Google has acknowledged that the Chinese government asked it to disable a search feature with the goal of censoring pornography, but it still won't say whether the government ordered tighter censorship around the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The New York Times reported Friday that Chinese government officials ordered Google to remove the search feature--known as Google Suggest--that displays related search terms based on the original query typed into the search bar or face unspecified punishment. Apparently some queries brought up related results with suggestive implications, leading to criticism from China's state-run media and government officials prior to Friday's move.
Google has long faced a difficult dilemma in China, reconciling the Chinese government's insistence that Internet companies censor their products with the company's desire to improve the world's access to information; not to mention the demands of shareholders for profits.
But despite acknowledging direct government intervention over pornography, Google is still unwilling to say whether or not the Chinese government ordered a temporary muzzle on its search engine around June 4, the 20th anniversary of the Chinese government's violent crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square.
For several days, Google.cn blocked all results for searches on Tiananmen Square, including ones that were entirely unrelated to the events of that day in 1989. Those results, such as travel-related sites, were restored last week.
In this case, however, Google was quite willing to state that it met with Chinese government officials to "discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foreign language searches," a Google representative said in a statement.
The company is also putting some serious effort into making sure it complies with China's antipornography drive. "We are undertaking a thorough review of our service and taking all necessary steps to fix any problems with our results. This has been a substantial engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed the large majority of the problem results," Google said.
Just in case those efforts don't work, China still plans to require PC companies to install desktop monitoring software later this year, according to a separate report in The New York Times debunking claims earlier in the week that China was reconsidering the requirement in the wake of security problems with its Green Dam software.
On June 4, 2009, Google.cn blocked all searches for "Tiananmen Square," even ones not related to the massacre that took place on that date in 1989. It refuses to say why.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)
Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three years after entering the Middle Kingdom, the search company still finds itself in an uncomfortable working relationship with government censors.
For about eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked all results that might come from searches for Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Not just politically sensitive results, not just historical accounts of the hundreds of deaths on June 4, 1989, but every single result--including directions to the square--with an error message that read "Search results can not be displayed as they may contain contents that do not comply to related laws and policy."
As of Thursday, things had appeared to return to normal. A search for "Tiananmen Square" in either English or Chinese brought up links to shops in the area, historical documents about one of China's most storied places, and images of fun, happy times in downtown Beijing.
So how did Google know that it was supposed to drop the hammer on all results for Tiananmen Square for that brief period of time? And how did it know that it was once again safe to reapply the limited filter?
Google isn't saying, beyond pointing to previous interviews and statements it has given on its tricky balancing act in China. "Google.cn complies with Chinese laws. The differences in search results over time in China are the result of a variety of factors, including the content that is available on the Internet and the regulations we follow in China," the company said in a statement last week.
But it has confirmed that Google has dropped a previous method of determining how to self-censor its search results--pinging the so-called Great Firewall of China to see what sites are blocked--in favor of a new self-censorship method that the company refuses to disclose.
Difficult choices
Google's formal entry into China in 2006 with Google.cn forced the company to strike a difficult balance between its stated goal of making the world's information widely available and the requirement that all Internet companies doing business in China adhere to government regulations regarding censorship.
In some ways, Google has improved the flow of information in China. Upon entering the market, it made sure to include a disclaimer like the one above alongside search results for sensitive queries, something even Baidu does now. That decision allowed Chinese Internet searchers to know they weren't getting the full extent of what was available on the Internet for a given query.
In addition, a study published by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab in June 2008 found that Google is actually the least censored search engine in China. Google is the second-most widely used search engine in China, behind Baidu.
In the past, company executives have justified Google's censored presence in China with a glass-three-quarters-full analogy: it's better to offer Chinese Internet users access to a wealth of information they might be otherwise unable to find at the expense of "pulling a few books out of the library," so to speak. They are also, of course, unwilling to miss out on perhaps the greatest Internet land rush of the 21st century as China's massive population continues to come online.
However, determining which books to leave and which books to pull is not an easy task. Google representatives over the past week pointed repeatedly to an article in "The New York Times" from 2006 that described Google's methodology for making those tough choices.
