surprising

This is just the latest front in China's attempt to try to stamp out any form of anti-government speech. Say what you want about the present US Governemnt, the fact that you're allowed to say it here is something that makes us very different from them...

Re:Not surprising

'At least we're better then China' isn't really something to be overly proud of.

It's akin to a murderer claiming at least he didn't kill more people.

Re:Not surprising

Pretty soon, they will have the largest dam, a space program, and still have the worlds largest population

And your point? We could build the world's largest dam if we were so inclined -- but most dam building in the United States was stopped due to the environmental damage that it causes. Have you read about some of the health and environmental impacts [irn.org] of the Three Gorges dam? It's an impressive engineering feat to be sure but nothing I'd want in my backyard. How many species will be wiped out by this monstrosity? How many people will be displaced?

Is that really something that China should be proud of?

Re:Not surprising

Say what you want about the present US Governemnt, the fact that you're allowed to say it here is something that makes us very different from them...

Sadly, the gap is closing from the US side, for the good of the country and all that rot.

Re:Not surprising

the gap is closing from the US side,

It's occurred to me, too, that the government/corporate system of the United States and of China are a lot closer in practice than people might think.

Yes, in China you get these weird laws where "slander of the state" and "revealing state secrets" put people in jail for expressing dissent.

But, in the US, if you criticize a business, eg, make disparaging comments about the healthiness of eating beef or provide a web link to a DeCSS site, you can get slammed with heavy legal action.

In China, the government powers have become corrupt as they hand out valuable contracts to cronies and have tolerated cheating bosses not paying their workers.

In the US, the government powers have become corrupt as they accept money from special interests to craft legislation favorable to those interests. Substantial growth in non-unionized workforce has meant stagnation in wage growth for blue collar workers in the US.

Government policies are not far apart between the US and China; corporate influence will tend to drive them even closer together.

As if people can't get around the block

I've got to think that anyone with the will and some time would easily be able to bypass the blockage, either by using underground ISPs, satellite, or other means.

Technically impossible

It is technically very hard to block information on the net, without dropping connectivity. Of course, attempting it might provide a major impulse to AI research :)

Re:Technically impossible

However, it's very trivial to firewall out specific sites so long as you have control of all paths between the user and the site. The Chinese have such firewalls installed at every ISP that leaves the country.

FAQ 3.2

Q: What is a GMTB?

A: The short answer is "Gay Movable Type Blogger." This does not quite paint the full picture, however.

A GMTB uses a Mac. A GMTB is excited about "wireless hot spots" and "cafes." The prototypical GMTB can be found at a Starbucks with a 15" PowerBook. He will be wearing a black turtleneck and will go on at length about the wonder years where web designers were paid like programmers.

The GMTB will blog about you. Do not be alarmed. In order to make sense of their fast moving and confusing world, GMTBers need to write at length about even the most trivial encounter. They will likely Google you and turn even the most minor conversation into an exploratory experience. Every experience is like that of the newborn boy who finds touching himself over and over to be a pleasurable experience.

Do not make the GMTB angry. The GMTB has natural defenses known as "Google juice." With the application of this "Google juice," the GMTB will sour any future searches on your name. While there is no physical harm to be done, they can make any attempt at finding relevant and useful information about you a linkfest of armchair philosophy, ill-formed opinions, and broad and insanely overblown reactions to everyday occurrences.

Should you find yourself confronted by a GMTB and wish to escape, one need only mention that their "CSS" is broken. The GMTB invariably considers the CSS "correctness" and "portability" to be a craft, and the output thereof to be an "art." By pointing out that the page renders poorly on the most esoteric browser you can imagine, you will be assured a quick and uneventful escape.

Re:Chinese Technology?

It is blocked by the main routers the government owns, which route all internet traffic. It simply checks the TCP header for the destination IP address, if it is bound for a blocked subnet, the packet is dropped.

How to get around it, well the CIA didn't like those commi's blocking information, so they set up Anonymizer ( www.anonymizer.com ) that would allow a type of encrypted proxy so you could get around that. CoDC also set up some sort of browser that could get around it, but I didn't really investigate it much (Same guys who made Back-Oriface)..

Re:Chinese Technology?

> It is blocked by the main routers the government owns, which route all internet traffic. It simply checks the TCP header for the destination IP address, if it is bound for a blocked subnet, the packet is dropped.

That's the part I don't get.

Why not let the packet go through, and simply log the session?

Chen Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org, is disgusted by what he sees, and the only thing in his logfile is index.html
Jiang Sixpack: Goes to www.freetibet.org/index.html and spends six hours reading 20-30 pages of material.

If I block both of them at the router, I don't know who's the greater threat to domestic security - because I can't target everyone. If I let the packets through and log session information (particularly if I can aggregate Jiang's web traffic with his IM traffic, for instance -- thereby exposing Jiang's entire social network. Great data mining opportunities :), I can use that data to have a better idea of who's worth targeting.

By blocking at the firewall, the Chinese government is missing the point. A properly-configured Internet is like a self-registration system for domestic security threats.

China is blocking information, but US is blocking

women's nipples.

Which society would you rather live in?

Give me a break.

