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Censorship Your Rights Online

China Prosecuting Webmaster Over Site 27

Posted by michael from the knock-in-the-night dept.
hughk writes "A trial is taking place in China where a webmaster who is running a site dedicated to help finding missing people is facing trial over content provided by a third-party. Unfortunately, someone had the audacity to mention Tiananmen Square. The story is written up on the BBC website amongst others. This comes down to the old problem of how do you run a service like this when not only do you monitor the articles, you have to monitor the replies as well? From a comparison point of view, you can not be prosecuted for doing something similar in Russia, but it does help to be up to date with your taxes." There are so many of these articles we can't run them all. But it helps to run some from time to time to remind people living in the freer areas of the world that not everyone lives as they do.
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China Prosecuting Webmaster Over Site More

China Prosecuting Webmaster Over Site

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  • TCWWW (Score:2)

    by Stormie ( 708 )

    Heh.. once upon a time, the URL http://slashdot.org was so frequently misquoted as http://www.slashdot.org, that the editors had an acronym for the offence - TCWWW, "the cursed WWW". Now, we get that mistake popping up on Slashdot itself. :-)

  • Repressive regime represses webmaster (Score:3)

    by Anoriymous Coward ( 257749 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2001 @06:34AM (#435332) Journal
    film at 11.

    What did he expect? He was providing a forum for free speech in a country where people are regularly tortured for expressing their opinions. I admire his bravery, and his principles, but I can't say I'm surprised by the reaction.
  • Heh.. once upon a time, the URL http://slashdot.org was so frequently misquoted as http://www.slashdot.org, that the editors had an acronym for the offence - TCWWW, "the cursed WWW". Now, we get that mistake popping up on Slashdot itself. :-)

    Huh? What "mistake"? The reference to "www.slashdot.org" [slashdot.org]? That link works, so where's the mistake? Indeed, these links all work just fine, and take you to the same story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/13/168218 [slashdot.org] , http://www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/13/16 8218 [slashdot.org], http://www.slashdot.com/article.pl?sid=01/02/13/16 8218 [slashdot.com].

  • Since both with and without the www. gets me there it doesn't really matter.
  • Yes, but various western countries are falling all over China trying to get export contracts. Look at the US giving China MFN status, for example.

    China has freed up it economy a little but on top it is the same old game and they get extremely worried about things like freedom of speech. In Russia, things are a lot better, but Putin certainly has started trying to clamp down on non-Kremlin leaning media. After all, if China can get away with it, why not Russia too?

  • If I were a webmaster in a communist country, I don't think I would provide a forum on MY site. Hell, I wouldn't even divulge my name.

    Then again, if a writer puts something slanderous in a newspaper, the paper can get sued, so it is the papers responsibility to a point. But this is different. I wonder if this article has caused /. to be censored in China.

  • First China, now USA (Score:3)

    by Morphy3 ( 227773 ) <morphy3 AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday February 13, 2001 @12:15PM (#435337) Homepage
    Why act surprised? Here is how this will happen in the US within the next 5-10 years:

    Republicans decide to make the net safe for children by appointing an 'Internet Czar' (see To Renew America [amazon.com] by Newt Gingrich) and decide that people can, in fact, be liable for "criminal" speech on the Internet. Congress accepts this comprimise to total Federal control of the Internet.

    Democrats, in order to appeal to their large amount of ethnic minority voters, pushes Congress for Federal 'hate crime' legislation. Now, it is a crime to think, or feel, hate. Orwell called these "thought-crimes" [amazon.com]. Republicans in congress who do not want to get "Ashcrofted" when they are appointed to their future cabinet position, make sure to go on record as voting for this legislation.

    These are not scenarios... these are agendas.

    So now, when some nutcase [geocities.com] posts on slashdot that he's going to kill a bunch of /blacks/whites/women/frogs/FBI Agents, Commander Taco and friends get to go to Federal Prison for running a "Hate Speech Forum" when the Ministry of Love comes down on them.

