News Blog

William Long at Moonlight Blog reports that YouTube is again accessible from his connection in China.

I'm in Osaka, Japan, but a friend in Beijing, who prefers to be identified as "Hot Mama in Beijing," confirms.

Hot Mama adds an anecdote: Last Friday, YouTube was accessible but anything related to what we called T%%% to avoid filters would return a message to the effect of, "This content is not available in your country." Though it would be relatively easy for Chinese filters to replicate this result, this may indicate some effort on YouTube/Google's part. Mama reports that YouTube soon went completely dark, until just now.

Another glitch that emerged, which may suggest some sort of Google involvement, is that when Mama was sending Gmail messages, anything containing the nonredacted T%%%, or even its first three letters, would return an error message she'd never seen, stating that there was an error while sending.

This is by no means certain to be Google involvement. Transmitting sensitive keywords may have triggered a stall that Google recognized as trouble--something Hot Mama would not have usually seen in Beijing or New England. Similarly, YouTube may have correctly interpreted the block and redirected to a human readable error page rather than the usual "reset connection."

I asked Hot Mama, who also wanted me to mention she's a truck driver (seriously), to try to access her Gmail, which had been terribly slow, using an anti-censorship micro-tactic: Instead of accessing http://mail.google.com, go for https://mail.google.com. The result was stark, she said. Everything loaded much faster. This suggests that encrypted communications are not being seriously delayed but that language filters are engaging a larger portion of traffic than usual.

The YouTube messages are still vexing. Was YouTube cooperating or was this a very smart error message? To have a Google property that's not Google China itself cooperating with Chinese censorship would be unprecedented, to my knowledge.

Protests break out in some nation around the globe and one of the first things a media-shy government does--just after sending in riot police--is pull the plug on YouTube.

The latest example is China's handling of protests in Tibet. The Chinese government has blocked access to YouTube in that country after scores of clips showing violence between police and protesters were posted to the site, according to hundreds of reports found on Google News.

On a trip to China in 2007, News.com reporter Michael Kanellos visited the offices of KU6.com, a rapidly growing video-sharing site in China. Here, KU6 workers review videos for "inappropriate" content before they can be posted.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

Scores of other media outlets have been blocked or partially blacked out in China, including broadcasts of CNN, the BBC World, and Google News. But it's YouTube that gets all the ink.

In an example of YouTube's influence, blocking access to the video-sharing site is now a sort of scarlet letter for governments. The site, which allows individuals to communicate with mass audiences, has become a symbol of free speech to many, and governments that forbid it are immediately branded around the world as repressive.

This kind of image can't be welcomed by China as it prepares to host this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing.

In its report on China's YouTube ban, The New York Times asks whether the Internet and its ability to enable individuals to communicate with large audiences can stand up to a "ruthless government."

The Web publication for British newspaper The Times wrote Monday: "YouTube has been blocked in the past, and the so-called Great Firewall of China prevents discussion of and searches for many sensitive topics, such as the Tiananmen Square protests."

The ban was reported in newspapers in a host of other countries including Russia, Turkey, Canada, and Ireland.

China is obviously no fan of user-generated content. In January, the Chinese government tried to impose a rule whereby only state-run companies could post videos to the Web. The measure was quickly altered after people began raising questions about freedom of speech.

The country's authorities routinely block sites such as Wikipedia, the BBC, and even live TV transmissions to hinder publication of stories on the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, or even stories critical of leaders or governments that China is trying to build better relationships with. Last May, while reporter Michael Kanellos watched a CNN story on Myannmar from a hotel in Beijing, the screen went blank. CNN only returned when the news station was broadcasting a different story.

The Great Firewall of China isn't perfect, and it will alternate between blocking particular sites and allowing particular sites, but it does make it more difficult for Chinese citizens to get full information or news stories, according to some analysts.

The Firewall also seems to allow Westerners to view objectionable material in China, while blocking it for Chinese readers. Conceivably, this could be a technique to blunt criticism from the West.

On an Internet connection from a room in a Western-owned hotel, censorship was fairly light, Kanellos reported. Hundreds of images of the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 popped up on Google Images, particularly images of "Tank Man." News stories, or at least headlines, on controversial subjects came up as well. In an Internet cafe, far fewer images of "Tank Man" appeared, but they could still be found. A few videos of the riots also were available on second-tier video sites like Veoh Networks.

