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Internet China Censors 1.8 Million Blogs
Tuan Nguyen (Blog) - March 6, 2007 7:16 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 9 comment(s) - last by GaryJohnson.. on Mar 6 at 3:53 PM
Free speech not something that government of China looks upon lightly

According to an announcement made by LiveJournal, China has officially blocked the popular online blogging site from its citizens. SixApart, the company behind LiveJournal, said that China's censor roughly locks out 1.8 million of its blogs -- of which 8,692 are self-reported Chinese bloggers.

This isn't the first time that China has blocked LiveJournal. SixApart director of worldwide strategy Ginger Tulley said that her company has been blocked before for no apparent reason. "We would just follow our standard procedures, which honor free speech," said Tulley.

Interestingly, the block is just in time for China's National People's Congress meeting in Beijing. According to Xiao Qiang, founder of the China Digital Times, the move is historical to the meeting. "The security is tight and the control is upgraded because they don't want [political voices]," said Xiao.

Chinese officials did not release a statement as to why LiveJournal was blocked, but according to Xiao, the government likely put up a blanket-restriction to target a few, or possibly one blogger. Xiao claims it is possible that Chinese officials simply wanted to block out a single blogger or a specific post, but blocked out all of LiveJournal anyway.

China's Internet firewall is famous for its censorship of free speech. Using specialized software, China has been in the papers for blocking sites that talk about democracy and other hot topics. Other than the usual blocking of porn and questionable materials, China also frowns upon its citizens that speak openly about how its government runs.

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workaround
By Anosh on 3/6/2007 10:39:01 AM , Rating: 2
Someone should make some sort of a workaround for this kind of censorship. Some sort of web service that can retrieve websites or info (text) from other sites without the person visiting those other sites.




RE: workaround
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 3/6/2007 10:49:41 AM , Rating: 3
RE: workaround
By ZeeStorm on 3/6/2007 10:50:18 AM , Rating: 2
Like a web proxy? There's plenty out there.

I just think it's funny how many people whine about free speech in America. We've never had to deal with things like the Chinese do, why complain? Compared to that, everything is free speech. You can easily make a website about how much you love or hate the government in America, but China? Good luck with that.


RE: workaround
By javiergf on 3/6/07, Rating: -1
RE: workaround
By CascadingDarkness on 3/6/2007 1:34:44 PM , Rating: 2
Because the FBI has nothing better to do than tail 14 year old kids for posting anti-American things...


what is 1.8 Mln?
By Garvey on 3/6/2007 2:39:38 PM , Rating: 2
Something wrong with numbers.
8693 is a number of LJ-users from China (I checked it there: http://www.livejournal.com/directory.bml). So, what is 1.8 Mln?




RE: what is 1.8 Mln?
By GaryJohnson on 3/6/2007 3:53:09 PM , Rating: 2
I think the story is that the entire livejournal.com blog site is blocked in china, and in total livejournal has 1.8 million blogs under its domain.


...
By Sahrin on 3/6/2007 10:17:29 AM , Rating: 2
doubleplusungood.




=(
By ss284 on 3/6/2007 11:08:00 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
China also frowns upon its citizens that speak openly about how its government runs.


Talk about an understatement.

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