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Censorship Your Rights Online

Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult 338

Posted by michael from the more-star-systems-will-slip-through-your-fingers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BBC reports that despite incredible efforts by the Chinese government, online dissent and distribution of censored information continues and even influences government policies."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult More

Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult

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  • Any Slashdot readers helping out? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How can we help?

    • Re:Any Slashdot readers helping out? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:12PM (#8139269)
      Well, I suppose one of the things you could do is let companies like IBM know you aren't happy doing business with someone providing censorship technologies to China.

      At least it's a start.

      Then maybe put up a Freenet node.

      KFG
      • What a schizophrenic world we've created...How can we resolve things like this...A company presently doing great things for open source at the same time they are providing censorship tech. I don't trust IBM or anybody like them. They play both sides of the "war" for a buck(ok, billions). Personaly I don't think they have changed that much from the "bad ol' days". You watch. They'll turn on us as soon as it is more profitable to do so.
        • I don't think they have changed that much from the "bad ol' days"

          They haven't changed at all, and it's best not to forget that. There's really no way to resolve the issue. If you really want to be proactive about it the only thing you can do is take what they give away for free and use it for your benefit while not actually providing them with direct profit; and letting them know you're doing it.

          Not, I'll note, in the sense of a boycott. Just out of a real sense of personal ethics. Then even if it has n

    • Re:Any Slashdot readers helping out? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Texas Rose on Lava L ( 712928 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:14PM (#8139283) Homepage Journal
      We can help each other. We host the political dissent websites and they host the mp3s.
    • Every time I receive unsolicited commercial email that advertises a website in China,I make sure to forward along information on Falun Gong or Free Tibet propaganda along with my LART.

    • That's a very good question. How can we help the people in China have better access to information on the Internet? But I think an equally important question that no one seems to have asked yet is, "Are the people of China ready for a democratic, capitalistic system?"

      Don't get me wrong here, I am a full supporter of the individual and the democratic system, but taking a look at the Chinese governments over the past years, and if you look at the Chinese cultural mindset, I might be inclined to say that Ch

  • Good. Now can we guarantee that we can dissent in the uk?
    • Good. Now can we guarantee that we can dissent in the uk?

      Depends. Is your name Andrew Gilligan [usatoday.com]?

      Interesting read on the Chinese Revolution, The Soong Dynasty, but Sterling Seagrave. Paints a pretty hideous picture of Chiang kai-Shek. I'm half-way through it, but I'm getting an understanding of why China closed itself off from the world, screwed even by Stalin, and cautiously invites in the international community 50 years later. The PRC seems oppressive, but China has always been repressed. Doesn't

    • Easy! No.

      HTH!

      Sadly, I'm not entirely joking. And before all the trolls start off on how China's much worse - no shit? But I expect the UK to be a beacon for democracy, whereas right now it's more a flickering birthday candle. Frankly, we'd have a better chance of convincing less free regimes to be more open if we were as democratic as possible.

      If you really hate my ideas, this may cheer you up: I can be arrested and detained indefinitely, without trial, in Britain right now. Because I'm not British.

  • power to the people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis&utk,edu> on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:05PM (#8139202) Homepage Journal
    I always find Communism funny. How can any government of the people be responsible for censoring the information they receive?

    Email me if you need any dangerous info; be sure to include your public key and encrypt to mine/a. [frob.us]
    • Well, all governments place limits at some point on what is considered 'okay'. Some are just more strict than others. Child-porn is universally 'illegal' for instance.
      • You're allowed to talk about child porn, though. Imagine that, instead of getting modded down, you got arrested for mentioning child porn. That's China.

      • Re:power to the people (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:52PM (#8139602)
        In one sense you're right, but the definition of child porn varies wildly, even within a single legal structure.

        So wildly that "child porn" has no real meaning. Hell, just "child" is a major issue of debate. And to the extent that it is universally illegal is due mostly to an American promotion, with the usual strong arm tactics, to create a universal condemnation, not due to any cultural aversion in and of itself.

        Governments tend to do things for purely politica reasons, and right now, in the world scheme of things, it's politically advantageous to adopt certain tenets of American Puritanism.

