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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."
Filtering of taiwanese sites 'understandable'?
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
TODO: Something witty here...
I dunno if any research has been done, but is it possible that they are taking offers from Chinese companies to block competitors' sites? I'm probably wrong on this, but it seems like one of 2 main possible reasons to do so.
Most revolutions start when such activities occur. I wonder if they decided to debate over the issue: 'Free access to all information available', or 'Block what we consider harmful to our socialist government and hope the people aren't smart enough to realize what we are doing'.
Sometimes I forget just how much I love the good old USA.
"This food is problematic."
The US passes laws without much trouble that lets the gov't snoop on all citizens and arrest them at will.
Is the US that much better? At least in China I wouldn't be arrested (because I wouldn't be able to find the site).
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Block what we consider harmful to our corporate oil government and hope the people aren't smart enough to realize what we are doing except this
guy who says:
Get Your War On
Cheers,
Woot
Contains programs that might be used to subvert the Chineese efforts to restrict internet use.
MIT?
Same as above as well as political speach that may be there.
The Learning Channel? ;) But, most likely for political reasons or there are documentaries that show China or it's leaders in a poor light.
Er...It shows animals 'doing it'?
Michael Loves Me!
It could be that they block the word "red" in sitenames to avoid anti-communist sites, but this would be a very generic and/or stupid filter (not that the firewall in general isn't stupid).
I can't hit any sites above (except for redlobster), so - does anyone know how to check if the GFOC blocks a particular site? How about sites like "redpaint.com".
than China, you can get KILLED for surfing the wrong www address. Think about it people. No, really, THINK!
If all of these sites China was censoring were protected by the DMCA, and there was source code or illegal files on them, suddenly its ok to censor it!
Are we complaining about China because they are Chinese or because of their so called censorship?
China isnt the country locking people up for sharing files, in fact up until recently it was perfectly legal to share your files, they had freedom of speech in that area until WE the so called freedom loving Americans forced them to adopt our censorship laws to protect our intellectual propery from the evil warez pirates of China who cant afford to buy our software anyway.
Its funny how we complain about every nation, China, Afganastan, Pakistan, Iraq, everywhere but if anyone dares complain about the USA they are unAmerican.
I expect to get flamed by a bunch of patriots who will tell me that America is not a country of hypocrites but if you look throughout history, this country was founded by hypocrites who said it was all about freedom, freedom to enslave millions of people and rob the natives of all their land?
So should the masses have absolute freedom of speech? No more DMCA? Or should the elite few people who happen to have some kinda intellectual propery, should these people have freedom to protect it?
I think considering 95 percent of us dont own any intellectual propery, why should we try so hard to protect it? It reduces our freedom.
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One does not preclude the other.
Posting a story about Chinese censorship does not mean that you implicit condone censorship somewhere else.
Help fight continental drift.
Isn't racist humor just sooooo cute. Not!
http://www.pigdog.org/decss/source/decss_mirror.ht ml
http://www.sharereactor.com/
oh lets not forget about all the illegal sites like hacking/security sites which I'm not even allowed to legally LINK to.
And what about that site with the illegal Microsoft Windows 2000 Beta source code?
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I can understand why Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and other "undersirables."
I can understand why Britain wanted to keep the American colonies under their control.
I can understand why Bush ended up president.
I can understand why my ex-girlfriend broke up with me.
I can understand why the police officer doesn't cut me any slack when he pulls me over for speeding on an empty highway at 3 in the morning.
In more than one of those cases that understanding involves realizing and accounting for the fact that the people involved were immoral nutcases (you can try to guess which is which if you wish =) but that doesn't prevent me from understanding why they choose to do the things they did, given their view of the world.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
That is the worst pun I've seen on ./ in a long time
Making for a "+5, Funny" moderation probability of almost 100%.
Theres starving kids here. Theres homeless kids here , Families in fact are homeless here. Theres kids growing up with a single parent here in ghettos filled with drugs and whore houses, why give money to people in etheopia or anywhere else when people HERE are on welfare, people here need help, its funny how a republican office can hate welfare, but when its supporting their Agenda suddenly its ok. When American Airlines was attacked Bush steped in with the corperate bailout work 20 billion. When we destroyed afganastan, we now spend billions a year on economic development,
if we attack Iraq its going to cost us billions a year.