    Maybe 5 years is too far into the future. These [rnc.org] proposals [democrats.org] are in the works now. Welcome to the fold.

    Vote Libertarian [lp.org]

  • If slashdot is not already banned in China, then we are not doing our jobs as slashdot commentators. Just wait until we're banned in Amerika.

  • Thank God We Live In A Free Country (Score:3)

    by peccary ( 161168 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2001 @01:16PM (#435339)
    Where you can't be arrested for content on your web site, as long as Sony says it's ok.
  • Leaving the matter at hand aside for a moment, I must admit my kneejerk reaction is to say that freedom of speech should be a basic human right. At the same time, anyone with a website should moderate its content with regards to the national law associated with the location of the servers that host the site. To do less is to try and create martyrs(-sp?) - and to practice unsafe webmastering.
    As for the whole political situation in China - there are good and bad things about the system. When it works, it works good. When it fails, it fails badly. Is that so much worse than the pseudo-grey myre that seems to envelope the Western world? I honestly don't know.
    But at this stage I am a little tired of hearing about how 'evil' everything is that hasn't been rubber stamped by the US since 1950. I'm tired of the tear-jerking stories that are supposed to pull at specific heart-strings or stike a cord with certain segments of society(i.e. in this case geeks and journalists) - only to be torn to shreds quietly in a few months when the one important fact that was left out of the story emerges on a non-English speaking news site.
    And while I'm ranting (and thoroughly wrecking my karma - I may have been a karma whore once, but I'm kissing that goodbye now I'm just sickened by this recurring topic) I'm tired of the media furore everytime a British or American person is convicted of a crime abroad. I'm sick of American marines and pilots coming on staged news conferences and saying things like: they felt like '...a scared little bunny-rabbit...' when trapped behind enemy lines.(Do any Americans even remember that? It was an insult to the American Armed Forces as a whole). I'm tired of American commentators coming on like part of the cast of Star Trek, quoting a prime directive of interference when something's going right and quoting a policy of non-interference when the dirt's hitting the fan. I'm tired of television assuring me I have inalienable rights under my constitution; I'm tired of being assured that my political leaders are doing their best in Washington D.C.; I'm tired of news articles filled with flotsam about American politicans or policies. I'm just plain tired of nice, neat wars that just happen to come about every four years when the polls for an American leader are sagging.
    I'm tired of American xenophobia disguised as concern for the standard of living. I am tired of the tug of war between Europe and America (and you can bet that's only in its infancy). I am tired of American abuses going unreported except by the 'crackpot' press - which only serve to discredit the truth. I am tired of Americans being 'holier-than-thou' when comparitive abuses exsist within their own shores. I am tired of Americans pretending the diseases spread by their armed forces are part of history because they happened more than one political administration ago. I'm tired of in living in fear of criticising Israeli policy lest I be cast as an anti-semite. I'm tired of living in fear of criticising Islamic Albania because they are in political favour with American this month. I'm just plain tired of it all.
    The man should have had more sense - it doesn't take much to host the site outside mainland China. There's someone who wanted to be a hero - the fact he had a wife and child doesn't change that fact. I'll shed no tears for him, even if his sentence is severe - which given the current situation I sincerely doubt.
    Bye-bye karma, but you know how these things go when you need to say something. I was tired of living in fear of losing karma, so I just don't care. However, don't mark this as a 'Troll' or 'Offtopic'; this comment is neither. Truth may set you free but it can make you damned unpopular.

    8)

  • Unforuntately having to state the obvious, the whole point of having an URL named slashdot is negated by putting www in front of it.
  • Unforuntately having to state the obvious, the whole point of having an URL named slashdot is negated by putting www in front of it.

    Unfortunately having to state the obvious, if it was such a big deal then "putting www in front of it" wouldn't work. But it does work, so the people who run this place apparantly don't mind (or don't care as much as some users).