        Note that Japan has a long history of prostitution as not only a cultural norm, but in some respects a respected profession. Now it is illegal.

        But not because the Japanese themselves really see anything innately wrong with it. It's politics.

        KFG
        • Governments tend to do things for purely politica reasons, and right now, in the world scheme of things, it's politically advantageous to adopt certain tenets of American Puritanism.

          However, disapproval of child pornography is something that crosses party, cultural, and religious lines in America. There are many, many people here who would not fit your definition of "puritan" and yet are as disapproving of kiddie porn as any Texan evangelist.

          There are a number of areas where I don't have any problem wit
          • But I might also point out that demand for child porn crosses all those same lines.

            It's also interesting to note that in traditional cultures with no particular strictures on eroticism there is no "kiddie" porn. There's a certain amount of bondage and torture, group sex, bestiality, etc., but no erotic depictions of adults having sex with toddlers.

            There are issues here that are culturally deep.

            Nor have I provided any personal definition of "Puritan," so any ideas you have along that line are largely assu
        • Either way, my point is that all societies have *some* form of censorship. There is not such thing as completely 'free' speech.
      • Yeah but the definition of "child porn" varies considerably from country to country. In many (industrialized) countries, 15 & 16 year olds are considered to be mature enough to decide whether or not they wish to be photographed while having sex. There's a world of difference between a pre-pubescent child and a biologically mature teenaged young adult.

        The US is pretty fucked up about sex and nudity. It's pretty stupid to tell someone who's old enough to get married, drive a car, and volunteer for mi

        • Re:power to the people (Score:4, Insightful)

          by the_mad_poster ( 640772 ) <shattoc@adelphia.com> on Friday January 30, 2004 @06:44PM (#8140045) Homepage Journal

          screw up some people's lives by taking nude pictures of themselves with a webcam in the privacy of their own bedroom, and then emailing said pictures to people they don't like and reporting the recipients to the police. Pretty f'ing scary scenerio if you ask me.

          You don't need to go that far. Baseless allegations, if properly worded, can cause a serious detriment to a person's life and leave the accusing party completely off the hook. All you have to do is send a nice letter to the FBI saying such and such person MAY have been viewing and/or sharing child pornography or they said something that LEADS YOU TO BELIEVE that they MAY be involved with it in some way.

          No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are. Then, the cops'll come down on you even harder for your "suspicious" activity of demanding they show some justification for searching / siezing property.

          Got an axe to grind? I'm almost willing to guarantee that scenario would work well for you. If you're REALLY careful, a few covert "leaks" about the bogus investigation to friends, family, and co-workers could leave a totally innocent person premanently labeled without a shred of evidence.

          Welcome to the American Justice system, where hearsay and public opinion court more power than most people would ever dare dream. We hope you have a nice stay.

          • (snip ignorance)

            No evidence necessary, and 9 times out of 10 a search warrant will be issued due entirely to the nature of the allegations, no matter how baseless they are.

            Do you even know how a search warrant is generated? Judging by the idiotic post, I doubt it. Let me explain:

            I gather information. I get specific facts from my witnesses, facts which show not just what the witness knows but exactly how he knows them. Statements like "I personally saw X get into the car." Hearsay is typically of no

        • The US is pretty fucked up about sex and nudity. It's pretty stupid to tell someone who's old enough to get married, drive a car, and volunteer for military service that they aren't old enough to take off their clothes in front of a camera.

          And you think a society that would promote 15yr old's staring in porn flicks is a good thing?

          Jesus Christ! I honestly don't know if there is any response to that! You're one sick bastard.

    • Re:power to the people (Score:5, Interesting)

      by radish ( 98371 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:34PM (#8139456) Homepage
      Agreed. I mean, what kind of "government of the people" would make it illegal to distribute information on, for instance, how to watch a movie? [eff.org]

    • China is _not_ communist (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:35PM (#8139473)
      They're a Fascist Dictatorship with Communist Rhetoric. Communism makes for great posters and propaganda when you're nearly starving and working 16 hrs/day. But given that people at large in China seem to have very little say in how "their" resources are spent (if they did, would they allow sweat shops to exist?), I don't see how you can call them Communist.