We dont even spend 1 billion a year on welfare but Republicans complain like welfare is draining every penny out of their pockets, they dont want to help homeless people in this country yet we spend billions each year helpinng homeless people in Africa. We dont protect our own borders yet we have thousands of troops protecting the korean border. What the fuck?! when are we going to stop policing the world, and become America again instead of the world government that we are trying to be?
Thats why we keep getting attacked by terrorists, we spread ourselves thin and focus everywhere but where we should focus.
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How is it different? The record companies hold a monopoly, they are no different than government.
The record companies, Microsoft, or any of these big giant companies, they are just like government, they tax you for stuff you dont even need like Microsoft Windows coming with your PC even if you dont want it, or record companies trying to rob you and musicians at the same time with $30 cds.
So because our government is Capitalist somehow we are immune to the problems China has? Hell no, we have the same problems, we are run by big business and China is run by elite government officials, both of us however are not run by the people.
No one in the USA but these big businesses want intellectual property. I dont know ANYONE who thinks napster and file sharing should be illegal, I dont know a single sick person who wants their medicine to cost x10 more money because of patents, and I dont know anyone in general who makes money from patents, even musicians i know make most of their money from concerts.
The only people making money from the patent and intellectual property industry are fakes like britney spears and guys in suits who sit around bossing people but who have no purpose.
We are a democracy right? I'll believe it when file sharing and marijuana are made legal.
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Is it now unacceptable to criticise anything unless the critic is perfect? If so, I suggest you stop expressing your opinions, because I am sure you have some flaws, too. That aside, I think you are missing the difference in scope and degree that exists between your examples.
USA:
Miniscule control of contested content as part of an on-going struggle over intellectual property. This control is almost entirely public, and any punishment is delivered openly after proper trials. An open and energetic debate is taking place within the USA regarding the correctness of these actions.
China:
Sweeping control of political expression. This control is as covert as possible. Much of the punishment is delivered in an arbitrary and concealed manner. Public debate within China is limited because people fear arrest if they complain.
Neither situation is ideal, but equating the situation in the USA with the situation in China diminishes the situation the Chinese people must endure.
...the leaders are idiots. No, really, they are. My family moved here from China because they were tired of living in a police state run by idiots with absolute control over everything. They're gradually getting better, but they've got a long way to go.
China has a long history of being run by idiots. A long series of emperors squandered China's treasures and people to build stupid things for themselves, like stone armies, terraced mountains, and The Great Wall. The Great Wall of China was started by a schizophrenic paraniod emperor who was afraid of being attacked from the north. It was continued by his descendants, who didn't have the sense to look at this project and realize it was a Big Waste Of Time.
What usually happens is that an imperial dynasty is started by a strong, good emperor, and then all his descendents are idiots. Eventually, they get overthrown by another group that sets up another imperial dynasty, and the cycle starts over again. Sort of like what caused the French Revolution, except it kept happening every century or so. The Communists are just the last in a long line of dynasties.
Gargoyles are relegious icons. Communist givernments generally don't like religions.
Your site seems to be about a BBS. Perhaps they don't want chineese people visiting discussion forums outside china. This seems the most likly answer from a quick look at the list of blocked sites, losts of discussion forums are blocked.
So how is this different than the current administration in power in the USA? :-)
We have successful, capitalist, legal-schooled morons versus soon-to-be-successful, partial-capitalist, state-schooled idiots.
You just can't win.
This space for rent.
Selective reading, my friend? There's plenty of US, DMCA, Congress-bashing all of the time. Look at nearly every Slashback in recent memory...
Actually, the only reason that China gets so much bashing is that, well, inside of China you don't get to bash them. In America (and Europe, and many if not most other places), we get to bash our government in every medium, as often as we're willing to bother. Granted, it gets old eventually, so we tend to concentrate on something more important to us personally. Like which Willow is better
We all know the USA is not perfect so what gives us the right to Bash China as if we are better or something?
Our government doesn't do what China's does. It doesn't censor directly; it doesn't ban religions (even pseudo-religions); it does allow criticism and free political speech.
And when someone criticises the US, our government doesn't throw a hissy fit. You haven't noticed us breaking diplomatic relations or trade ties with Germany, now, have you? And you won't; our goverment disagrees with Germany's government (hell, it disagrees with me too!), but that isn't going to interfere with business as usual. And note, the US criticizes Germany's stance on declaring Scientology a cult rather than a religion, so such disagreements are certainly not new nor interesting...