But those results came when the search is conducted in English. Searching for Tiananmen Square on Google's Chinese Image site with Chinese characters revealed no pictures of the riots in 14 pages of images. The only one--on 14 pages of results--that relates to the 1989 riots was a picture of the Goddess of Liberty. On Baidu, the more popular Chinese Web search site, not even that came up.

In the latest controversy, the Chinese government may have been spooked by what happened in Myanmar last year. Clips of troops clashing with protesters were widely videotaped and posted to YouTube before the site was blacked out in Myanmar. By then it was too late. World condemnation of the crackdown was only spurred on by the YouTube ban.

Perhaps the poster child for bans gone wrong is Pakistan. The government there was angered over videos it found disrespectful to Islam and demanded YouTube be blocked. An ISP in Pakistan goofed and erroneously shut down access to YouTube around the world. The government lifted the ban soon after.

The other important issue in all this is how Google will respond to China's ban. A representative said that the company is "looking into the matter," and trying to "ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible."

But what happens if China wants Google to begin self censoring videos or wants to know the names of the people who posted the clips of the Tibet violence?

Yahoo can be used as a model of what can go wrong when negotiating with the Chinese government. The portal handed over information about a journalist who was later sentenced to eight years in prison for posting comments critical of the government online. Yahoo's action has been widely condemned ever since.

CNET News.com staff writer Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.

Baidu.com, the top Chinese search engine, gets lots of its traffic from a service that tracks and links to MP3s, most of which are illegally posted. Now a Chinese music industry group is suing the site over alleged copyright violation.

The AP reports:

Music Copyright Society official Qu Jingming said in a statement posted on the society's Web site Friday that Baidu.com provided "music listening, broadcasting and downloading services in various forms on its Web site without approval, and through unfettered piracy, earning huge advertising revenue on its huge number of hits."

The copyright society said its lawsuit, filed in a Beijing court in January, claims Baidu used 50 songs illegally and demands compensation. The alleged piracy forced legitimate online-music providers to shut down, the industry group said.

This comes at a time when Google, which is hoping to catch up to Baidu in the Chinese market, is working with record companies to provide legal links to music for searchers.

From The Times of London:

A former Chinese university professor who was dismissed after he founded a democratic opposition party, plans to sue Yahoo and Google in the United States for blocking his name from search results in China.

Guo Quan, an expert on classical Chinese literature and the 1937 Nanjing massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops, last week issued an open letter pledging to bring a lawsuit against Google after he discovered that his name had been excised in searches of its Google.cn portal in China.

He told The Times that he had now found that the Chinese Yahoo site had also blocked his name and that he planned to bring actions against both companies. "Since January 1, a lot of friends told me that Web sites with my name had been closed. They told me it's impossible to search for my information on Google and Yahoo."

I won't pretend to be a lawyer, but it seems unlikely that Guo will be successful. He acknowledges that there's no chance in Chinese court, but it would be interesting if he succeeds in bringing a suit against the companies in U.S. court.

See The Times' full article, "Dissident Chinese professor to sue Yahoo! and Google for erasing his name." Hat tip goes to Techdirt.

Baidu, China's leading search engine, gets 7 percent of its traffic on a service that eases access to free music downloads. Google, determined to catch up after two years in what is now the second largest Internet user base on earth, may follow suit.

The Wall Street Journal describes Google's possible plans thusly: "Vivendi SA's Universal Music and about 100 other foreign and domestic record labels have been working with Top100.cn, a Beijing-based Web site that currently sells licensed music downloads for 1 yuan (about 14 cents) each, and Google. Together, Top100.cn and Google would provide free MP3 downloads with value added services, people familiar with the plans say. The new search options, for example, promise to give users free access to a database of information about their favorite artists--from concert listings to links to special ring tones."

This stands in contrast to Baidu's service, which the Journal says has led to legal disputes with record labels because illegal downloads are accessible. You get no shortage of illegal download options when you run a Baidu music search for Björk mp3s. (Sidenote: Björk herself plays Shanghai March 3.)

