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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."
Sourceforge?
MIT?
The Learning Channel?
Why do these sites need to be blocked?
Also, for Red Lobster, it's only the receipe and lobster delivery sections.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
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.
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.
They don't want their children seeing prawn.
I suspect you don't know what "understandable" means. To help you out, "understandable" means you "understand" why they did it.
geez
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This is what happened to the Censorware Project (censorware.org), for anyone wondering why the domain name has changed.
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
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Probably because of your secret connections to Red Lobster.
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From this perspective, I hope you can understand why they might find the idea of plunging a 'red' lobster into a tank of boiling water to be as offensive as any pornography our country has to offer.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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
Mirror of sites that are blocked is up at http://ra.msstate.edu/~naw4/chinafire.html sans graphics.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
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".
China blocks and censors the net? Look, in the USA we have the RIAA tracking people down, raiding colleges, shutting down file sharing networks, and censoring websites, software, music, movies, art, and everything else which they make a profit out of.
So its ok for the USA to censor in the name of Capitalism, but its bad for China to censor in the name of Communism?
I hate looking at such hypocritical stories, stop picking on China's government and fix ours. Lets talk about the fucked up DMCA, lets talk about the RIAA, lets talk about IP and the fact that none of us here have IP yet we all must sacrafice our freedom to protect something only 5% of our population owns.
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.
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From the report : "He generated this list by collecting all 797 results from Google in response to an October 2001 web search using the search criteria "free adult sex," less two pages removed because they were found not to include sexually explicit images" Wow, poor man had to check 797 sites to make sure they had pr0n. Where do you sign up to help?
And why wouldn't they?
Lobsters are commonly found in cold waters. This is symbolic of the cold war that the communists lost. Communism was founded by Marx in Vienna. Notice that Vienna is the same shape as a lobster's claw. Turn the first letter of the founder of communism's name upside down and you get a W - two V's. Just like a lobster.
In addition, when a lobster is boiled they turn red, and then are consumed - by western capitalists.
It's obvious that the communists saw through the thinly veiled allegory to the slanderous attack on their party and beliefs. The Red Lobster site is the western equivalent of 'We will bury you - in butter and lemon'.
You would have to be a fool not to see it...
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
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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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
Quick perusal of the list showed that www.ski-red.com is also blocked, as is www.redhorserecords.com. Perhaps they are blocking sites that have red as a URL component.
That is the worst pun I've seen on ./ in a long time
Making for a "+5, Funny" moderation probability of almost 100%.
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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"...whoever is moderator of Slashdot, please post an article comparing China and the USA's censorship ..."
Oh no. He has summoned the moderator John Katz.
RUN!
...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.
Filtering of taiwanese sites 'understandable'?
Never mind that you can't understand why China would block taiwanese sites.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
I don't have children, but if I did, you'd better believe I'd set up a mandatory web filter until they reached a reasonable age.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
I *do* have a proxy that blocks ads.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
I have an email spam filter.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
My browser does not display ads when they're obvious.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
I use google with the lowest level of filter (that isn't off) just to avoid the crap.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
I use killfiles when reading usenet.
Filtering is bad, PERIOD.
Finally, I imagine I'll add you to my "enemies list" (hate that term - it's just a kill file) here at slashdot.
If I drank coffee, I'd use a filter there, too. Have a nice life - look out for the grinds...
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.
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! >
No visible obstructions last time I looked
(the following is a slightly modified email that I sent to the people who did the study. I did get a response, but I will not post it since I didn't ask for permission.)
...Or perhaps to an increase of users in a particular layer of Chinese society?
******
It occured to me that this is only interesting because of the very large number of potentially affected people. If the same study was done about filtering in the country of, say, Morocco, I probably would not have bothered to read it. As such, I feel that the analysis sort of begs the question. How many people in China actually have Internet access, and what parts of the society are they in?
If only 1% of the country uses the Web on a regular basis, and 90% of those are "well to do", then the filtering has much less significance because the potential impact of Internet access is already minimalized.
(I have made the assumption that "well to do" citizens are less likely to want to modify the status quo, meaning that Web content would have minimal impact on their actions, filtered or not.)
Does an increase in filtering correalate in any way to an increase in Chinese Internet users?
******
(The gist of the response was that the study was not concerned with any implications of the filtering, just the filtering itself.)
Keep using those PERIODs as a lazy substitution for an otherwise truly poignant and resonating idea, and you'll can make every other idea the rest of us value (Freedom of Expression, Due Process, etc.) seem trite. I'm serious. Every thoughtless regurgitation of an idea wears down the effect of that idea.
...and could you moderators please raise your standards a little?
You might as well scream, "Information wants to be Free!"
If you want to be the next Richard Stallman hardliner, you should note that Richard Stallman always puts the effort into explaining his vision rather than simply asserting it with cheap dramatics.
I'm sorry I had to be tough...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
His response made sense seeing as the original poster took the word "understandable" out of context. As a response, the word "filtering" was taken out of context. Get it? Somebody should now take something I said out of context.
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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.
His response...made ...the original poster..Yer Sex Gateway
My Sex Gateway is private, and in no way is it "understandable" for the that guy to offer himself to me like that.
Never confuse volume with power.
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
You sure do excel at taking things out of context!
OK, help me put a little context on the statement
"Filtering is bad, PERIOD."
I thought I'd covered just about all the angles. I guess the only one I left out is
"China filtering outgoing web request is bad, PERIOD"
, but I got the feeling that was not what the original author meant. Maybe I'm wrong.
It turns out that I think our speech is a little too unfettered, as well, so I'd probably disagree with that assertion too. See also cases of the French government banning/blocking/whatever Nazi sites...
Are you in politics?
No; I tend to state my mind. It also bothered me that TE's 2 line post with no seeming thought to the content was rated "Insightful".
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).
*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).