Slashdot Mirror
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."
... 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.
"You laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you because you're all the same." --Vick Imbornoni
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.
The BSA doesn't mess around in those developing countries, does it?! Betcha the 200 shops that re-open will have their documents in order...
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
the real condition of these illegal net cafes.....
Think a large room with only one door(maybe two... second one likely locked) and 100-200 conmputers with a few hundred people. When they do things here they tend to do it big.
Windows are often barred as well so if there is a fire near an exit.... you can imagine the results.
This is why they are shutting down the cafes.... they are death traps.
As for controlling Internet access.... they want to limit the hours and the ages of the people who can access it - stop school children wasting their time there and it also means you have to be an adult to use it outside of school holidays.
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.
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.
Weird indeed. I'm actually on holiday in china so i got a chance to see the news on cctv4. apart from the fire hazard they also talked about the dangers of letting young people on the internet.And in the same item they talked about limiting youth access to karaoke bars.
What's really weird is that my internet explorer refuses to open the beijing internet cafe story on yro.slashdot.org. strange because everything else on yro (including the is china losing control story) still works. being an old slashdot reader I ssh-ed to my unix box and used lynx instead. i've no idea how they would block a single url that way, but hey, i'm a westerner in china, so i'm a little paranoid...
XENNA
(sorry 'bout the layout, btw: same story on the pc next to me)
People who go the Cafes are mostly teenagers. Closing the net cafes does not affect anything at all for most Internet surfers.
I can remember, several years ago, there was a huge fire in a dance club, which killed hundreds of people. The city closed all its dance clubs for one month and only allow those which has the right license and meets fire standards to reopen. I think it is the same thing here for Net Cafes. It has nothing to do with quashing the Internet access. It can't.
Notes: I just checked with friends in China. They can acess slashdot.com and cnn.com without any limitation.
Of course it can be... Look at India. Sure, the government collapses once in a while, but I think India's a lot harder to run: $2.2k GNP per cap, vs China's $3.6k GNP, massive ethnic strife in India and interests from so many different states, etc.
My point is that India is a pretty radical experiment in democracy... just consider the expense of running elections in a place that has a $2200 per capita GNP.
..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?
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.