It will definitely be striking if Google puts legal music online. Like DVDs, CDs here are almost always illegal copies and it would take some doing to find the legal ones in many cases. Perhaps they will share ad revenue from the search pages with the record companies. Something like the ad-supported free music we hear on the radio, but available anytime and as a high-quality file...

P.S.: The Journal article includes a useful outline of the Baidu-Google competition in China.

I'd meant to note this earlier, but SEO Hong Kong posted a summary of some findings when Chinese Internet users were tested comparing China's leading search engine, Baidu, with the newer Google.cn.

In a test conducted with Chinese subjects, eye scanning on Google.cn was more focused in the upper left hand corner compared to Baidu despite the fact that both search engines have nearly identical page layouts. Baidu users also scrolled down the page more than the Google users, but clicked on less sponsored listings--less than 1 percent compared to 3 percent for Google. ...

On Baidu, less than 45 percent of all clicks took place in the first 3 organic listings. This was much less focused than Google.cn where over 70 percent of all clicks took place on the top 2 organic results alone. Baidu pages also had significantly longer reading times--an average of 55 seconds--compared to 30 seconds on Google.cn.

The blog says the test was conducted by Enquiro. This result would seem to suggest that Google, like when it's compared to other English search engines such as Yahoo, seems to get users to what they want more quickly. I'd caution, however, that there may be a complication in that the test subjects may have been more familiar with the Baidu layout and were thus more interested in culling more information from familiar locations on the page. Both sites have exceedingly clean front pages.

(Credit: Google/Sinobyte)

I thought I'd give the two a comparative whirl with a simple search for something a Chinese user wouldn't necessarily need to search for: what is the exact date of the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year in the Gregorian calendar. The result? Google wins, giving me the date, as well as an icon indicating this is the coming year of the rat. It also links to a board for Spring Festival greetings...

(Credit: Baidu/Sinobyte)

Baidu also links to its festival page, which gives us a history of the holiday, but it's significantly harder to find the most simple fact you might be looking for: the exact date. On the other hand, Baidu's page gives you a nice history (translated) of the holiday.

Google is also rumored to be experimenting with a more, say, cluttered home page for the Chinese market, along the lines of the leading Chinese search engine Sohu.com. I'd love to see comparisons of user experience including Sohu's Yahoo-esque portal. Yahoo itself, so far, is something of an also-ran, with a live beta online. Why it advertises that it's a beta and doesn't just launch with continual improvements the way Google has is beyond me.

Microsoft has launched Live Search 地图, the China branch of its Virtual Earth project.

Compared with Google's ditu.google.cn and Sogou's (搜狗) map.sogou.com, the site seems about the same, if a little faster--though traffic may still be low. What Google and Microsoft have in common is that the maps contain listings for restaurants, banks, and other locations rendered as icons on the map. Sogou has no such advantage, but sometimes it resolves addresses better than Google.

But here's the interesting part: Microsoft's new service includes major highways and the locations of main cities on Taiwan. It never occurred to me before, but so does Google's. Sogou, on the other hand, has a full detail map of Taibei (Taipei).

Is it just me, or does this suggest that Google and Microsoft may have struck a compromise between people who would want Taiwan included and people who would rather see it separate? Google has a much better map of Taiwan on Google.tw.

I don't want to suggest there isn't a good reason to have different map sites serving mainland China and Taiwan audiences. Here in Beijing and throughout the mainland, we use Simplified Chinese characters; in Taiwan, they still use Traditional characters. This is important because place names look different in the two systems. Even the word China is different: 中国 (Simplified) and 中國 (Traditional).

It's perhaps unsurprising that Sogou's Taiwan map uses Simplified. But it is interesting that both Microsoft and Google have included partial map information for Taiwan on their mainland-focused sites. For another day, perhaps I'll look at where they drew the international barriers at sea, but we already know making maps can be a source of controversy. Just look what happened when a Chinese-made map for sale in Japan was recalled over labeling Taiwan.

UPDATE: Just as I finished writing, I noticed a headline from Marbridge Consulting's Web site noting that China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping recently published a to do list for 2008, including the drafting of a document all three sites would be wise to watch: "Suggestions on Increasing the Supervision and Management of Mapping and Geographical Information Websites."