From the article:
Brin's team had one more challenge to confront: how to determine which sites to block? The Chinese government wouldn't give them a list. So Google's engineers hit on a high-tech solution. They set up a computer inside China and programmed it to try to access Web sites outside the country, one after another. If a site was blocked by the firewall, it meant the government regarded it as illicit -- so it became part of Google's blacklist.
That system is no longer in place, Google representatives confirmed. Despite repeated inquiries, no information was made available about the new system: whether it involves taking direct cues from the government, self-selection by Google engineers, or something else.
In a way, Google's reluctance to talk about censorship and China is understandable. The Chinese government's regulations seem to be written in a deliberately vague way as to encourage Internet companies to censor more than the government would actually like to see pulled from the Internet.
In 2006, CNET's Declan McCullagh noted that Google.cn censored far more search results than seemed necessary, which was proven when Google restored access to Web sites like Budweiser.com following the article, with no apparent repercussions from the Chinese government.
The Times article from 2006 also noted the existence of weekly meetings between government officials and Internet companies known as the "wind-blowing" meetings; as in, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in China, you need a bureaucrat. During those meetings, government officials would discuss upcoming events and hint at the ones they'd prefer to go unnoticed, according to the article.
Relevance lost
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, it seems several such meetings took place. Web sites across China were forced to shut down for a brief period of time in the days surrounding June 4, which many of them sarcastically dubbed "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day."
Unlike Twitter, Google's YouTube, and Wordpress, Google.cn was not shut down during the days surrounding the anniversary. But it was certainly far more stingy with search results than it was before the first week of June, or at present.
Whatever filter Google is using is both flexible and imprecise. Searches for obvious terms like "Tiananmen Square" and "Tank Man" returned no results between approximately June 3 and June 10, but as of last Thursday once again returned generic results unrelated to the events of June 4, 1989.
However, during "Chinese Internet Maintenance Week," searches on Google.cn for "June 4 incident" (the Chinese term for the events of June 4, 1989), "Goddess of Democracy" and "Tiananmen Square massacre," all returned results that one might think would be frowned upon by the Chinese government, including images of the Goddess of Democracy--a Statue of Liberty-like figure constructed by student protesters--staring defiantly at a portrait of Chairman Mao above the Tiananmen Gate.
Google's new filtering method allows Google.cn searches in English to produce results the government might not like. The same search in Chinese does not lead to Wikipedia.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)And during that week, a search for "June 4 incident" on Google.cn actually returned (and still does return) links pointing to Wikipedia's article on the subject as well as a YouTube video with bloody images of the government's crackdown on student protesters in the top two positions. A search for that term in Chinese returns what appears to be censored results with the "According to local laws and regulations and policies, some search results are not displayed" disclaimer.
Perhaps that's why the Chinese government has announced plans to require all PCs sold in the country to have filtering software preinstalled that would block Web sites and even monitor keystrokes in word-processing applications. Whatever new filtering method Google has chosen, it may not be enough to satisfy the government's desire to keep certain topics out of the public eye.
Google has justified its presence in China as part of its lofty mission; this is a company that really does think it's engaged in business to better the world. But doing business in China while maintaining the moral high ground could well be more difficult than digitizing all the world's information.
The Iranian government is trying to control the flow of information among protesters of the supposed results of that nation's presidential election, and to and from news organizations.
But, reports CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg, Tehran is having difficulty stopping citizens from using technology to report what's happening, express outrage and get people out to opposition rallies.
There are reports citizens in Tehran have no access to text messaging via cell phones, and opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's Web site has been down.
But Sieberg combed Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and photo-sharing site Flickr, and found that those opposing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refusing to be silenced.
"Against all odds," says Sieberg, "they're taking their voices to the Internet and seem to be announcing, 'The revolution will be blogged." '
"Shame on them that they think they can fool us," said one post. "Where's my vote? Really, where's my vote?" asked another.
Moments after Ahmadinejad declared victory in Iran, protestors flooded the streets of the capital.
They'd mobilized using the latest digital technology on Twitter and Facebook, Sieberg points out, while adding that there is still "no definitive way to verify the authenticity or accuracy of these reports."
"On the street level," says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, "people are asking themselves, 'What's going on. What does the candidate want us to do?' Well, you go to Facebook and you check what is the latest status line of your candidate, and from there they could find out what was actually taking place."
