Shocker: China Censors Report On China Censorship

from the you-were-expecting-otherwise dept

Thu, Feb 7th 2008 2:23am — Mike Masnick

This probably won't come as much of a surprise to, well, anyone, but when Reporters Without Borders came out with a report on how China censors the internet, China ordered that the report be censored. Of course, to do that, China's censors issued a list of targeted keywords to various ISPs, and that list made its way back to Reporters Without Borders, who have published it. I'd imagine that will also be censored, and the whole cycle can repeat itself. Either way, it does show a little bit of how the Great Firewall of China actually works.

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Filed Under: censorship, china, reporters without borders

14 Comments

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Chinaman, 7 Feb 2008 @ 4:02am

Lead paint
Did you hear that they blocked a shipment of Chinese lead paint from entering the US?

It was contaminated with toys.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Feb 2008 @ 4:44am

lol at lead shipment.

hey Mike i guess you just got techdirt on the great firewall of china do not allow list :P
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Null, 7 Feb 2008 @ 5:58am

"I'd imagine that will also be censored"

It's a list of banned keywords, therefore already censored.
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in front of a tank, 7 Feb 2008 @ 6:18am

one guy
How soon before we see something similar in the us ?
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Shawn, 7 Feb 2008 @ 6:44am

unfortunately,im using blogspot that was blocked by gfw.
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Bob, 7 Feb 2008 @ 6:44am

The real truth about the US govt censorship progra
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USA, 7 Feb 2008 @ 6:45am

The previous post has been cleaned for your viewin
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Iain, 7 Feb 2008 @ 6:47am

keywords
One of the keywords listed to be banned is: "key-words".

LOL @ China.
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Charming Charlie, 7 Feb 2008 @ 7:23am

Re:
It's a list of banned keywords, therefore already censored. If I understand this comment corrently it is a reply to #2, and as someone posting from Beijing, I can assure you Techdirt is still accessable without a proxy.
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Joe Dirt, 7 Feb 2008 @ 7:46am

Soon
We should see this very soon. All the big players in search want the China market so they're developing censorship tech. I expect they'll be more than happy to deploy it here to protect the children.
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Rekrul, 7 Feb 2008 @ 7:51am

Wouldn't it be simpler for China to issue a list of the stuff that they DON'T want blocked? The entire list should fit on a Post-It note...
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M. Thompson, 7 Feb 2008 @ 8:23am

Hory Mory!
Chinese Censor "Don't Crick that Rink!"

They are just pissed off that they don't have the letter 'l' on their keyboards so they can't visit places like 'LinkedIn' cause 'RinkedIn' keeps returning errors.
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mike allen, 7 Feb 2008 @ 8:29am

Rekrul wrong
There are soooo many chinise government departments producing government propaganda (still more than UK or USA but only just) that you need a toilet roll to list them.
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Chi Sun, 12 Mar 2008 @ 6:01pm

Censorship
I'm using VPN services (OpenVPN account) to access any blocked site as in the case of you are in China or in USA. It requires some fee, but I think is still best service for such a deal.
I use http://strongvpn.com
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