censorship

Members of a hepatitis B support group in China, numbering about 300,000, lost their online forum in a Chinese crackdown on civil society. Now some say they may be forced into taking drastic measures, even during the Olympics.

In an unusually prominent threat of collective action in China, Lu Jun, who ran a recently blocked site for carriers of hepatitis B, said some disgruntled members may be planning protests during the Olympics, according to the Financial Times:

Mr. Lu, who heads a rights group that has helped carriers sue companies such as IBM and Foxconn for discrimination, said the … Read more

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta, said he never anticipated router-level information restrictions and said he's concerned.

"I had never appreciated that governments would see the internet as so important that they would begin to block it at the router level, so I worry about that," Schmidt said.

Schmidt did not name specific countries, but the type of blocking, including that of Google's YouTube, applies directly to China. He also said that Google talks to governments about what they're blocking and tries to convince them that offending … Read more

As of right now in a Beijing bar and restaurant, Anonymouse.org is inaccessible. It returns the "connection reset" message that is a hallmark of most Chinese internet controls.

Anonymouse is one of the most commonly used tools among my friends for accessing websites blocked in China. Its limitations, including inability to load complex web pages, i.e. those using javascript or streaming video, led me to seek out other options, but Anonymouse has been an important tool for many.

One alternative, proxy4china.com, does a better job dealing with complex pages, and is working again after a … Read more

WASHINGTON--Senators on Tuesday pressed executives from Yahoo, Google, and Cisco Systems to justify their business practices in China and other Internet-censoring countries, with Cisco in the hot seat over new allegations of cozier-than-confessed ties with the Chinese police.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who led the morning hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee's human rights panel, said he is actively considering whether to draft new legislation that, similar to a pending House of Representatives proposal, would place a host of new restrictions on American companies doing business in Internet-restricting countries.

Durbin said he appreciates the efforts of American companies to … Read more

Blogspot is gone again from here in Beijing and also according to Ullrich in Shanghai via Twitter. As the last time it went out, a traceroute stops on a Chinese ISP server.

This image is from last time, but I'm seeing similar readings, with the blocking server this time as 219.158.5.118.

The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracking site, has launched a blogging service where bloggers won't have to fear censorship, according to TorrentFreak.

The new blogging site, dubbed BayWords, is powered by Wordpress and will eventually make money off ads.

The Pirate Bay already has an uncensored image-hosting site call BayIMG and has confirmed it is working on an uncensored video-hosting site.

Brokep, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, told blog TorrentFreak that the group decided to launch BayWords after a friend's Wordpress blog was removed for linking to copyrighted material.

"Many blogs are being … Read more

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's foundation received an undisclosed sum in exchange for his keynote address at an event held by Alibaba, the Chinese internet company that controls China Yahoo* and has been accused of aiding China's crackdown in Tibet.

Some activists are trying to tie this money to Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying it conflicts with her statements on China. In addition to claiming she "stood up to" China's government in a speech while Bill was president, she has said President George W. Bush should not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic … Read more

From my connection in Beijing, Blogspot has again gone offline. The transmission stops on a Chinese ISP server.

I was able to get through using proxies. Anyone else, or is this just me? Blogspot had reemerged two weeks ago after years being blocked almost continuously.

Does posting censorship workarounds help the censors? That's the question I've been mulling for the last few days. I asked for your comments, and the verdict is in: Almost no one thinks we should keep these tricks to ourselves. I agree.

I started grappling with this question after I posted a now-defunct workaround for Mainlanders to access the still-blocked Chinese language Wikipedia. After a commenter posted the link on Sinobyte, I featured the link in the post. Then the commenter, Ted Chien, wrote me concerned that having the workaround posted would lead to the authorities blocking it. I … Read more