Yahoo Confirms Beijing Blocking Flickr 163
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."
Old News... (Score:1)
Re:Old News... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Filtering IP addresses is hardly the cutting edge of technology. Which companies are you referring to?
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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.
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"If the people knew what happened in Tienanmen Square, their anger might cause them to revolt. The action would be ultimately fruitless, and we would be forced to kill a great many people. Therefore, it is in the people's
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After thinking about it, I really believe that a company like Yahoo or even MS could, as another poster put it, say "Enough is Enough" and draw a line in the sand regarding their involvement in with China's censorship. Make a huge deal of their announcement to stand up for human rights. Issue press releases and hold news conferences. Get Errol Morri
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For one, that's an EXTREMELY bold move by a public owned company like Yahoo that could backfire. Remember that Yahoo is trying to work hand in hand with Microsoft, and they don't really want to isolate themselves like that by taking such a proactive stance. It wouldn't fly at a shareholder meeting, let's put it that way. If just saying "censorship is wrong" doesn't work, I don't think "censorship is wrong, and FUCK CHINA AND THE WHORES THAT SU
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Here's a tip on how to tell the difference. Would you ever even hear about such a program if you were a Chinese citizen? If you did, would you be shocked? Would you look at such information and go "And...?" Would you openly discuss it at your place of work or at a restaurant? Would you expect the journalists that broke the story to see no more
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/theunholytrinity/543
Forgive my ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)
Only reason I ask is why would Yahoo be saying it isn't something technicaly on their end unless they own/run it...
Yes, Yahoo owns Flickr (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr#History [wikipedia.org]
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China Evil or Not (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:China Evil or Not (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:China Evil or Not (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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China is no more or less evil than the United States is evil.
Um, no. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and China. China is a vicious totalitarian state. No formal political dissent is tolerated (opposition parties, for example) by the state. There is no freedom of religion, all religions must have state-approved doctrine and are closely monitored. There is no freedom of expression or press in China. All media is state-run and heavily controlled, academic criticism is stifled (through imprisonment and murder), and any public protest is violently
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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
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Used to be? No. Still is. And yes, I have been there.
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That being said, the best strategy for empowering the Chinese people is to begin with economic development and outside involvement in their economic affairs. In time, this censorship will begin to fail.
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I guess if the Soviets had sold us cheap electronics instead of getting into space first there would have been no cold war. Silly Ruskies!
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with the greatest economy growth and potential.
How does "making lots of money" translate to "good"? Certainly economic development in China is "good" for the Chinese people in the sense that it's pulling some of them out of the abject poverty caused by the PRC. Of course, this same economic development is further entrenching the people in power who caused the hardship to begin with. So the relatively good economy is itself a double-edged sword.
Fundamentally, the People's Republic of China is an evil state run by evil men. Not as evil as North Korea, bu
i wonder just how successful this will be? (Score:2, Interesting)
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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.
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Definition of rebellion [m-w.com]:
I don't think I can rebel against something that is not "in authority or dominance" over me. I may, however, be able to sabotage [m-w.com] or subvert [m-w.com] it.
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Their country, their choice (Score:2, Insightful)
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.)
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I second that. The question now is: how long will the Chinese continue to put up with repression?
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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
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Nazional-Socialism gets forgetful approval (Score:2)
Germany was in absolute shambles after WW1 with scores of people dieing from starvation etc. so you could also argue that by grabbing power in early 1930s and establishing a national socialist dictatorship (aka n
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Chinazism gets indoctrinated approval (Score:2)
You completely avoided any response to the fact that the Tibetan people, who are in every single way non-Chinese, have never wanted to be occupied, oppressed and flooded by hordes of alien Chinese settlers any more than your ow
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We are free to say what we want, and if we dont like other's POV, we can say it.
Thats why our way of life is better!
Re:Their country, their choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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I accept that I am being somewhat radical and idealistic by judging others by my minimum standard of human rights, but I certainly won't back off.
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I get where you are coming from, though... the Chinese will always have a different government than we do - the culture is very
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This is a delicate issue. Say you were born 20 years ago in China. Only if you had very rich parents or were smart enough to get some grants you would be able to leave the place and see something else. Still, it will always be the country you grew up in, your friends live there, your family of course. My objection to the GP's statement is that he connects the country's politics to the people who live in it. This doesn't mak
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Re:Their country, their choice (Score:4, Informative)
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.
irony (Score:2)
the west is better simply because you can be critical and have contrarian views of the west, in the west
in other words, i disagree with what you just said, but i support your right to say it
were i in power in china, i could simply shut you down, shut you up
that's superior? no, that's clearly inferior. that a chinese can't criticize his system is clearly inferior and wrong. 100%. no doubt
now if you chose to reply to my comme
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I say our way is better. Some things are just better. A fork IS better than chopsticks.
Not just their country (Score:2)
If the Chinese voluntarily wish to have dictatorship as their preferred form of government (forgetting the rights of the Chinese "political minorities" for the moment; I'm not talking about the 60-odd ethnic "minorities" aka former nations China has invaded and largely assimilated over the aeons) it would be hard to argue with their choice.
However it is not a choice the Chinese are either allowed to make (it's either Communist Party rule or prison/dea
Seems logical (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
flickr just added traditional chinese to its list (Score:2)
http://blog.flickr.com/en/2007/06/12/flickr-inter
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Re:flickr just added traditional chinese to its li (Score:2)
Re:flickr just added traditional chinese to its li (Score:2)
Mandarin speakers in mainland China typically use simplified hanzi, and I have to imagine the literate of the other geographically close dialects do as well.
However, the Cantonese speakers I've known all learned traditional hanzi, which shows up a lot in kanji as well (tho there seems to be some simplified in there, in addition to some other forms, I guess). So really this probably doesn't directly impact the dev efforts vis a vis mainland China.
Re:flickr just added traditional chinese to its li (Score:2)
How it works.. (Score:1)
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Yahoo shouldn't mind. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, yes (Score:2)
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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)
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.
The Moral Optimum ? (Score:2, Interesting)
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-
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Probably, although it wouldn't be a bad position to start from seeing as how the success of our system as at least inspired (and been inspired) by others throughout the world and history. Fortunately we don't have to worry about whether they are American ideals or not because they are also the ideals of the United Nations (which includes China). I suggest you read through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [un.org]. You'll f
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Well, the French Revolution [wikipedia.org] might not be the best example since they actually did actually use our Declaration of Independence as a model for their own:
However, I agree (and I did mention that the ideals
If you were not going to like them posted, (Score:4, Insightful)
people will be seeing what crap you "people's" republic have pulled on people despite your muzzling attempts. get over with it, "party".
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You seem to be a bit deluded, the Chinese government are not worried. They don't mind them being posted, as long as the people in China won't see them, and they have control over that. The fact is that most people inside China have no idea what went on.
But is that really any different to the Western nations, do most people have any idea about the Gonzalez-Attorney general filings. We are just looking at 2 different ways of doing the same thing. China tr
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do they. with countless proxy services which increase exponentially in numbers, other tunneling technologies and such which surfers use even without knowing they use them
Massacre? (Score:5, Funny)
"The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope." - Karl Marx
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Was it even posted by Chinese national (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Ironic, eh? (Score:2)
Is Slashdot blocked in China? (Score:2, Insightful)
true. (Score:2, Interesting)
makes sense (Score:1)
Not that I agree with the censorship, but if you're going to run your society that way, you've just taken care of a major leak in individuals ability to communicate on the sly.
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quantum networks (Score:2, Interesting)
The arms race toward quantum encryption wo
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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
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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