The Great Firewall of China - Samples of Filtered Sites

Loligo writes "Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society has released a study listing some of the sites filtered by Chinese internet connections. Sites about Taiwan are maybe understandable, but Red Lobster?" We've mentioned the ongoing Berkman study before; one of their interesting findings is that the list of blocked sites is a moving target, and some sites are blocked only intermittently. Here are summaries from The New York Times and MSNBC, by way of The Censorware Project. Update: 12/04 21:03 GMT by T : Seth Finkelstein points to his report "Searching Through the Great Firewall of China," which "describes a simple technique which can be used with some search engines to bypass censorware bans on searching for forbidden words. Particular emphasis is placed on the situation of the Great Firewall Of China."

Comments

Intermittent blocks huh?

[Apathy costs bills]

and some sites are blocked only intermittently.

That's interesting. Let me create, then, an "ancient Chinese secret":

while true; do wget http://site.intermittent.com;sleep 60;done

Re:Huh?

[Mnemia]

I think that was just poor wording on the part of the submitter. A better way to put it would be 'unsurprising' and I'm pretty sure that's what he meant based on the context.

Re:Huh?

[L. VeGas]

I suspect you don't know what "understandable" means. To help you out, "understandable" means you "understand" why they did it.

geez

also...

[night_flyer]

I submitted this earlier (and it was rejected), but it seems two Chinese citizens were executed for experssing their opinions on the internet, while countless others have been detained and tortured, the Chinese wont hear about it though because its on a blocked site.

here is more information on Chinas control

Since its slashdotted, Google cache

[JJAnon]

here.

Re:big deal

[Traicovn]

Mirror of sites that are blocked is up at http://ra.msstate.edu/~naw4/chinafire.html sans graphics.

I just checked

[Anonymous Coward]

they don't block this!

Re:Other sites

[WWWWolf]

Sourceforge? ...
Why do these sites need to be blocked?

Sourceforge probably hosts software that could be used to bypass such filters. But most importantly, they host the development of Freenet, a thorn in web censor's side =)

Highlights, since it seems to be slashdotted

[mikerackhabit]

Here are the names of the highlighted blocked sites. I have all the other stats too but the filter system won't let me post them for some reason.