  • Wait, I think I can hear something. It sounds like a nail being hit on the head. I too am sick of it all. Of course, I just have to say it isn't just Americans doing bad out there, there was plenty of precedent to learn from. Anyway, I'm sure the abuses in Tibet will end since I now have my "Free Tibet" bumpersticker.
  • In China there is a law which makes it illegal to undermine the power of the state. You would expect every Chinese citizen to obey that law. So why this uproar? He violated a law of his country and now he is punished for it. But of course America has to tell the Chinese how to run their own society.

    The USA commits far more damning assaults on basic human rights (as guaranteed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which the USA signed), such as the right to housing, the right to medical care and the right to a fair trial (the cases of Hurricane Carter and Mumia show that this right is violated frequently denied in the USA).

    Also the right to be free of discrimination is not guaranteed in the USA, hate groups such as the KKK and that writer of the Turner Diaries go unpunished and the USA lacks a law against Holocaust denial, such as exists in many European nations [antiracisme.be].

  • I strongly agree with your statements.

    Freedom from discrimination is an important human right as guaranteerd in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Article 1 and 7 of the UNDHR guarantee this right. Freedom of opinion is covered by Article 19. Article 30 states clearly "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.". This clarifies that the rights guaranteed by the UNDHR cannot be abused to deny others rights. Therefore freedom of opinion may not be abused to discriminate others.

    Anti-discrimination trumps freedom of speech. The US should follow the rest of the world and establish strong anti-discrimination laws that will make sure fascists, racists, Nazi's and white supremacists won't have a safe haven anywhere.

    United Nations Declaration of Human Rights [un.org]

  • Re:TCWWW (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ever heard of CNAME aliases?

    You can point a site anywhere in your DNS settings, with a line like this in the website's database file it us usually pointed to the machine that hosts the website:

    www IN CNAME yourhost.yoursite.org.

    where yoursite.yourhost.org. was previously defined like:

    yourhost.yoursite.org. IN A 111.111.111.111 (exchange for your IP address)

    But you can easily change that www into wwww, w3, yomumma so the people can type:

    http://wwww.slashdot.org
    http://w3.slashdot.org
    http://yomumma.slashdot.org

    Dr. DNS is glad to have been of service!

  • The reason that Western governments are 'falling all over China' is because their local corps are trying to drum up business there. I wonder how that punitive lawsuit against a Japanese company (can't remember who - might have been Hitachi) turned out (FYI, their website separated mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This guy from mainland China sued over the insult to the Chinese people. Wonder how it turned out? Settled?) The Chinese market is enormous. Unfortunately it comes down to money in the end. Which is sort of odd for someone from the UK to say (yes we are quite capitalistic here). For some reason I am not very well informed about what is happening in Russia at the moment. Anyone got any links?
  • Laws that limit Nazi's from opening their mouths are just laws. Would you deny that?

    In China they are worried that what happened in Hitler-Germany could happen to their society as well. Falun Gong is turning out to be a great menace to the Chinese society and they might make a bid for national power, turning China into a place where it is dangerous to be a non-member.

    If the Nazi's could have been stopped with a law would you still have been against that law?

    Just to make your mind up, have a look at the Falun Gong symbol [mindspring.com]. Looks familiar [adl.org] doesn't it?

    In such an environment I do not blame the Chinese at all for stamping on dangerous propaganda that could weaken and undermine the most populous country on Earth, leading to the detriment of billions of people.

  • Re:Oh my god....am I posting pro-China? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The nazi's could have been stopped with the exisiting laws of Germany. They took power and chose to disregard those laws.

    as for the falun gong -- the government has the right to oppress them simply because they are scared of loosing power? That is a pretty poor argument. and as for "stamping on propaganda that could weaken ... detriment of billions of people". I figure things are already pretty detrimental in a totalitarian regime with no self determination, no rights of free speach, where dissenters are routinely beaten, tortured and killed. Sounds like the government has the best interests of the people in mind. NOT.

    and read further about the nazi symbol at your link [adl.org]

    why the resemblance is there, the nazi page explicitely says that hitler stole the symbol from various religious groups (it was a sign of good luck) and then REVERSED it. The nazi symbol is clockwise, the falun gong symbol, counterclockwise.

    nice try, but your guilty by association doesn't hold up here.

    wait, lets try some more guilt by association.

    maybe we should associate the Chinese government with the Hitler's Germany since they are a repressive totalitarian regime that has killed MILLIONS of its own people.

    just like the third reich the chinese government is evil and does not deserve to be defended.