Twitter lit up with posts like this at 8:32 a.m. local time Saturday: "Reports of gun shots in Fatemi Square."
Even with many Web sites down, says Sieberg, supporters of Mousavi found a way to send this tweet at 3:44 p.m. Saturday: "All Internet and mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout 'Alaho Akbar' in protest."
"It's a tremendously skillful, talented, and Internet-savvy population in Iran," Parsi observed.
Protest videos and photos appeared on YouTube and Flickr.
Mousavi backers implored followers to declare, 'Death to dictator," on Facebook at 11:38 a.m. Sunday.
The latest tweet from Mousavi supporters called for street protests today at 4 p.m. local time, roughly 20 minutes from when Sieberg's piece aired on "The Early Show."
A tweet from Monday morning, claiming to be from an Iranian student, says of Monday's planned protest, "It's worth taking the risk. We're going. I won't be able to update until I'm back. Again, thanks for your support and wish us luck."
These pages have the most up-to-date information:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mousavi1388
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Mousavi1388
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mousavi1388
Daniel Sieberg reports on technology for CBS News.
China's government plans to require all PCs sold in that country as of July 1 to be shipped with software that blocks certain Web sites, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The move, which is expected to give government censors heightened control over how China's citizens use the Internet, is intended to protect young people from "harmful" content such as pornography, according to the software's main developer.
The software, called "Green Dam-Youth Escort," would block access to banned Web sites by connecting to a regularly updated database of banned sites and block access to those addresses, according to the report. The requirement is aimed at "constructing a green, healthy, and harmonious Internet environment, and preventing harmful information on the Internet from influencing and poisoning young people," according to a May 19 Chinese government notice the newspaper cited.
The Chinese government has a reputation for restricting its citizens' access to the Internet.
Last week, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, China reportedly blocked access to Web sites like Twitter, Yahoo's Flickr, YouTube, Microsoft Hotmail, Live.com, Wordpress, Blogger, and many other social-networking sites.
Internet censorship in China took center stage last year during the Beijing Olympic Games when it was revealed that the International Olympic Committee had cut a deal to let the Chinese government block international journalist' access to sensitive Web sites, despite promises of unrestricted access.
Updated 3:15 p.m. PDT April 14 with Amazon saying the problem has been fixed and 2:15 p.m. with insider saying it was manual error by Amazon worker in France and 9:45 a.m. with background on Weev and comment from sources who say he is most likely not involved in the Amazon incident.
Amazon got blasted by gay rights groups this weekend after gay and lesbian book titles were delisted from its site. Was it an internal glitch, as Amazon claims, or is an Internet troll with a vendetta responsible?
Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith told CNET News on Monday that the "glitch" was being fixed, but declined to elaborate. (By Tuesday afternoon the problem was all fixed, she said.)
"This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection," she wrote in an e-mail statement.
"It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay and Lesbian themed titles--in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind and Body, Reproductive and Sexual Medicine, and Erotica," the statement said. "This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search."
However, a Live Journal blogger with the alias of "weev" claims he did it to cause an outrage among the gay community, which he alleges has repeatedly flagged his online ads on Craigslist as inappropriate.
"I guess my game is up! Here's a nice piece I like to call 'how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code,'" he writes on his blog.
Weev said he figured out that he could easily get the books removed from search rankings by reporting them as inappropriate through a link at the bottom of the book page. He also claims he wrote code to identify all the gay and lesbian metadata-tagged books on Amazon and grab their IDs. He then hired people outside the U.S. to register new accounts en masse to help push the books out of the system, he said.
"Now from here it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books," he wrote. "The thing about the adult reporting function of Amazon was that it was vulnerable to something called 'cross-site request forgery.' This means if I referred someone to the URL of the successful complaint, it would resister as a complaint if they were logged in. So now it is a numbers game."
Amazon's Smith dismissed the claim and insisted the error was internal. She is not alone. Several sources have questioned Weev's account, particularly given his notoriety as an Internet troll, someone who flames others in online discussions and is intentionally disruptive on the Web.
