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Real-Time Testing of China's Internet Filters

Posted by chrisd on from the but-do-they-block-wigu dept.

mrbnsn writes "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is conducting a study of Internet filtering in countries worldwide. As part of this study, they have put up a web page where you can get a real-time report on whether any URL you submit is blocked by the Great Firewall. Check whether you'd be able to read your favorite web sites in Beijing!" I've also heard that there are some "western" hotels that have non-blocked connections. Anyone from China care to tell us what it's like?

6 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Actually... by olesk · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...it depends. I was in China recently, visiting an old friend who lives there. He signed a document saying he was officially a foreigner and suddenly got CNN on his cable. Seems you can get away from most of it by not being Chinese, even in China.

    I prodded the "Great Firewall" when I was there, and realized some sites were cut off, like the CNN. Besides Yahoo and some other sites have tailor made pages for the Chinese. I made a SSH-tunnel back home to god old Norway though (no restrictions on protocols/ports it seemed, only some IP-adresses), so I had no problems. I don't think it would be much of an obstacle for most slashdotters :)

  2. All SourceForge sites blocked by Eloquence · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is the list of sites that have been found to be inaccsesible. A lot of them are the expectable human rights (Amnesty etc.), Tibet and Falun Gong stuff, as well as some news media (Yahoo Asia News, CBS News, BBC news, and many US-based China news sites).

    Geocities appears to be completely blocked.

    The Chinese government doesn't like Playboy or sex.com - hmm, do we see a correlation between repressive government and antisexual morals there? Nah, couldn't be.

    I have no idea why they censor {Insert Something Funny}, an obscure weblog, an anti-tobacco group, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Columbia Earthscape, or Columbia University.

    Google is on their shitlist. No surprise given its cache and large index. The Wayback Machine isn't - I'd expect that to change in the long term. Anonymizer is accessible as well.

    Peek-A-Booty and Freenet are not accessible, of course. It appears that all SourceForge sites are blocked (unless the testing engine is slashdotted and not working properly, but other sites are reported as accessible). I presume this might be because Freenet is hosted at SourceForge.

  3. Extensive testing by worried geeks... by MavEtJu · · Score: 4, Funny

    Extensive testing by worried geeks has shown that slashdot.org is still accessible from the Chinese part of the Internet. Further tests are scheduled for the next couple of days to make sure it stays.

    --
    bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
  4. I'm in China, it's not that bad... by pfleisch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just arrived in Dalian, China three weeks ago and I'm going to be here for a year working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    One of my main fears about coming here was the internet access. I was afraid that they would block any western site that could talk about democracy or badly about China in any way. Could it be possible that I might not be able to, gasp, read slashdot for an entire year? After I got here I found at that isn't the case at all. I can get to Slashdot, CNN, Yahoo, pretty much every site that I use on a regular basis. The only one that really pisses me off is sourceforge. Out of all the sites to block, why the hell did they pick that one? Maybe because they figure that if anyone does find a way to write a piece of software that could get around their firewall, that would probably be one of the first places it would be posted. I can't seem to come up with a better answer. Any ideas?

    Anyway, Google is not blocked, and neither is the cache, so if I ever do find a site that I can't get to, I just use Google's cache to get a general idea of what is there.

    Also, as far as the blocking of Playboy and other sex sites goes, any country where you can walk into a bar and have two prostitutes sitting on your lap within 5 minutes (no joke) has far more serious moral issues to deal with than a few internet sex sites. Enough said.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. Re:wrong by billbaggins · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the front page...

    http://slashdot.org - Reported as inaccessible in China
    http://www.slashdot.org - Reported as accessible in China

    Throw your result in (slashdot.org accessible), and what we get is either a filter on the fritz, or else this tester still has some bugs to be worked out of it. According to the FAQ, China's filter is based on IP address. Does slashdot's homepage have multiple IPs? (sorry, too lazy to check).

    For whatever it's worth, it seems that Saudi Arabia is not known to block slashdot.

    --
    "The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
    --Winston Churchill