      That said, I don't think Communism is a viable system. You can never get past that whole "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" thing. China didn't, Russia didn't and neither did Cuba. I'm a Socialist myself. Violent or at least forceful revolutions like Communism is usually associated with almost always end with a brutal, Fascist government. I better solution is for the poor and disenfranchised to control their population so that the value of their labor increases (kinda like what happened with the Black Plague but minus the Plague). As funny as it sounds, I think birth control is the best hope for mankind. Now if we can only get those pesky religious and cultural factors to go away so the poor will use it...
      • the Black Plague but minus the Plague

        Is that some kind of racist remark?


      • That said, I don't think Communism is a viable system.

        The definition has gotten bumped around a bit. They are not "communists" as originally defined, but a single-party dictatorship.

        Also, economic system and freedom of speech can be orthogonal things. Communism used to mean mostly an economic system, not a speech control system.

        I think birth control is the best hope for mankind.

        But Darwinian natural selection will eventually prevent it. Even now there seems to be more people who like having chil
      • Now if we can only get those pesky religious and cultural factors to go away so the poor will use it...

        You could always force people to accept it. After all, it's for their own good.

      • Re:China is _not_ communist (Score:5, Insightful)

        by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @08:43PM (#8141080) Homepage Journal
        The problem is that in a country like the US most of the poor and disenfranchised have no one to blame but themselves. Every child is afforded a free and public education. Every child has educational and economic opportunities that people in the third world would do almost anything to take advantage of. Why do you think the US is a beacon of hope an prosperity to the rest of the world? Even those nations that hate and resent us do so because we represent everything that they are not. Resentment is the sincerest form of flattery.

        The US is a meritocracy. Not a perfect one of course but what flaws we have are not fatal ones. Prosperity can be had by anyone who is willing and able to work for it. Most adults who live in poverty are losers plain and simple. Worrying about their welfare and quality of life when they won't take responsibility for these things themselves is an exercise in stupidity. There is a reason why some people are well off and others are not, and that boils down to a fundamental difference in the quality of their character and the level of their abilities. Losers lose, winners win. Do anything you want to the system within which these two groups exist and it won't make a damned bit of difference. You can't help those who won't help themselves. Trying to monkey with the social machinery to favor those who can't or won't produce just makes things worse for everyone.

        I agree with you that birth control is the best hope for mankind. If losers and idiots can be discouraged from creating more of themselves the long term benefits for humanity are nearly limitless. I can't agree with you about religion however. Nature abhors a vacuum and religion is a powerful civilizing and socializing force. It is not perfect, but at least it does not deny human nature. Most leftest ideology is based upon the idea that evil is the result of social conditions/injustice, and simple misunderstandings. Man's nature is seen as both inherently good and infinitely malleable. It is believed that man can be made into something better through education and other social endeavors. The truth is that human nature is not inherently good and neither is terribly changable. Any system that denies the truth about human nature will be the victim of it. Communism is only one of the more horrific examples of this fundamental truth.

        I understand why you're a socialist. You want to make the world a better place. What you need to understand is that not everyone can be helped and those who can are best served by providing them with the opportunity to help themselves.

        Lee
      • I better solution is for the poor and disenfranchised to control their population so that the value of their labor increases

        Can you explain how the poor and disenfranchised could possibly obtain control (the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end) over the rest of the populace without becoming the powerful elite?

        Government cannot possibly achieve equality, because the first prerequisite of government is inequality.

  • Cue "internet routes around damage" line (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:05PM (#8139203) Journal
    It is true, to a certain extent, but the use of strategic "choke points" on the network infrastructure can put a serious dent in the ideal...

    It's only really true when you have high connectivity across all nodes - even in the US/Europe this is rarely significantly true...

    Simon
  • I'm sure michael sims can suggest some good ways for the chicomms to censor everyone.

  • Have they thought of this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by moehoward ( 668736 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:06PM (#8139210)
    Just post the censored sites as links in Slashdot stories.

    Censorship via the slashdot effect.

  • They got greedy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by EulerX07 ( 314098 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:08PM (#8139230)
    From the article :

    "Filters are used to screen out items containing certain pornographic or politically sensitive terms"

    See, if they had stopped at stifling free expression and political opinion exchange they would have been allright. They went after porn, and in technology, porn ALWAYS win. An army of horny men will find a way through their defenses like a knife through hot butter.