I don't know which is more mind-boggling - the fact that this was seriously posed as a question or the fact that it was modded insightful.

Kindly go to a strip club, get HBO, google for "nipple", or buy a magazine in a brown wrapper ALL LEGALLY and THEN tell me how terrible the US is just because most people who live here think it might be smart to not allow nudity during the Superbowl.

Re:Oh the outrage......

It's totally understandable that China's gov't will be overthrown if people are given free access to information

Why do you say this? Have you been to China, asked anyone there what they think? Of course China is oppressive, and of course its views don't fall in line with those of the US. But that doesn't necessarily mean people would instantly overthrow it given the chance.

As an architect, I've been keeping a very close eye on growth in China. Quite simply, China is where it's at. The growth rate there is just insane, and with the Olympics coming up there is now intense international pressure on very accellerated modernization. Remember the dot com boom? China is like that right now, except their economy is based on tangible things.

I'm not saying that giving up freedom is worth some prosperity, but I am saying that if China were to all of a sudden take down its Great Firewall there is no guarantee that its people would want to risk destroying one of the largest economic expansions in history just because they can read the whiny ramblings of a 13 year old girl on Blogspot.

Ultimate Power... almost

They've implimented a system to block free exchange of ideas about religion, politics and current issues through blogs and the internet...

But even they can't stop spam.

Interesting.

Turning your weblog black?

Oh, that'll show them. I can just see China's head of information management saying to himself "I never thought it would come to this! Black weblogs! Damn those clever bastards!"

Webloggers have always had a hugely inflated sense of self-importance, but this is just ridiculous.

Freenet?

I suppose someone could just ban any and all downloads of Freenet-related software so that's not going to solve anything. For anyone who ever said the mantra "Information Wants To Be Free" -- THIS is what it is meant to be.

Government-sanctioned censorship isn't anything new, though. We try to protect children with things like CIPA and the like. We've got watchdogs all over that won't allow us (folks in the US) to hear foul language over public airwaves, are looking to restrain violent video games, and in general trying to police what we do.

I'm not saying we're communistic, by any means. Just saying that censorship is censorship. Not as extreme, but the seeds are there.

In the end, it unfortunately comes down to "censorship is only bad when they're censoring something I believe in."

Re:Freenet?

The US brand of content censorship is more about truth-in-labeling than anything else. Offensive material isn't totally prohibited, just limited to be exhibited where kids and people who would perfer not to see it won't stumble into it. You'd have to try very hard to get access to the Playboy Channel without knowing what you're doing...

As long as FTP works,

They can send their info to some FTP server and their US friends can copy it to Typepad. If FTP gets blocked, there's always e-mail.. and if I recall (can't find the link) there was actually a service that you could e-mail your FTP requests to. (wow, wish I could find that again, it was a list of about a zillion different services which were e-mail enabled)

Re:As long as FTP works,

It's a cat-and-mouse game. The Chinese will block any server being used to coordinate anti-government activities of any type. They're always a step behind, but this leads those who oppose the government to constantly be looking for new ways to communicate. Then, once they start communicating over a government honeypot site, they send the spooks and that person is never heard from again.

Just reading...

I think it was on BBC I was reading about goverments blocking their citizens from content, I know Iraq did it at first. All I can see it doing is makeing them mad and giveing them more of a reason to find a way around the block. They might just have to come to the relization that if people want to see if they will find a way to see it

Oh, bitter irony

As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet

Somewhat ironic given that U.S. companies are profiting [wired.com] by selling censorship software to China. And of course, the U.S. requiring (or trying to require) libraries to censor the Internet, for the children, of course.

really, guys, what did you expect?

these are the perpetrators of the Tiananmen massacre. do you really think they would hesitate to block a few websites?

What's next? Slashdot.

Remember, China blocked Google for a time out of fears that they could find anti-government info there...

So, it seems any site that lets somebody post infomation without has got to go. It won't be long until they decide Slashdot is not something they should let their people see.

Why not the WTO instead of ONU?

Just other day the WTO said that USA had to allow on line gambling [slashdot.org]. China has just joined the WTO. Typepad is an for profit company, why not they also can't make WTO force them to allow access to Typepad? At least this shitty globalization would give a little help to free speech. At least by now USA and Britain aren't trying to make WTO become irrelevant as they did with ONU.

Could Gopher be used to defeat Censorship?

Do they only block the http ports?
Or do the block by IP or what?

Yea, Gopher is dead, but don't be insensitive.
Gopher was pretty cool, especially considering some of the terrible backgrounds and colors you sometimes get in http.

Or is this just like suggesting lynx?

Maybe it is a good thing that Apache 2 [slashdot.org] supports Gopher.

Stop laughing, I'm serious.
It wouldn't suprise me that the communist bastard politicians wouldn't know to block stuff outside http.

p2p is another possibility, but that's been discussed before I'm sure.

WTO: Casinos and Information Services

If the WTO can force the U.S to admit offshore online casinos [slashdot.org], perhaps the WTO can force China to admit offshore information services. The Chinese consumers should be able to access any commercial internet site (including a paid weblog service like Typepad) as a free trade issue.

Free Trade does not apply to China.

Chinese government policies that favor Chinese companies over foreign firms are drivin