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Complete Net Cafe Shutdown After Beijing Fire

Posted by timothy on from the quash-quash-quash dept.

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."

5 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Clear things up by jsse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. :(

  2. locked emergency exits by forged · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  3. Re:China's up to some weird stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)

  4. Closing Net Cafe does NOT mean quashing Internet by gqy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In China you can pay 80 Yuan ($10) monthly fee to have a dial-up account, which is affordable for most Chinese. A majority of the netizen in China can surf on Internet right from their home.

    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.

  5. This isn't news for nerds.. by Sapphon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..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.