  • CIPA (Childrens Internet Protection Act) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stephenisu ( 580105 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:08PM (#8139234)
    Reminds me of back when most of my friends in highscool had two floppy disks with them at all times. One to disable netnanny, one to put it back. Oh the good ol' days.

  • The more the Internet is needed for (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gentoo Fan ( 643403 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:09PM (#8139237) Homepage
    outside-of-China business the more China will have to adopt to it. It's basic market principles. Sure, the average Chinese citizen will have a harder time accessing it but it will filter down, eventually.

  • Just cross ur fingers and hope u dont get caught.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by goodbye_kitty ( 692309 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:09PM (#8139241)
    Yes indeed the censorship in china is quite ineffective, they dont run any filtering of content at all just various well known webaddress like cnn.com, bbc.co.uk, wenjiancity etc however this can be easily bypassed by using an oversease proxy or bouncing the web pages through akamai. I was shocked to find thay they dont even block taiwanese news sites! I guess all they can do is go after a few unlucky people and try to make examples of them.

  • ChinaNet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:11PM (#8139260)
    if the chinese government really wants to censor the internet, maybe they should consider scrapping ISPs and build their own Intranet, one which has no access with the outside world -- non-compatible e-mail systems, incompatible HTML/XML markup, integrated browsers, etc. etc. Even looking at the above, I still don't think it's possible to block the outside world.

    Maybe they should start working on propaganda - China rules and the rest of the world sucks. Non-Chinese news sources are fallacious and biased against China, that sort of thing. I've been kicking around the idea of fascism in our post-industrial world, but as yet I've not come up with an idea that would truly work. A closed media system is impossible to achieve, esp. in a country as large as China.

    This is all, of course, for fun; the intellectual exercise is more interesting to me than applying my ideas to reality.

    • Just like they do in Cuba, to quote a Cuban on the net "The internet is for foreginers the intranet is for Cubans"
    • Maybe they just dont want to pay microsoft. $ always win over ideals.
    • Oh my god!
      What if the Chinese government reads slashdot!
    • This is correct. As long as there's any form of I/O, someone will write a tunnel to (ab)use it to get around any filters.

      It may not be fast, but if people want something bad enough, they'll do whatever it takes and take whatever they can get to get ahold of it.

      I once used HTTP tunnelling to run VNC.. It was not pretty but it got the job done =D

  • Conflicting Values (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reclusivemonkey ( 703154 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:12PM (#8139264)
    Does anybody know how much involvement the Chinese Government has with Red Flag? [redflag-linux.com] It seems to me that the principles of open source software sit uneasily with censorship.
    • Does anybody know how much involvement the Chinese Government has with Red Flag?



      Not much. Red Flag was started by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). There are several chinese-language distributions available, and Red Flag does not seem to be particularly popular.

  • Pssst, look here!!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:13PM (#8139271) Homepage
    Lots of people in the US subscribe to these guys for Internet censorship: N2H2 [n2h2.com]

    I know it's not quite the same as "Communist Country" censorship, but the US isn't without Government-influenced information suppression. Just google for CIPA. You filter, you get funding. You don't filter, you find funding elsewhere.

    "False-positives" anyone?
    • Ya...my school filters because the school board decided censorship was worth funding. check out http://igloo.bigfiber.net/~the1/report.jpg and http://igloo.bigfiber.net/~the1/incident.txt for my dealings with this policy.

      • Re:Pssst, look here!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by boobsea ( 728173 )
        Hey.

        I operate a website [fortbendisdsucks.com] that criticizes our local school system.

        We have similar censorship policies in Fort Bend ISD [fortbendisd.com] and I have set up CGI-Proxy accounts for people in the past so they could access totally appropriate websites that were wrongly blocked.

        Anyway, I'd like your permission to use your story as a front page article. You do a really excellent job demonstrating the ignorance and total disregard for students that these administrators have for us.

        Reply here or email me - news @ fortbendisdsucks.
      • Good luck - you are one GED from being able to give them the finger with impunity.