Title: Asian American Baptist Church
Title: ABC.com
Title: ABC Online
Title: About Reuters
Title: Association of Christian Community ComputerCenters
Title: American Cancer Society - Northern California Chinese Unit Air Intelligence Agency
Title: AltaVista - The Search Company
Title: MIT Alumni Association
Title: American Feed Magazine Welcome to America's Party
Title: Amnesty International USA - Defending and PromotingHuman Rights Worldwide
Title: Center for Anti-Communism The Nando Times
Title: The University of Arizona
Title: The United States Army Homepage
Title: Russian Christian Orthodox church in BostoUSA
Title: MIT Computer Architecture Group Home Page
Title: Christian Academy in Japan
Title: The Cancer Information Network US Army War College and Carlisle Barracks, alsoCenter for Strategic Leadership, Military History Institute, ArmyPhysical Fitness Research Institute, Parameters, and Strategic Studies Institute CBS.com
Title: Welcome to ITS
Title: Charlotte.com - Your Guide to Charlotte
Title: Welcome to the US Army Research Institute of ChemicaDefense
Title: Chichester District Online
Title: The China Times
Title: Bilingual Chinese children's books, Chinese movieDVDs, Chinese cultural products! Learn Mandarin Chinese, LearnCantonese, books, traditional chinese music & songs, CD's, CD-ROM,stories, and cassett tapes. Chinese language/mandarin culture/heri christopherlydon.org
Title: Welcome to CKS International Airport
Title: Columbia University
Title: Le Consulat General de France - Hong Kong Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS)Calgary/Banff Chapter
Title: The Stanford Daily Online Edition
Title: Deep Impact Defend AMERICA - US Department of Defense News AboutThe War on Terrorism
Title: DefenseLINK - Official Web Site of the U.S. Department of Defense
Title: DFW.com - Your Dallas/Fort Worth Everything Guide
Title: Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Home Page
Title: DefenseLINK - Official Web Site of theU.S. Department of Defense
Title: Defense Technical Information Center
Title: Study Tour to JAPAN 97
Title: Economic Services (Macau) MIT EECS - Home Page
Title: Taipei e-campus
Title: Environmental Protection Agency - Taiwan
Title: Falun Dafa Canada Falun Dafa in Ireland
Title: Canada Family Action Coalition - CFAC
Title: Faith Bible Church, Seattle, WA USA
Title: Feng Shui USA Homepage Federal Judicial Center
Title: The Free Methodist Church in Canada - MAINPAGE
Title: Fair Trade Commission - Taiwan Japan Fukuoka Mission
Title: Government Information Office, Republic ofChina
Title: The George Washington University Haneda Japanese Tutorial School
Title: The Happy Hacker -- the web site computer criminalsdon't want you to visit!
Title: Integrity Episcopal Church U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence
Title: INTERHIT RECORDS ONLINE
Title: Irish Chronicle: news from Ireland and around the world Ice Rink Management Asia & Ice Rink Resources
Title: CIC - Canberra Islamic Centre
Title: Islamic Virtual School
Title: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israel Tour Connection - Free Bar/Bat Mitzvah toIsrael
Title: The Judicial Yuan of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Kaohshiung - Taiwan's Maritime Capital
Title: Kinsman Redeemer Ministries
Title: Los Angeles Times
Title: Welcome to the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Title: The Learning Channel
Title: The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
Title: MIT Libraries
Title: Wellesley College Library
Title: Miami.com - Your Miami Everything Guide
Title: The Official State Web Site of Mississippi Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: City of Light; The Path to the True Islam
Title: Critical in-depth studies of Christianity, Islam, Ismailism, Evolution and Atheism MotorBikeAssociation
Title: The Nando Times: Front
Title: U.S. Navy's Official Web Site: Welcome Aboard
Title: The National Guard Bureau Notre Dame Academy {Catholic High School inMiddleburg, Virginia}
Title: National Public Radio
Title: oneworld.net homepage Parti federaliste du France - POUR UNE FRANCEFEDERALE - POUR UNE EUROPE FEDERALE
Title: Philly.com - "The Region's Home Page"
Title: FCIC - Home Page Radio Canada International
Title: Red Horse Records-Independent record label, recordingstudio, music publisher, distributor, and online music store. Bobby Carlson, Mustang Mesa, Michael Razz, Melissa Bates, and DebbiGrant.
Title: Red Lobster Seafood Restaurants - Recipes and LiveLobster Delivery
Title: Home Page: American Memory from the Library oCongress
Title: Saudi Times - latest news stories and topheadlines.
Title: æ--...å¥åç"Yèè¼æoefTaiwaStudent Club in Austria
Title: Welcome to the National Food and Agriculture HomePage
Title: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute Yahoo! Singapore News
Title: Singapore Millennium Study Tour
Title: Welcome to Red Mountain
Title: SonyStyle USA SourceForge.net: Welcome
Title: National Statistics of Taiwan, the Republic ofChina
Title: New Mexico State Government Welcome to Streamripper
Title: Sunnyside Jazz Records first page
Title: Scott Wiggerman's Poetry Pages
Title: Tibetan Incense Company : Incense for MeditationHealth and all Spiritual Practices
Title: Welcome to TIME.com
Title: The Truth in America Project
Title: Tucows Downloads - Download freeware and sharewarsoftware.
Title: United Nations Moldova
Title: Welcome to UNICEF Canada
Title: United Nations - daily news and currenevents
Title: The Federal Judiciary
Title: Official Website for the United States Marine Corps Uyghur American Association
Title: Veterans Affairs Commission, Taiwan
Title: Voice of America
Title: washingtonpost.com - News Front Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title: Space Science Division, NASA
Title: The University of Virginia

Re:Huh?

[Planesdragon]

Finally, I imagine I'll add you to my "enemies list" (hate that term - it's just a kill file) here at slashdot.

1: it's "foes list" not "enemies." All the "dot" settings start with an F. (Friend/Fan/Foe/Freak)

2: It's not a killfile. It's a non-anonymous automatic user-indictaed moderation setting with notification of jounrals of those you add to the "friend" list. You can set whatever value you want for it in your settings.

Summary of Censorware Drama

[Sanity]

Michael Sims, Slashdot editor, and Seth Finkelstein both worked on the Censorware project. One day Sims got into some kind of bitch-fight with Finkelstein, the subject of that fight isn't even relevant any more. Sims hijacked the Censorware website - for which he happened to own the domain name. He shut it down, and actively tried to prevent anyone from mirroring the information on it.

Even if you ignore what happened before, the current situation is that the Censorware project had to start up a new site at censorware.net, and Sims is using the original URL - censorware.org, as a rant page against Finkelstein.

Sims admits at the top of this page that many people visiting it will be hoping to find information pertaining to censorship. However, rather than do what most people who claim to be concerned about censorship would do (allow the visitor to get the information they are looking for), he just rants on about Finkelstein.

Seemingly, for Sims - ego and flaming Finkelstein gets a higher priority than educating people about censorship. Don't take my word for it, visit censorware.org and see for yourself.

Oh, also - be warned. Sims is known to use his Slashdot editor status to remove these discussion threads, claiming they are off-topic (he can't really use that excuse here).

/. editor censored the original Censorware site

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so people don't have to bother with the link, the story is that Michael Sims, Slashdot editor, shut down the original censorware.org site, to which he happened to own the domain name, after getting into a fight with some of the other people working on the project. They were forced to set up a new site at censorware.net. Sims is still sitting on censorware.org and using it as a rant-page against the other Censorware people.

Way to fight censorship Michael!!

redlobster can be visited from China

[zxyang]

I'm in Wuhan,China.www.redlobster.com can be visited now.