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China Reinstates Wikipedia Ban

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that-was-depressingly-quick dept.

Rob T Firefly writes "The International Herald Tribute reports that the lifting of China's Wikipedia ban earlier this week was short-lived. Wikipedia is once again inaccessible from behind the Great Firewall, along with all other Wikimedia projects. Additionally, the URL of Chinese Wikipedia is once again a banned search term. No reason has yet been given for any of it." From the article: "It wasn't immediately clear if Wikipedia was inaccessible due to technical glitches or because government censors had blocked the site again. The Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Information Industry did not immediately respond when contacted for comment Friday. Beijing blocked access to the English and Chinese versions of Wikipedia in October last year, apparently out of concern about entries touching on the country's sensitive spots -- Tibet, Taiwan and other topics."

5 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Reflects the Politics in Beijing by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Informative

    In Beijing you have the conservatives and the hard-line conservatives duking it out for control. When policy changes it's because one side has momentarily gained the upper hand, or believed they had, and ordered the change.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Reflects the Politics in Beijing by anaesthetica · · Score: 4, Informative
      I might be able to believe that if Wikipedia was accessible for a month or two, but a major blocking policy like this changing over a few days seems a bit insane.

      This pattern of behavior was played out on a much larger scale early on in PRC history: the Hundred Flowers Campaign followed by the Anti-Rightist Movement. The pattern is: open up and seemingly liberalize communications for a brief period; then, once everyone who criticizes the government identifies themselves, you go clean them up. Pretty straightforward.

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      The Rise and Fall of Online Community
  2. Accordign to Google..... by 8127972 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They haven't blocked it:

    http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid =57869 (posted at 2:18 PM EST)
    http://www.toptechnews.com/news/China-Abandons-Wik ipedia-Censorship/story.xhtml?story_id=101009A5G2I Q (posted at 12:19 PM EST)

    I don't know if I entirely believe it, but that's another story....

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    This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
  3. Re:Searching vs typing in URL? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to Wikinews, searching from within China on any non-Chinese search engine (including the English-language Google, Yahoo, and MSN you know and/or love) for the string "zh.wikipedia.org" will apparently get you banned from viewing that search engine for several minutes. I imagine this is to stop people finding references to the blocked site and discussions of its' blocking (like we are now) just as much as it is to discourage people using things like Google's cache to see the blocked material.

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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  4. Run TOR by Mantus · · Score: 5, Informative

    TOR helps people in oppressive countries freely access information and it needs to grow.
    http://tor.eff.org/