As citizens and residents in the US, we have the right (check the First Amendment here) to whinge about not only our government, but our neighbors and city councilmen and international conglomerates and the French... and yes, the government of the PRC. Get used to it, bucko, it's a big world out here
Ok I understand us Bashing the taliban, but China?
China does some very nasty things; to wit:
So, my lad, if you can't take the heat, you'd best get out of the kitchen!
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
All right, trollboy.
OT, but I don't care. You don't have a clue 1 about basic economics. The Republicans complain about welfare because it is counterproductive. The airline industry is getting handouts because it improves the economy as a whole. Like it or not, the US is the world superpower.
I disagree. I spent 2 years of my life working with disadvantaged families in the South side of Chicago. I was the only white guy for miles much of the time. I lived in the exact same conditions, ate the same food, froze with everyone else in the winter, etc.
The solution is not money. These problems are extremely, extremely tough to fix. It can't be fixed in a generation. (in fact, I left wondering if a solution can ever be found). As soon as someone 'pulled themselves up by the bootstraps' (often with aid) and went to school, they immediately moved out of the city. This simply leaves 'everything else' in the inner cities. Very few want to stay once they become productive.
Don't get me wrong. I still have many friends who live in inner Chicago (not that it matters, but FYI, almost all black people who grew up there). They are working to fix the problem, but it's not about money. It's about changing culture. It's about changing families. More than anything, it's about getting fathers to get married to those they impregnate and take care of their kids (instead of running off to the next woman). Strong families would solve the problem.
I agree that we should focus on our own problems, but that doesn't preclude us from working with other countries as well. Cities don't need money. They need people to go in and help change culture. How do we do that? I don't know. But after my experience there I don't worry about money the US spends helping other countries. We need a whole lot more than money in the inner city.
in the USA we have the RIAA tracking people down
/. today? No? Well you would be in China if you talked about the government in this way.
Yeah. And they're being reported on doing it. And getting sued for civil liberties violations.
lets talk about IP and the fact that none of us here have IP
Speak for yourself. I'm a coder. I have IP. And, frankly, if you had a clue about the IP laws you'd know you had IP too. But instead of educating yourself about IP and what's right and wrong with the current IP system, you'd rather just whine and moan about the RIAA and MPAA being evil and horrible, and compare them to draconian authoritative regimes clouding the issue... all so that you can not pay the artist for their time when you download a song or movie off a P2P network.
I happen to agree that the RIAA and MPAA have wildly overstepped their bounds, but I've yet to see anyone figure out a decent scheme that still ensures the artist will be paid. I don't give a flying fuck about the middlemen and their dieing business model, but I damn well do want to see the inventor properly paid for their time and effort.
Its pathetic, leave China alone for a moment and whoever is moderator of Slashdot, please post an article comparing China and the USA's censorship and see that we are just as bad
Wow... that's such an incredible stretch it's not even funny.
Are you worried about someone coming to your home tonight, arresting you and your family, and throwing you into prison for the rest of your (possibly drastically shortened) life because of the post you made on
There may very well be issues in the US. We can strive to fix them. That doesn't mean we can't point at someone else and say "no, that's wrong".
I can't believe there were enough moderators that thought this was "interesting" or "insightful" to get you modded up past all the proper "flamebait" mods. This is pure tripe.
Actually... They both point fingers at each other. Look at http://censorware.org/ or http://stalkedbyseth.com for Michael's side of it.
Personally, I think it this battle is an utterly childish act on both parts and its disgusting to see a perfectly good URL (censorware.org) used for this rediculous Michael vs Seth soap opera.
At this point, no one cares who is at fault, but many slashdotters would be very happy if one or both sides would just fucking grow up and quit furthering this war of egos and blame throwing.
Peronsally, I'd like to see censorware.org turned back into what it was supposed to be. Michael owns it, so he should be able to do what, even without Seth on the project. If he can't then he should turn it over to more capable hands, such as the EFF or Amnesty International or someone who actually wants to create a nice site which educates about censorware instead of pushing a personal grudge against someone else.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
What hypocrasy! WHy is when a censored internet is talked about, it's ALWAYS China that's mentioned? What about all the other "wonderful" and "democratic" socities such as Australia, Germany, France, Austria, US, etc, etc??
