China Blocks More Internet Services

Dave writes "China continues to block more and more popular services. This week they blocked iTunes and YouTube, and now it's TringMe, a popular VoIP 2.0 service. From TringMe's Blog: 'We received close to hundred complaints from our China users that TringMe services is not accessible from yesterday. We have found after our investigation that TringMe is blocked by Chinese government. Earlier China blocked Skype and now they are turning their eye to TringMe. TringMe is extremely popular in China and we have a large number of paying customers in China including a Chinese social network with 3 million users using TringMe's API & services.'"

China's not the only one

[megamerican]

The UK is doing its best to censor the internet any way they can. Londonâ(TM)s St. Pancras International has been censoring [infowars.com] alternative news websites through their wi-fi for at least a month. While I see plenty of news articles about Chinese censorship, I didn't see the UK censorship anywhere else.

Re:China's not the only one

[strelitsa]

Well, in Britain you're free to utilize another company other than St. Pancras International if you don't like their blocking policies. OTOH, in China you're perfectly free to warmly embrace the blocking policies, as well as being free to attend any of the myriad re-educational soirees held by the Chinese government. I heard they have cookies.

Re:Aaah, Good Ol' China

[Joe the Lesser]

The best time to enact unpopular laws is when national pride is at an all-time high.

Re:Block China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the western world should block China from the internet.

Here's a better plan: on all pages with scientific and technical information-- which is to say, the stuff that the Chinese leaders want their people to be able to access-- embed somewhere in the page some of the keywords that trigger the firewall filters-- stuff like "free Tibet" and "Say Yes to Falun Gong" and the names of the Tiananmen Square [wikipedia.org] June 4th protesters (in Chinese).

Make their own firewall block the internet.

Re:World View

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Of course, I wasn't implying America is as bad as North Korea.

My point was that "world views that in no way resemble the actual physical reality" are not only found in countries like North Korea. In America, and increasingly in Europe too, we see things like anti-terrorism measures that violate people's privacy without actually providing any security. And that's just one stupid example off the top of my head. Just because things aren't as bad as in North Korea doesn't mean there's nothing wrong.

Which reminds me of this quote by Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.