Reports: TypePad unblocked in China

Various TypePad-hosted bloggers are rejoicing as their blogs become visible again in China.

As with any such event, we're not sure how long this will last, and we're not sure why it happened. Tim Johnson, a McClatchy Newspapers correspondent based in China, writes:

I'm celebrating, of sorts. For the first time in maybe a year, this blog and others on the typepad.com host can now be seen within China. They are no longer blocked.

Why did the blocking suddenly end? I have no idea. Someone just flicked a switch.

The last sentence gave me an idea. What are the odds that, literally, somewhere, someone used their finger to, say, remove a fly who was sitting atop one of the routers or switches that make up the Chinese internet blocking infrastructure. And what if that caused a defect in stored data, erased some buffer, anyway just sort of fudged things up in the right way to let loose TypePad for the masses.

Just a thought.

[mrglsmrc]

i like your thought about the fly on the router; it reminds me of the beginning of the terry gilliam movie 'brazil,' but in a good way. let's hope that the chinese leaders think their government is robust enough to survive and tolerate the opinions of a few bloggers, maybe even be improved by those opinions. but it's too early to bet the farm on that.