No Google In China
from the sorry dept
Just days after hearing that Google is pumping up their efforts to sell more ads in Europe and Asia, one area they might want to pass on is China. It turns out that China is now blocking access to Google. We've written in the past about China's seemingly random blocking and unblocking of sites, and they don't seem to ever explain the rationale behind the blocking. Blocking an entire search engine seems a bit silly, of course. Even worse is that there's a very simple workaround: use Yahoo!. The Chinese censors haven't blocked Yahoo's search at all, and Yahoo just uses Google anyway... Update: Google claims they're talking to Chinese officials about resolving this.
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Legal and Global implications of Hijacking Company
But let us consider what has recently happened:
The Chinese government has now not only block access to many thousands of websites, but has now taken the next step and redirected traffic from one of the most popular search sites, www.google.com and redirected traffic to sites within China, withing their control.
This time, not only has someone blocked access to a website, but now the website traffic is being diverted to some place else.
What would a company think if its DNS was being re-routed to someone elses website. A site out of their control, who's content they had not part in?
We would consider this a hijack of their company's domain and site.
And what would we think if the site was one of the most popular sites in the world, and it was being re-direct to the second largest community of internet users?
We would consider this a serious action!
Well this is exactly what has happened with google.com for all of the Chinese internet users. Not only was the site blocked for a period of time by the Chinese government, but now it is being re-directed to Chinese sites!
If China wishes to be a part of the International community, to be a part of the World Trade Organization and play by the fair games of International trade, and Internet rules, then this should not, and must not be allowed.
Blocking a site is one thing, but then to redirect traffic away from the real site to other sites, this is against all the rules of Internet usage.
And what will happen next? What would happen if the Chinese government did not like the content of your website www.techdirt.com and decided to not only block its access, but to also re-direct it to a Chinese new site,one that is controled by the Chinese government?
And what if a country's govenmental site contains reference that the Chinese government does not like, will they also redirect traffic away from their site, or your site, so some unknown site?
And what would China say if the world redirects traffic away from any and all chinese sites to sites that contain the truth about what they are doing?
What the Chinse Government has not in this case, is well beyond just blocking of information, but a hijack of the domain address for a company. If the destination of a Web Address cannot be trusted, then all bets are off in the online world.
Please consider these comments in future article about this matter, which i am sure is far from over.
thank you
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Spam
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