        Or maybe you ought to ask them for their scores on the high school exit exams. Some districts require teachers and administrators to take them.

  • Hacktivismo (Score:5, Informative)

    by rjelks ( 635588 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:15PM (#8139290) Homepage
    The Hacktivismo [hacktivismo.com] group has been writing software to help the Chinese and others that are being censored. I was very interested when I heard about the "Six/Four" protocal that they were writing for anonymous browsing. Has anyone heard any news on the development of this or any other projects like it. (I'm aware of freenet) Anyway, here [hacktivismo.com] is their project page. They're [hacktivismo.com] an interesting group that seems to be pushing for free distribution of information.
    • 4. You must be a Certified Patriot! In our view, it is exceptionally patriotic to be a member of Hacktivismo and to advocate civil liberties all over the world. And we don't view people who agree with George Bush, John Poindexter, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, or Don Rumsfeld as very patriotic at all. It is patriotic to disagree with Mr. Bush and other friends of Big Oil. But neither we nor George Bush can decide unilaterally whether you are a Certified Patriot merely based on your politics or point of view.
    • It seems that the best obscured and encrypted application-layer HTTP tunnel is HTTPort [ssimicro.com], which is very popular in Saudi Arabia.

      However, it's clear that China doesn't block HTTPS/SSL or even SSH, so any of the ordinary transport-layer proxies [freeproxy.ru] would do, as would simple ssh-based port forwarding.

  • Bad stuff (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:17PM (#8139310) Homepage
    If you want to get an idea on just how bad it is over there in terms of filtering, check out this [harvard.edu] article about a 2002 study by the Hardvard Law. There are about 19,000 sites listed there. Pretty much anything that has to do with the US and other western governments, "smut", anything even remotely related to Taiwan and so on.

  • This could be useful... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:18PM (#8139328) Journal
    If this Chinese gov't attempts to block access to IP addresses that run web proxies outside their control. I can report my own servers to China, so their Big Red Firewall can block all the spam I get from inside China!

    2) Profit!

    -Charles Hill

  • /. like censorship system? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dkode ( 517172 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:20PM (#8139339) Homepage
    I think it would be interesting to employ some form moderation system that is currently in use on /.
    The citizens could vote on which sites are offensive and the appropriate sites would be blocked.
    Although a conflict of opinion would surely surface as it seems to be already

    But this would essentially take control of the internet out of the hands of the government and put it in the hands of the citizens which is an oxymoron for communism.

  • Having lived there (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tristan7 ( 222645 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:21PM (#8139351)
    I lived in China for six months last year teaching English at a University. What I found particularly amazing, was that the culture has taught people not to question things. Even my PhD students largely accepted whatever was told to them. So even though there may have been forums online for them to learn about political dissent, most wouldn't particularly have been interested (a few seemed more aware than most, but only a very few).
    Add to this the location of these forums. Online. China does have internet cafes in the larger areas, but the bulk of the country is too poor to even go into them, let alone find their way to some hidden forum.

    I'm all for more individual freedoms in China, but I think most westerners really don't have a clue about how our cultural upbringing has affected us, and how their culture has affected them.
    • Even my PhD students largely accepted whatever was told to them.

      The idea of controlling a population by propoganda is ancient and effective. Plato in his designs for a Utopia suggested it took only two generations to instill a political falsehood as a universal truth. Having the resources and the means to question the presuppositions underlying our beliefs are rare gifts.

    • I just finished reading this fine book of Arthur C. Clarke (yes, he wrote 2001), what you describe has a striking resemblence of Diaspar, a city cut of from the universe where people were conditioned to fear the outside.. Just asking the question if there was anything outside the city would make the inhabitants flee in terror..

      I really can recommend this book.

  • After blocking, can they try drowning ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by leoaugust ( 665240 ) <<leoaugust> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:21PM (#8139354) Journal

    If it becomes increasingly hard to block "objectionable" messages, (which by the way the Cubans have effectively done - Cuban Government Toughens Internet Restrictions [slashdot.org]) would it come to a stage the Authoritarian Governments try to drown the messages.