  • Why Western Businesses are nice to China... (Score:3)

    by TwoEdge77 ( 92704 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @07:46AM (#435350)
    It's cheap labor. It's no one is around to complain about human rights. The government is in your favor. The workers have no voice. The companies can do as they like with impunity. What better place to do business??? Let the money roll in, like we have to keep our lawns green don't we? And the rest is none of our business, right?
  • Why act surprised? Here is how this will happen in the US within the next 5-10 years:

    Bzzzt! Wrong! This type of govt behavior started a long time ago. One instance is how the meat industry sued Oprah for that episode regarding conataminated meat. There's also laws protecting broccoli from slander.

  • wait, lets try some more guilt by association.

    maybe we should associate the Chinese government with the Hitler's Germany since they are a repressive totalitarian regime that has killed MILLIONS of its own people.

    just like the third reich the chinese government is evil and does not deserve to be defended.

    Let me remind you Germans thought the Nazi party did have their best interests in mind. The problem here is convincing them that the Nazi's didn't. Same here witht he chinese.

    I'm particularly interested in the fact that people are so willing to damn whole groups of people for the actions of the few, especially when they're foreign.

    As for the snip about million of people, yes, I do know about the famine cause by the "Great Leap Forward" program. I doubt Mao would even have the guts to deliberately send millions to be gassed, shot by firingsquad, etc. tho. Interestingly, I hear theres a college somewhere that teaches students that the Potato Famine in Ireland was also man-made.

  • I think I remember hearing our chimp prez wants to fight countries sponsoring terrorism. That's awfully noble until you realize the School of the Americas is known to have terrorists among its graduates. Also, look at how little attention is stirred when a NATO country censors a website [slashdot.org]. Smacks of hypocrisy, no? Oh, right, I forgot that its OK when its used against a dirty people like the chinese.
  • Terrorist or Freedom-Fighter all depends which side you're on. George Washington was probably viewed as the worst traitor-terrorist by the British government, whereas he's our patron saint of freedom. Yasir Arafat. Terrorist? Or someone trying to free his people from the oppression of a foriegn invader? I guess that depends on which end of the artillery barrage on the refugee camp you happen to be on.

  • Phony Communists Have a Lot to Hide! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you know what actual, real communism [rwor.org] is, you know that the current regime in China AIN'T IT!

    China was once on the road to communism, but after Mao died in 1976, the revisionist headquarters of Deng Xiaoping quickly staged a coup [rwor.org], arrested all leading real communists in the Party (the so-called Gang of Four), and set China on the capitalist road. But they kept waving red flags around anyway so they could get away with fooling everybody while they consolidated their power. This is why it is so repressive today, and why they have sweatshops in China, which were nowhere to be found during the revolutionary years 1948-76. It is at the core of why Tiananmen Square happened, and why they are cracking down on this righteous webmaster.

    So it's very ironic when people point to China today to complain about how terrible 'communism' is, because they are actually pointing the finger at capitalism operating under a veil [rwor.org] of 'socialism' and 'people's democracy'!

  • As the UNDHR protects my right to property, the freedom of opinion clause may not be used to call for the abolition of my property rights. Therefore communists can be imprisoned for advocating their beliefs without violating the UNDHR.

    The UNDHR is crap. The U.S. should lead the world and repudiate this arbitrary and self-contradictory pile of shit.
  • Saddly this is true but it is the guys own fault. He did put a fourum on his site and people posted but he didn't monter it well. I don't adree with what happened but I think it was at least in part his own fault to. That is what you get when you you live in a communist country with such heavy regulations on free speech and press. If thiss happened in America there would probably be open revolt by most of the internet comunity and probably at least some of the general public.

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