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China Blocks Typepad, Prompts Weblog Blackout
dcm writes "As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet, democratic dialogue, religious expression,' the regime continues to block discourse.On Friday, China began blocking access to Typepad, a paid weblog hosting service in San Mateo, California. The communist regime previously blocked access to BlogSpot, Blogger's free hosting site. Yan Sham-Shackleton filed a report on the Glutter weblog, mentioning China is '...now using blocking software to stop information from leaking into the county via personal sites, an increasingly vibrant China Internet community, and a place where users are slipping in banned information. Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident.'"
However, it's very trivial to firewall out specific sites so long as you have control of all paths between the user and the site. The Chinese have such firewalls installed at every ISP that leaves the country.
They can send their info to some FTP server and their US friends can copy it to Typepad. If FTP gets blocked, there's always e-mail.. and if I recall (can't find the link) there was actually a service that you could e-mail your FTP requests to. (wow, wish I could find that again, it was a list of about a zillion different services which were e-mail enabled)
It is blocked by the main routers the government owns, which route all internet traffic. It simply checks the TCP header for the destination IP address, if it is bound for a blocked subnet, the packet is dropped.
How to get around it, well the CIA didn't like those commi's blocking information, so they set up Anonymizer ( www.anonymizer.com ) that would allow a type of encrypted proxy so you could get around that. CoDC also set up some sort of browser that could get around it, but I didn't really investigate it much (Same guys who made Back-Oriface)..
Mod +5 Drunk
This is in no way related to the FCC. The FCC is just doing the job they were assigned to do. Because of the media involvement as of late, they have to be a little more strict, else lose all respect in the industry.
In America, we can show nudity, have "foul" language, and just about anything else on TV. Just not Frequency Broadcasted television. Do you have HBO? There is a clear moral difference. I am not saying I completely agree with what is going on, but I do feel this has absolutely nothing to do with the chinese government banning information from the public.
If you want to see tits, turn on cinemax and hbo, if you want access to pertinent information, don't live in china.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
And it becomes obvious why cryptography is so important...
http://www.t0.or.at/crypto/crossbow.htm
I thoroughly recommend you read Plato's 'The Republic' - not a hard read but a concise critic of democracy and its pitfalls.
96 years back the Manchu dynasty met its end. Maintaining her grip on power, the Empress Dowager effectively killed the dynasty, herself, with the execution of Kuang Hsu (so he couldn't take the throne upon her death, after she kept him imprisoned most of his life.) There are parallels. Their goals may be at opposite ends, but the methods of achieving those goals are greatly similar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Compare that to configuring a public computer so that it won't show porn to children... I'm afraid I don't see your point of view.
But they're not just blocking porn. They're using software with "encrypted" databases that have been proven to block more than just porn. People are prevented from decrypting these filtering programs by the government thanks to the DMCA. This is an end run around censorship laws, though I will grant that it doesn't give the government the power they want to block all opposing viewpoints. Only those companies who have an agenda, or are just plain lazy and wildcard anatomical references or strong language.
I suppose that the libraries can just develop their own software, but where's the money going to come from?
Here come da fudge!
The breadth of censored content there is simply amazing.
"Because, as Plato pointed out over 2000 years ago, democracy is a dangerous thing."
I really don't care to take pointers on democracy from a guy that's been dead for 2 millenia AT HIS OWN HAND because his government told him to drink the kool-aid. Gimme a break.
And I don't care to take pointers on anything from a guy who doesn't know the difference between Plato and Socrates.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
It does look good on paper. It also works in practice, assuming that there aren't many idiots like you. It is not a game, do not apply a strategy to it. Preferring Bush as a 2nd choice, but ranking him 4th leads to results like these, so in essence, all you have demonstrated is that you do not know how to vote for the candidates you prefer.
Maybe you'd like to tell us how to insert the peg in both holes, so that your ballot is ambiguous?
And I would like to share a few things to anyone who is interested:
... US allies ... )
First of all: China is changing a such a rapid pace that no Cisco routers that are used to block a couple websites will have any major impact.
We are talking of about 100 million people rapidly moving up the social ladder. The communist party just aknowledged that they have to do something about the rest (more than 900 million btw), many of them on the way trying to get on board with the first group.
That said I would like to share some insight into history. Even though we know oppresive regimes are bad and the usual American only pokes at Communism with a 9 foot pole the regime served the majority of the Chinese people pretty well in the past 40-50 years. The cultural revolution was a major setback and the party says it was very wrong. Apart from that they had some great success at poverty reduction during the 70s and 80s.
Compare that to what You know about India, which has had a stable democracy during most of that time or South America which has been under US influence since the infamous "Teddy".
IMHO India lags behind China on the rights of the woman (in practial terms, theoratically all Communist coutries should be heaven for women, which never was) over all for example. I am sure You will find more.
At the moment the US govt. is using the "human rights tool" to apply pressure to China on the international diplomatic level. You know it, they know it and everyone else knows it too. (Saudi Arabia and human rights
Still we have an issue with free speech in China, since a corrupt govt. that has nothing left to justify its hold on power (they promote market economics for heavens sake) is trying to keep the country out of major shakeups. Remember what happened to Russia after the change? Live expectency is still going down there. Anyways, there are people in the party that try to move towards democracy, but that is not easy and they don't want civil war.
