Complete Net Cafe Shutdown After Beijing Fire

lunchlady doris writes: "The BBC has this story that tells of a fire in an internet cafe in Beijing that killed 24 people. The mayor responded to this tragedy by shutting down all 2,400 cafes in the city, most of which are operated illegally. Only 200 cafes will be allowed to reopen, pending municipal regulation. Needless to say, the netizens of Beijing are pissed and see this as a move to quash the limited access to the net that the Chinese people currently have."

Comments

You wheren't expecting that...

[m.batsis]

... the Chinese gov would admit it's responsibilities regarding the incident did you? If the internet cafe was allowed to be legal, no emergency exits would be locked. Sorry, no sig.

Excuse or real concern?

[Saint Fnordius]

It's easy to jump on the mayor for being a censor tyrant for this action, and some conspiracy buffs will undoubtedly claim the fire was set by the authorities on purpose. I think the real cause is the cavalier lack of any safety measures. Most of these cafés were illegal most likely because they didn't conform to any sort of building codes or grease the right palms.

After the excitement dies back down, several of these cafés will be up and running again, most likely under new aliases and at new locations.

I doubt that this will have more than a temporary effect. Even on fire safety.

Clear things up

[jsse]

I write to clear things up just in case some people immediate jumping into issues of free speech and human rights.

The students are killed as all possible exits were either blocked or locked up.

The building has only one entrance/exit, and it was locked at the time of fire, and the windows were barred with steel. As a matter of fact the owner didn't get proper license to open an Internet cafe and the door was always locked to avoid inspection. The windows were barred to prevent thievery, and it's not unusual to see many factories and commercial buildings have their windows barred for this reason.

As a result the authority shutdown all Internet cafes for safety and license inspection. In fact only 1/10 of the Internet cafes got proper commercial license for. It's not an action against civilians' Internet access, at least not directly.

Of course, I'd expect people in Beijing has tough time accessing Internet in the future, as the conservative people would sneak chance to impose more restrictions. :(

locked emergency exits

[forged]

What makes the story fascinating to the Slashdot readers (and to the editors who posted it in the first place) is that it is a cybercafë which burned down. So what.

If that would have been any other kind of building in town, nobody else would care.

The reality is that, "Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.

Shit happens.

This isn't news for nerds..

[Sapphon]

..anymore than "Dog bites man - while he's at his computer"

There is no way Slashdot would have posted this article if the fire had occurred in any other form of business in china. And trying to pass this off as a human rights/totalitarian government issue is bullshit too.

this is something to get upset about

This is a government going nuts

But this story, is standard practice worldwide. Illegal operations lead to loss of life, crack-down ensues. How much more commonplace can it be?