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Google Disappears In China
An anonymous reader submits: "The censorship in China was finally getting better since people were 'allowed' to read the CNN news now (except for certain articles). But since this weekend it seems that a new web page has been censored in China. Since this weekend it looks like everyone in China is not 'allowed' to use google.com anymore. google.com was also gaining populairity in China as the better search engine (which also works fine in Chinese). But now I guess it got too popular and thus not allowed. Or does it have anything to do with Yahoo signing the agreement to censor?" Comments to yesterday's post "Real-Time Testing of China's Internet Filters" also noted that Google has gone missing within China.
Surely it's because Google's cache would allow people inside the Great Firewall to read all manner of banned web pages?
Google's cached page feature could give anyone in china the ability to see any censored sites (or at least older copies).
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Maybe google labs can whip up a quick p2p client that will allow people to use google in places where it is blocked.
Goatse.cx is A-OK by Chinese authorities, but google isn't?
Wow... now that's what I call a strange can of worms.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
It's available from Googles cache.
Err... Never mind.
bash$
There's no source, no reference; just a wild rumors from an anonymous coward. I don't believe /. editors would down to spreading FUD for a few extra hits.
:)
In China there are some search engines like Yam which is google based and use google's queries. Even if you haven't heard of Yam, you might have heard of a China based search engine company suing Yahoo for stealing queries. Yam is more popular than Google here.
If they block Google they might have to block Yam as well, which would then be a real chaos.
Google access decreased steadily the whole of last week.
First it was www.google.com that went down, then the country specific versions, now the wwwN.google.com types.
IP addresses work for viewing, but a get/post doesn't work, so no searching.
From what I can see, the firewall is just dropping packets on those ports at the 80,443 addresses.
You can ping google, and see what open ports are on, but a raw GET on port 80 or 443 does nothing.
Net Scan returns this:
IP Address : 216.239.51.100
Resolved : www.google.com
Operating System : probably Unix
Time to live (TTL) : 42 (64) - 22 hop(s) away
Open Ports (2)
80 [ Http => World Wide Web, HTTP ]
H 400 Bad Request
Content-Length: 1210
Connection: Close
Server: GWS/2.0
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 06:45:23 GMT
443 [ HttpS => Secure HTTP ]
Looks like its back to the dark old days of proxy's again.
Lawrence
www.shanghaiguide.com
Yam is accessible, and so is Yahoo.
Too bad China overlooked Google proxies...they exist you know.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Every year or so, I get to rewrite this article, because it seems to continue to be regarded as news.
The government of the PRC, through Zhonghua Telecom, continues to filter traffic going in and out of China.
The filters do not work. This is old news. Proxy servers are everywhere.
Here's the secret which doesn't seem to have gotten out of China yet, the filters don't have to work. They're not designed for the users.
Contrary to popular belief, China is not run as an absolute dictatorship. It's run by a circle of maybe a few dozen people who's opinions really matter. Like any good-sized group, there's a lot of disagreeement about how much (or little) openness there should be to the rest of the world.
The filters exist to appease the more close-minded members of the circle and to let them know that the best efforts are being made to keep bad stuff out of the minds of users.
My best guess about Google disappearing is that one or more companies who are providing portal and search services in China have been complaining to the Ministry of the Information Industry about loss of market share to Google. The solution? If Google gets blocked, the market share for locally-produced Chinese portals goes up!
Is this good policy? No. Probably not. I've seen protectionist policy used all over the world and it's generally not the consumer or even the producers who benefit. It's a few well-placed friends of the folks in power. At least in this case, there's always another open proxy server which someone "forgot" to close up to work around this bit of government silliness.
Happy hunting all!
j.
Hellooo? McFly? Anybody home?
They are blocking 2 Billion + people of an Internetsite that's something like the cornerstone of online information!
Don't you also think that a lot of powerpeople in the US and elsewhere envy the chinese powermongers for this? What will the world look like in 10 years from now, when books are getting scarce and drm is all over us like a polyester safari suit and each of us will be paying hard bucks only to view data - and even that will be censored?
Pretty grim if you ask me...
What I'm saying is: This is not the least bit funny!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Basicly, if the media wants, they can brainwash majority of people in believing anything they want.
In the case of censorship, you know atleast, that you don't have access to unbiased information - and you know that if you want to create an unbiased opinion, you need to do it yourself.
But, as we have free speech, it is easy to leave thinking to the media, and let someone else form your opinion. So, to some extent, I think that the fact that media is controlled by tiny interest groups, is maybe even a bigger threat than censorship.
Yeah...why, just the other day, a friend of mine was "censored" when the army came and took him away for publically speaking out against the government. Later, there was a report on the news that he was to be imprisoned, tortured, and shot.
He was part of a rally in Times Square, and they arrested him. Sucks that we live in a country without peaceable assembly.
Wait...I think it was actually someone I didn't know who was killed in Tiananmen square for a pro-democracy demonstration.
I think I got it straight now. The US is NOTHING like China when it comes to censorship. We don't imprison and kill people because we don't like what they say. We certainly don't use full force; on the contrary, our main censorship punishment is fines, or at the very most, a minimum security prison sentence. Of course, you have to consider that we are not trying to censor, our goal is to avoid copyright violations. You can say anything you want, as long as it isn't libel (untrue statement of FACTS - all opinions are allowed).
Don't belittle our freedom or China's suffering by such a comparison.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
"Google was long known as a tool for hackers and perverts," said Truth Minister Chu. "It didn't serve any purpose for the greater good of the people, which is why it presumably went out of business without even a goodbye. Every economist knows this rude, erratic behavior is common among companies that can not find a way to serve the needs state."
Most good citizens won't even miss the Web site.
"It was too boring," said Jie Zhang, a rice farmer. "There was only one picture on the whole site and it was promoting the self-serving ideals of capitalist branding. Plus many of the pages were in other languages, so the site was useless to me. I'm glad I couldn't understand it, because I wouldn't want to be imprisoned for reading dangerous materials."
Many citizens said they have never used Google; they remain true to the official Chinese search engine: http:///www...
(If this had been a real news story, I would have linked to the source. If you still take it seriously after reading this, you deserve to be laughed at. A lot.)
Here is a list of sites Chinese people shouldn't see. The list includes Google, Altavista. Amnesty, geocities, various .mil sites, free speech sites, Slashdot, SourceForge, and some porn sites as well as a variety of politically oriented sites.
:)
Does the US currently have any plans for a "regime shift" over there?
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.