Blogger Mike Daisey, who worked in customer support and business development at Amazon from 1998 until 2001, wrote on his blog that: "Someone was editing the category systems inside of Amazon.fr, made an error, and that system is global, so it propagated everywhere. I have no insight as to anyone's nationality, or whether it was a language gap, or anything of that nature."
Smith declined to comment on Daisey's explanation.
A Seattle Post-Intelligencer article quotes an unnamed Amazon employee who confirmed the report of manual error. "Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as 'adult,'" the source told the newspaper.
Blogger Bryant Durrell said he tested out Weev's concept and doesn't believe it is legitimate, partly because of buggy code.
"Summation: nope, you didn't do that, you liar you. Nice meta-troll, though," Durrell wrote on his blog.
"The really interesting thing about the troll is that he's right even if he didn't do it. The vulnerability he describes exists anywhere you make automated decisions based on third-party input."
Among the more than 1,500 products on Amazon that have been tagged "amazonfail" are "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Brokeback Mountain."
(Credit: Amazon)
Updated at 7:15 p.m. PDT with comment from Amazon.com.
Amazon.com recently delisted from its sales ranking system gay and lesbian book titles that it deemed "adult," raising the ire of some who characterize the move as online censorship.
Author Mark R. Probst wrote on his blog Sunday that he noticed the change a few days ago:
On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: "Transgressions" by Erastes and "False Colors" by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book "The Filly." There was buzz, What's going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books?
Probst, the author of a novel with gay characters in the Old West, said he was perplexed by the move and used his status as a publisher to contact Amazon for an explanation. He said he received the following response from an Amazon Advantage service representative:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Of course, being delisted from the rankings doesn't mean that the book giant has stopped selling the title; it just means that the title won't show up with a public sales ranking or in the best-seller lists--often a factor in how shoppers make their purchases.
An Amazon representative characterized the move as a mistake but declined to elaborate.
"Essentially, there's a glitch in our system and it's being fixed," Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith told CNET News.
Certainly, one could make an argument that deranking titles with "adult" themes would make a reasonable policy for a site that attracts a wide range of the Internet population. But as demonstrated by an online petition that has already attracted more than 4,000 signatures, the policy appears to be biased against books with gay, lesbian, and transgendered characters.
Here's a sampling of books titles that the petition's backers noted are still ranked in the listing system (all notes and descriptions on the titles are supplied by the petition supporters):
• "Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds" by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
• Rosemary Rogers' "Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance)
• Kathleen Woodiwiss' "The Wolf and the Dove" (explicit heterosexual romance)
• Bertrice Smal's "Skye o'Malley," (which are all explicit heterosexual romances)
• Alan Moore's "Lost Girls" (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
The petition supporters note that the following titles with gay and lesbian themes are no longer ranked on Amazon:
• Radclyffe Hill's classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
• Mark R. Probst's YA novel "The Filly" about a young man in the wild West discovering that he's gay (gay romance, no sex);
• Charlie Cochrane's "Lessons in Love" (gay romance with no sex)
• "The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience," edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues)
• "Homophobia: A History" by Bryan Fone (nonfiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years)
The move has raised the ire of heterosexuals, including Kassia Krozser, who wrote an open letter to the online retailer:
Somehow, the brain trust of your company has decided to protect the "entire" Amazon customer base by restricting access to content that someone (who?) decided was offensive. In your zeal to protect me from myself, of course, you managed to leave content that I find singularly repulsive online (really, exploring the human condition is bad, but Mein Kampf is just fine?).As a heterosexual, happily married adult female, I am deeply offended by this decision. As a customer, I am angered enough to take my business elsewhere, and I'd like a refund on my Kindle since, despite reports that your database sweep was not complete, you have decided to limit my ability to purchase books -- from literary classics like Lady Chatterley's Lover to newesque titles like Tipping The Velvet and Running With Scissors.
It's unclear what--if any--impact this backlash will have on Amazon, but certainly many are troubled (and should be) that the bookseller is apparently trying to make certain books harder to find.
Wikipedia functionality has returned for Brits after the country's Internet watchdog reversed its decision to prevent users in that country from visiting a Wikipedia page containing an image of a naked child.