Remember when the Austrian Google decided to delist Nazi web sites, and the Frnech Google followed? Or when the Italian gov went after indymedia.org? Everyone censors these days.
*sigh*
/., since this crowd is so *#*@@ clueless about such matters... but, here goes.
I always dread seeing political issues on
It is illegal to possess or distribute certain types of content in China. The penalties for doing these things can be quite severe. It does not matter whether a site is blocked or not. If you get caught viewing porn, that is a crime. It doesn't matter if you got it from an unblocked site or from a blocked site via some circumvention technique. Circumventing the law (any law) is also a crime in China (as it is in the US and many countries), and that is a separate crime over and above the crime of possessing/distributing forbidden material.
China's net control is not limited to blocking of the internet. They also do very extensive monitoring, thanks to their friends at Cisco. Think "FBI in the 50s" - lots of people collecting lots of files on lots of other people. Just because you can view restricted material does not mean you are getting away with anything. In fact, it is much more likely that you are not getting away with squat. They are just sitting on the info should they ever need to use it.
That said, China is primarily concerned with people who are distributing illegal materials. People who are engaging in this activity are doing so with full knowledge of the (possibly severe) punishments. This makes them either heroes or troublemakers, depending on your political view of the stuff they are distributing (i.e., kiddie porn vs. leaked gov't papers).
If you want to stop the censorship, you need to understand why the censorship is there in the first place. The sophomoric attitude of "we should force the US way on the rest of the world" is overly simplistic at best, and is one of the reasons other countries hate us. It is no help to the people actually trying to solve real problems and create change. The social and political situation is very different in China than in US. The attitude of the people towards the government, and the role government plays in the society is quite different. The US was founded on an extreme distrust of government, so it is hard for us to understand cultures who do not share this distrust.
For example, try to imagine this in the US: a senior military commander is arrested and thrown into prison. After many years, he is released. The government (this is the same government, mind you) tells him that after much investigations, it was a mistake, gives him an apology, gives him his back pay, and gives him his old job back, commanding a large part of the military. When asked about it, he says "everyone makes mistakes."
Sidney Rittenberg once said something like "The Chinese government is among the most corrupt, repressive, dysfunctional governments on Earth. It is also one of the best, and is the only one that can save China." This is from a man who lived in China 35 years - 16 of which were spent in Chinese prisons.
Most Americans also have comically extreme anti-communism attitude burned onto their collective subconscious from the 50's. Why otherwise intelligent people don't realize this is just BS government PR is beyond me. In any case, China is hardly communist in the Marx sense anyway - it is really a socialist state with increasing privatization. In some ways, it is even more capitalistic than the West. China describes its system as "socialism with Chinese characteristics", and I think that is pretty accurate.
BTW, China is NOT anti-Internet. China provides free (28.8 dial-up) internet access to their citizens. As of 10/2002, there are about 40 million internet users in China, growing at about 3%/month (from http://www.stats.gov.cn).
HanzoSan, I suspect this is just flamebait, because the differences obvious. Set down the crack pipe for a moment and listen up:
The RIAA, MPAA are not government entities. they are private organizations. they are composed of citizens.
The people they have problems with (those illegally pirating music and movies) are also citizens.
One of the functions of government is to preserve the rights of its citizens. In this example we have a struggle between the rights of different citizens. On the one had we have Hilary Rosen and crew, who, under our current scheme of fostering content creation, have the sole right to distribute the music and movies they create. On the other hand, we have the fair use rights of consumers, who must be allowed sufficient flexibility to enjoy their purchased content however they see fit.
There's this famous quote by one of the founding fathers of this country (I forget who) "the right for you to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". Analogously, we need to pass laws that allow both parties sufficient room to swing their fists while still outlawing the hitting of noses.
Now, in this case, I completely agree that the laws (DMCA) are too much in favor of the content creators and do not preserve the rights of consumers enough. I not only hold this view, but I have acted on it on many occasions though letters to politicians and donations to related groups.
This is not "the USA [censoring] in the name of Capitalism" at all. It is the USA passing laws that try to balance the rights of its citizens.
Our leaders are NOT censoring negative information about them. There is no firewall that separates americans from unamerican content on the internet. Criticism of american policy and laws is everywhere and legal. No one goes to prison for such criticism.
Are some powerful citizens in our society weilding that power to further their aims? yes. does that piss me off? yes. Is this somehow the governemnt controlling what we see and hear? no.