That said the most important problems that China is facing at the moment are corruption and trying not to loose the 900 million people on the way to wealth and prosperity. That is what the party is saying. IMHO the biggest problem is for the officials to stay on top of this huge moving mass that China represents at the moment. And it is gaining speed.
Exactly because of that the central government is trying to promote free speech to get more accurate reports from the various parts of China, since the official channels are slow and always change facts around so the local govt. looks good.
I'm skeptical, so let's do a scientific test.
Rather than a straw-man test, why not paint up a placcard that says something like "Bush Sucks" or "Get US out of Iraq" and visit one of his campaign stops.
They have these nice little lots, well away from where the president is actually speaking for protesters. That, my dear friend, is a limitation of free speech. Bush said, years ago, that "there ought to be limits to freedom."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So like someone up there said... "looks good on a chalkboard, but doesn't pan out in reality."
Anyway, to bring this back on topic, last week's Economist (don't be put off by the title, grasshopper) had a great survey of Chinese politics, culture and business. A fun read and enlightening, too.
Actually, it is an acknowledged fact by communists that a period of tolitarianism is required to usher in the 'Golden Age of Communism.' Unfortunately, totalitarians usually do not wish to give up their power easily, and the whole deck of cards collapses.
1. Should we intervene? That is, are the Xites being really, really offensive?
2. Can we intervene? That is, does X have a massive nuclear arsenal? (Note: China does, Iraq didn't but wanted one)
3. Is our interest being served? That is, does attacking X serve national strategic goals? Does X have it in for us in some way?
Your mileage may vary on how to answer these questions for Iraq and China, but my readings suggest that the US executive branch does think this way.
In a Platonic world of Good Smiting Evil, question #1 and #2 would be the only ones considered. But in our world question #3 must also be considered. Note also that the extent to which #3 outweighs #1 is the distance we are into the Gray Area (tm).
And your point? We could build the world's largest dam if we were so inclined -- but most dam building in the United States was stopped due to the environmental damage that it causes. Have you read about some of the health and environmental impacts of the Three Gorges dam? It's an impressive engineering feat to be sure but nothing I'd want in my backyard. How many species will be wiped out by this monstrosity? How many people will be displaced?
Is that really something that China should be proud of?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
<sarcasm>Yeah cuz the multinationals and Government types don't have any control over the airwaves. If we can just get the net off the wire controlled by the evil corporations it will truly be free of outside control!</sarcasm>
You can put the tin-foil hat away now. Depending on who you ask your viewpoint is either paranoid (what corporate control?) or justified but we can't do anything about it anyway (for the aforementioned reason of Government control of the airwaves).
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Hello there, I am a Canadian and I'm now in China teaching English and doing some freelance web development. I've been in China (Shanghai) for about 9 months now and to be honest it is VERY rare that I can't access any particuliar website. I remember just when I got here I did have some problems with a very few sites but then they seemed to have really cooled down lately about it since now these sites are easily accessible. Same thing with Google, they un-blocked it long time ago. I just tried both of the supposedly blocked websites (blogger and typepad) and I have absolutely no problem accessing these sites. I don't know where this information came from but they surely didn't block it for me! ;)
I'm also pretty amazed by how easy and cheap it is to go online here (compared to Canada). I'm on a very fast cable connection, with no restrictions or quotas at all, and I pay about US 14$ (splitted between me and my flatmate). In Canada I have to pay over CDN 35$ for a cable connection that gives me like 6 gig max of downloads and a crappy 15k/s upload speed limit...
Anyways I just thought I should share that information with you guys as I feel sometimes we westerners tend to bitch a lot about China and its government without really seeing how things really are in the real world. China is under very heavy and fast transformations right now, as much economically than socially, and I think Shanghai is probably the best place to actually see that LIVE in front of your eyes. Shanghai is definately opening up to the world and its a pretty cool and fun place to live in (and party!) nowadays. You should see how fast skyscrapers are growing like mushrooms around here, it's quite unbelievable. And I haven't said anything about the amazing transportation system and its modern facilities... I still can't believe they can put these flat LCDs and huge plasma screens about every 5 meters in the metro, when I can't even afford one of those myself (Grr). Oh btw, I saw those terminals reboot once or twice, and yes it runs under Linux ;) The cultural changes are there as well, as the younger generations seem not to differ as much as westerners anymore... But at the same time it's a bit of a shame cuz with McDonalds and KFC invading China (There's a famous street in Shanghai, Nanjing rd. where there is a McDonald's or KFC about every 100 meters!) I see SO many very FAT youngsters, which is something almost impossible to see amongst the 20+ and older generations... Too bad, I guess the amazing fact that chinese woman are all very thin and healthy looking will be something of the past and to remember... sigh! ;)
There's a lot more to say but oh well, that was just my 2 cents about China...
Several minutes ago a friend of mine was asking me the IP address of slashdot.org via IM. His DNS is no longer resolving slashdot.org! All of these happened just now. Looks like you folks are talking about something that Chairman Hu don't like their people to hear...
Yeah, what toogreen said -- I'm sitting in a school in Shandong at the moment and could access both "blocked" sites without a problem. I've had nary a problem with accessing sites, except for the frequently-down local DNS.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'