Chinese Ban on Wikipedia Prevents Research

An anonymous reader writes "China has banned access to Wikipedia for the third time, outraging students and intellectuals." From the article: "The latest blocking of the website, the third shutdown of the site in China in the past two years, has now continued for more than 10 weeks without any explanation and without any indication whether the ban is temporary or permanent ... Others said the blocking of Wikipedia has been a major blow to their research projects and even to their prospects of passing civil-service exams. 'How can I do my thesis now?' a university student asked on another Chinese website."

Comments

Back to (Tiananmen) Square One?

[eldavojohn]

I guess we wait for another Tiananmen Square to happen again. It kind of makes one wonder what exactly was accomplished in 1989 when 100,000 protesters marched in Beijing. Appearantly not much.

While the U.S. is concerned with this, maybe we should instead be concerned with that?

Either way, if you're interested in what the U.S. is concerned about, maybe you should read documents made available by the Freedom of Information Act.

What are people supposed to do if they cannot free themselves from a suppressive government? It's not worth violence to be able to read wikipedia but it's clear that non-violent protests in the past did very little.

Re:Doomed. Doomed, I tell you!

[pla]

I don't think it's really fair for you to say something like this unless you live in China and get along fine with the suppression of websites.

Do you live in the US?

Can you legally visit child porn sites (or if certain people have their way, ANY porn sites in the near future)?

Oh, but that breaks the law, you no doubt protest... Well, guess who writes the law? The government. And China has one of those as well, to write their laws.

But perhaps you'd prefer a more "fair" comparison? Okay...

Can you go download Grokster? Visit I2Hub? LokiTorrent? Run the original Napster client (successfully)?

All societies have taboos, and all societies believe that those taboos protect either all of society or the target of the taboo. Sometimes that holds true, and sometimes it does not.

In the US, we believe in practically ANYTHING justified by "for the kids". We believe corporate profit and domestic security trump personal freedoms. We believe we have quite a lot of rights that the courts regularly laugh out of court.

China believes certain religious, political, and economic philosophies constitute a grave danger to their society. And actually, they have that correct, in that at least on the political and economic front, those banned ideas will eventually destroy their existing government. But if you replace "democracy" with "theocracy", "Falun Gong" with "Radical Islam", and "capitalism" with "socialism", can Americans really claim themselves as so much more enlightened?

Re:Doomed. Doomed, I tell you!

[misleb]

Is any of it due to government cencorship?
No.

Of course it is. The government censors child pornography. You can't view it, you can't dispplay it, you can't trade it. What else would you call this besides censorship?

Please be careful distinguishing government intervention and bulk censorship (as opposed to personal responsibility) .

So if it isn't done "bulk," it isn't censorship? What about broadcast TV, isn't that censored? Don't the networks have to pass their material by censors before they can put it on the air? Should we change their job title because you are uncomfortable with the fact that the US government employs censorship to some degree? You might argue that the networks hire their own censors, but what rules do you think the censors go by... the FCC, right?

with perfectly sane laws quite endorsed by the society

From what I understand, "bulk" censorship is quite endorsed by the majority of the Chinese population. Just as censorship of child pornography is quite endorsed by the majority of the US population.

Is it legal to commit murder? No
Is it legal to threaten with murder? No
Is it legal to think about murder? Yes

Cencorship begins only when that last question has to be answered with a "no".

Hardly. Even the Chinese are allowed to think about the things that are censored. They might be oppressed, but they don't quite have thought police yet.

-matthew