    The Govt could itself start sending out so much propoganda messages that they will drown the "rebel" messages, and most people will be unable to develop personalized filters to get to the "rebel" information. (A conspi-racist may think that the real purpose of the CAN-SPAM legilation was to pre-emptively acquire these capabilities.)

    After all, if this is supposed to be the attention economy, all the govt has to do to prevent mischief is to keep your attention - almost like in Clockwork Orange. Does it really matter if the attention is directed to something worthwhile, or towards just delusion and deception - I mean from the Governments point-of-view.

  • How about /. in China? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CAlworth1 ( 518119 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:28PM (#8139407) Homepage
    Does anyone know if Slashdot is blocked or at all censored in China? A huge variety of news goes through here, as well as new technology (some of which could even prove helpful in evading the various filters...)

  • American Technology is helping repress the Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GomezAdams ( 679726 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:31PM (#8139435)
    When I worked at GTE the company got the contract to lay the fiber optic cable around the border of China and put in the network centers that setup a ring around China. Total control of all the traffic in and out of the country, or so they hoped. A career limiting move came when I wrote Chuck Lee, CEO of GTE, and said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology. But Bean Counters only care about profit and damn the people that get get screwed over in the process.

    As a side note, I knew a lad working near me from China who had been at Tianamen Square the day before and then the day after the massacre happened. When he saw what the army had done to their own people he went home, packed and left for Hong Kong and then to the US.

    Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.

    • Re:American Technology is helping repress the Chin (Score:4, Insightful)

      by chenyu ( 134524 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:12AM (#8142434)
      Not to be too harsh since your heart seems to be in the right place but.....

      I think here GTE has helped free speech in China more than you have. A fiber system in and out of China which the government tries to censor is *far* better than no system at all. One reason that China is finding much harder to censor the internet than Cuba or North Korea is that there is so much traffic going back and forth that its impossible to monitor it all. Putting in fiber helps increase internet usage and makes it much harder for the government to censor it.

      Something to keep in mind is that on the same weekend that Tiananmen happened, the Burmese government also shot a whole bunch of students. No one remembers or even knows about it, because there weren't a million television cameras in Burma that weekend.

  • The Saudi Lead? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Necrotica ( 241109 )
    I seem to remember stumbling across a web site a few months ago that had a list of "black market" ISPs that would allow a Saudi citizen to access the Internet in a non-monitored/non-censored way. Apparently accessing the Internet using "normal" ISPs means excessive content blocking, etc.

    There may already be such ISPs in China for all I know. But it's interesting to see groups of people band together to circumvent the restrictions put on them by their governments.

  • U.S. Companies are helping (Score:4, Informative)

    by rjelks ( 635588 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @05:36PM (#8139484) Homepage
    Here is an article [ieee.org] about how the Chinese have been blocking content from their citizens. What's interesting is how some American companies, like Yahoo, are cooperating to do business with them.
  • Censorship? In the 21st century with all the communications and the Internet? I guess not. The Chinese gov't can swim upstream if they want to but it's pretty silly anyways.

  • Wireless will be a bitch in the coming years then (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @06:00PM (#8139664) Homepage Journal
    Try controlling radio frequencies never mind speficially laying pipe for conventional net access.

  • Let the call go out..... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Conspiracy_Of_Doves ( 236787 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @06:02PM (#8139681)
    to all oppressors of the human spirit, your end is at hand.

    The forces of freedom and technology now walk hand in hand.
    There now exists the most powerful weapon in the war against ignorance since the printing press.
    A weapon that has evaded, and will continue to evade, every attempt to control it that has ever been made, including by the country that spawned it.

    Those who desire freedom will not stop until they attain it.

    You can not stop them.
    You can not slow them down.
    Kill them, and more will rise in thier place.
    Try to silence them, and they will whisper in secret and be heard the world over.
    Stand in their way, they will go around you,
    over you,
    under you,
    and eventually, through you.

    Try to make criminals of those who wish only to think and say as they wish, and you will be exposed to millions as the criminal that you are.

    Try to keep secret your evil actions, and you will fail miserably.

    As someone said long ago " This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. ... We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals."

    No government whose survival depends on the oppression and ignorance of its people deserves to exist.

    How long to you think you can keep your iron grip on your citizens when they begin to learn how much better thier lives can be and they rise against you?