The Internet Watch Foundation had taken exception with a page dedicated to a 1976 album by rock band The Scorpions. The cover of that album--called Virgin Killer--includes the image of a prepubescent girl, which the group deemed a "potentially illegal indecent image," landing Wikipedia on the group's blacklist.
As a result, Internet service providers in the U.K. began filtering access to all pages of the online encyclopedia over the weekend.
The IWF announced in a statement Tuesday that it would reverse that decision after an appeal and presentation by the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia.
"The IWF board has today considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case, and--in the light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability--the decision has been taken to remove this Web page from our list," it said.
The group went on to acknowledge that its effort to prevent people from seeing the image actually resulted in the opposite effect, bringing more attention to the album cover worldwide.
"IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect," the watchdog group said. "We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users."
The Wikimedia Foundation applauded the Internet watchdog's "swift action," but noted that the episode emphasized the need for watchdog accountability.
"We recognize the good intentions of Internet watch groups, including their focus on blocking and discouraging illegal content," Mike Godwin, general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement. "Nevertheless, this incident underscores the need for transparency and accountability in the processes of the Internet Watch Foundation and similar bodies around the world."
I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.
No, not censorship by the Chinese.
Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.
Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.
It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.
Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o'clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?
Here's what is strange about NBC's online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream--except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.
(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.
There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.
The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)
Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: "Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation."
They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.
The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.
Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men's road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary. Here is the latest:
"The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4'11" down on Patricio Almonacid."
No, I don't think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.
No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images. It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.
And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women's handball game.
I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.
Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Olympic officials on Saturday said there was "no deal" with the Chinese government to restrict Internet access for foreign journalists covering the Beijing Games.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said during a press conference in Beijing that he is "adamant in saying there has been no deal whatsoever to accept restrictions," according to the BBC. In addition, he applauded the organization of the Summer Games, falling short of an apology following widespread public criticism that China had backtracked on assurances that members of the media would not be restricted.
Rogge did not address reports that had surfaced earlier this week that some Olympic officials had been aware of negotiations with the Chinese government. On Wednesday, IOC press chief Kevan Gosper told Reuters that committee members had cut a deal to let the Chinese government block sensitive sites.
"I regret that it now appears BOCOG (Beijing's Olympic organizers) has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during games time," Gosper had told Reuters. "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."
While China has since unblocked a number of sites, The Associated Press said that, as of Saturday morning, many sites the Chinese government disapproves of continued to be blocked, though the sites that are blocked appear to change daily.
The Chinese government and the IOC are facing ever more international scrutiny, as critics voice concerns that the country could be trying to restrict the gaze of its world audience during the upcoming Olympic Games. Besides the limited Net access, some broadcasters have complained about restricted live television shots of Tiananmen Square.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Allowing journalists access to an uncensored Internet apparently isn't on the International Olympic Committee's list of things to do before the Beijing games begin next week.
A day after journalists learned their Internet activities would be limited, a senior IOC official admitted to Reuters on Wednesday that committee members had cut a deal to let the Chinese government block sensitive Web sites, despite promises of unrestricted access.
"I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during games time," IOC press chief Kevan Gosper told Reuters, 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."
The revelation came a day after journalists learned that organizers had backtracked on earlier guarantees that journalists would have access to an uncensored Internet at the Main Press Center and athletic venues. The announcement meant that thousands of reporters working in Beijing during the next several weeks won't have access to a multitude of sites deemed embarrassing to the Chinese government, such as Amnesty International or any sites related to the crackdown in Tibet or the banned spiritual group Falun Gong.
When Chinese officials were bidding for the right to hold the games seven years ago, they assured international organizers that there would be ''complete freedom to report.'' In April, Chinese organizers told International Olympic Committee members that Internet censorship, which is routine for China's citizens, would be lifted for journalists during the games.
However, IOC members issued a clarification Tuesday, saying that Internet freedom applied only to Web sites related to ''Olympic competitions.'' Some journalists expressed frustration at the slow download rates and even voiced suspicion that it was deliberate and intended to discourage use.
Media watchdog Reporters without Borders said it was increasingly concerned that journalists would face many cases of censorship during the Olympics.
"We condemn the IOC's failure to do anything about this, and we are more skeptical about its ability to ensure that the media are able to report freely," the group said in a statement.
