IOC Admits Internet Censorship Deal With China

Dave writes "BEIJING (Reuters) — Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday. Persistent pollution fears and China's concerns about security in Tibet also remained problems for organizers nine days before the Games begin. China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked. 'I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time,' IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said, referring to Beijing's Olympic organizers. 'I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related,' he said." But yet somehow the mainstream media will ignore this because the Olympics are patriotic or something.

Comments

No problem

[Yer Mum]

Browse through a VPN to company HQ.

Or are VPNs banned too?

Mainstream media is covering it.

[randyest]

But yet somehow the mainstream media will ignore this because the Olympics are patriotic or something.

Huh? I find more than a thousand stories about this and I saw it mentioned on CNN last night. What's your definition of "mainstream?"

What can they really do?

[JSBiff]

The only *power* the Olympic Committee has, at this point, at least I think, would be to *cancel* the Olympics. What other power do they have over China at this point? It's not like the IOC can impose sanctions on China, can it?

Re:What can they really do?

[ScentCone]

What other power do they have over China at this point? It's not like the IOC can impose sanctions on China, can it?

Of course they have power. They can rule that China's athletes cannot compete in the games. They made exactly such a politics-based ruling against the 7-person team from Iraq just last week. They've since changed their minds, and now TWO athletes from Iraq will be allowed to compete. The IOC's membership is aggressively anti-American (which is funny, considering that the largest share of the money from games-sponsoring and IOC-funding companies comes from the US), and play all sorts of games like this at the committee level. Police states like China get no grief from the IOC, but the US has no voting seat on the IOC's executive committee. In the same meeting during which the IOC decided to kill off baseball and softball from the games two years ago, the US was voted off of the executive committee. The IOC's president, in Belgium, appears not to have minded Iraq's previous Olympic committee chair (Uday Hussein, who had athletes beaten - and worse - for not winning games), but considers the fragile new Iraqi government too shaky, and too supported by the US, to put forth a team to his liking ... though North Korea, of course, is fine, and countries like China which actively lie about their ICO-related policies in order to get the games in their country can just hum along and get what they want.

Since China is being caught having lied about a central issue around which their obtaining of the games was focused, it seems appropriate for the IOC to threaten ruling out their own national team's participation. I can't think of a single better use of the IOC's capricious authority, but it would at least hit China where it hurts, and show the world that messing with reporters' use of the internet is typical policy there - and in direct contradiction to China's contingent-upon-getting-the-games promise of exactly the opposite.

Re:What can they really do?

[MightyMartian]

South Africa was banned from the Olympics for over twenty years because of Apartheid. Mind you, back then, it's unlikely that the IOC would have picked Johannesburg as a host city.

Everyone knew this was going to happen. They knew the Butchers of Beijing weren't going to truly open things up.

or they could ignore it

[phantomfive]

But yet somehow the mainstream media will ignore this because the Olympics are patriotic or something.

Or it could be they will ignore it because everyone already knows China censors. The exact details of the matter are probably not interesting, and most likely don't matter. I mean, really, what did you expect? Did you expect China to give unfettered access to the internet? If everyone knows what's going to happen, it's really not news. News is for......new stuff, not protesting your favorite injustice.

Re:Only one thing left to do..

[A beautiful mind]

I'm boycotting the olympics but not primarily because of China. The whole overcommercialized, performance enhancing drug fueled, censorship and copyright problem ridden thing disgusts me to the core. It is the polar opposite of what the olympic spirit was.

I'm automatically excluding every brand on my purchase list as long as they feature ads in the Olympics theme or sponsor the Olympics.

Re:Why...

[makomk]

What horrible record on Israel/Palestine? They actually dare to criticise the Israeli government and army? I know most of Zionists (and probably an alarmingly large proportion of the normal Jewish population too) consider any criticism the same as anti-Semitism, but Israel's record is far from spotless. (It'd probably be even worse if it wasn't for Israeli human rights groups trying to keep them in check.)

No.....

[Moryath]

I think their criticisms of the Israeli government/army are overblown, but they're certainly not the rabid "apartheid states" lunatics you get elsewhere.

Where I find fault with AI is their failure to likewise criticize the Palestinian groups - for the ill treatment of their own gay population, for deplorable treatment of prisoners and criminals in their jails, for deliberately using civilians as shields (in violation of the Geneva Conventions), for indoctrinating children and dressing them up as military, for the use of tactics to deliberately hide arms and disguise soldiers as civilians (again in violation of the Geneva Conventions), for attacking humanitarian convoys and stealing the food and supplies meant for civilians and using them for the military instead, for assassinating foreign diplomats, for routinely forcing hostages to make propaganda statements and then murdering them, and so on...

Re:Well Said!

[demachina]

If there is any dirt to be broadcast on Obama I'm sure Fox and Rush are broadcasting it so its not like there is any sweeping conspiracy that will keep it all secret. Its still common for Fox anchors to intentionally confuse Obama's name with Osama Bin Laden and imply he is secretly a Muslim terrorist infiltrating the government as some Al Qaeda plot. Media bias cuts both ways now, get over it.

Maybe part of the problem is this country desperately needs a new President that doesn't suck as bad as the current one, and then we run in to the problem that all politicians suck, especially these days. Unfortunately power corrupts, politicians are practitioners of power, so they all tend to be somewhere between a little or very corrupt. We are just extremely aware of it these days thanks to the internet and saturation media coverage of campaigns and candidates.

If the media destroys them all we will basically be left with no one qualified running the country, kind of like the situation we've had for the last 8 years.

I should point out George W. got his fortune from a sweetheart deal with his dads rich friends, who gave him a giant cut of the Texas Rangers, which he later cashed out at a huge profit with almost no risk on his part. There is also the fact he was busted for cocaine possession in Texas though his connections kept him out of a felony conviction that would have killed his political career. And of course its a near certainty he for all practical purposes deserted the National Guard which his family connections got him in to ahead of others to keep him out of Vietnam. He may have bailed on the Guard because the Guard started testing for Cocaine, which he was using, and didn't want to get caught. He didn't even fulfill the very modest requirements of his guard service and got a free pass and again his connections managed to destroy all the incriminating records. None of this stopped him from becoming President so where was the liberal media bias from 1999 through 2004. Rather was the only one he tried to make an issue out of it and he was destroyed. Why did the "liberal" media behead one of their own if there was a grand liberal conspiracy.

McCain isn't exactly better. You may forget but he was one of the "Keating Five" and was knee deep in the corruption of the Savings and Loan scandals in the 1980's and was doing favors for Keating who was one of the most famous and corrupt execs in the S&L scandal.

We could switch to Hillary though she has shady dealings on Whitewater, the Rose law firm, missing records and host of other scandals from the Clinton presidency none of which quite stuck but didn't go away either.

So I suspect the "media bias" you see these days is the "liberal" media is biting the bullet and embracing Obama because there just isn't anyone better. At least he is very smart, charismatic, a good speaker and is a complete change from the disaster of the last eight years. I think at this point a lot of the liberal media, and a whole lot of the rest of America just wants the Republican gone, and Obama is the man for better or worse. The Republican have no one but themselves to blame, since they had it all, until their hubrus, arrogance, corruption and incompetence completely burned their bridges with the American people.

If we keep playing the gotcha politics you are going to end up with someone with a squeaky clean record but who is totally incompetent, or like the last eight years someone who is incompetent and still corrupt like Bush.