    This is the Information Age. The truth can be spread to all corners of the earth in the blink of an eye. How long can a nation survive which relies on disinformation and lies?

  • scary (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ignoramous ( 746789 )
    Let's see...what's wrong with this sentence (for those of you who didn't read the actual article):
    But despite the help of several major international corporations and the use of the most sophisticated equipment, the Chinese government is finding the worldwide web much harder to censor than traditional media.
    This seems to me like the most interesting point. If major American corporations weren't helping out, the large scale prosecution that appears to be happening wouldn't even be going on.

    As to anot

  • Lao Tzu comes to mind... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PsychoKick ( 97013 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @07:05PM (#8140246)
    If rulers take too much grain,
    people rapidly starve.
    If rulers take too much freedom,
    people easily rebel.
    If rulers take too much happiness,
    people gladly die.
    By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.

    - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
  • Why are the chinese people not using freenet regularly ? This is exactly the scenario that it was designed for - fighting censorship.

    Well, I guess they could outlaw freenet as a protocol ...

  • Can't access BBC from China (Score:3, Funny)

    by fluppy88 ( 473039 ) on Friday January 30, 2004 @08:28PM (#8140975)
    I'd love to read about how censorship is failing in China but I can't access BBC from Beijing.
  • The Internet is the most important invention/discovery/whatever in the last 100+ years. It is more important than landing on the moon (overrated to begin with), invention of transistor, electricity, etc. Prior to the Internet, the most important discovery was the printing press.

    Both of these are similar and will end up accomplishing similar things. The Internet will result in massive increase in the spread of knowledge. Most importantly, the Internet will shift power from the authoraties (usually the government) to the individual. It is already happening and this is just the start.

    I have this theory that the internet will allow future generations to overthrow the government. I'm not talking about just China--I'm talking about ALL countries. It is THAT powerful! It is more powerful than any military; it is more powerful than having a billion dollars; it is more powerful than the Pope; and so on.

    Needless to say, there are several threats emerging on the horizon. Hopefully the threats will be dealt with but it remains to be seen. The threats I have in mind are money/capitalism, and the government. Governments of all stripes have been trying to hard to control the Internet. The naive would say that it is impossible for the governments to control it but one should not be so confident. Already some governments have total control over the Internet. China probably doesn't because of its size. But smaller poorer countries have total control. This is mostly because there are only a few ISPs and the government monitors them. Even in larger countries, the governments are getting ever more smarter. Some countries already have tax laws passed. These laws are not enforced but the govt can do so at any time. There is already censorship against freedom of speech. Countries like China come to mind but there are many more which are worse. Some countries, like USA, already spend billions attempting to sniff through e-mail and websites. Let's also not forget that encryption technology is heavily controlled by governments. Sending encrypted e-mail is sure to land some in jail. It hasn't happened in countries like USA or Canada yet but it won't be very long before USA start jailing people because Al-Qaida or some other dark shadow is using encryption.

    The other threat on the horizon is capitalism and its excesses. In particular, the greed and the power that comes with any new technology. The original Internet was largely controlled by the government. Even then, it was a scientific environment. Therefore, it was mostly free (in more than one sense). There is no doubt that capitalist entities, like corporations, helped the Internet, but there are some downsides too. The push towards profits can already be seen. One just needs to mention Verisign, which is attempting to control the most lucrative elements. Other companies are pushing proprietary technologies which will result in monopolies. Companies are also more likely to shut down websites for "offensive content". I suppose one can also count the actions of RIAA and others as a threat. It is within the right of RIAA to crack down on pirates, but some of their methods are highly questionable (eg. forcing ISPs to disclose people). Good thing similar organizations in other countries haven't cracking down. It would be worse in other countries because privacy laws are much weaker in other countries (compared to USA). Who knows what else will emerge from the brains of the corporations?

    Having said all that, I am hopeful that the Internet will surivive with my vision. I think it will. The reason is simple. Just like the printing press, the Internet is too simple to be manipulated. Regardless of what the monarchs and the priests did with the printing press, they couldn't control it. I think the same thing will happen with the Internet. It is just too simple and too many people are involved for it to be controlled.

    Sivaram Velauthapillai

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