China Centralizes The Great Firewall Into Single Censorship Body
from the well-how-about-that dept
There have been numerous articles about how the Great Firewall of China functions, and it's generally been done via a series of bureaucracies, combined with tens of thousands of government employees along with a bunch of "volunteers." The process also involves somewhat vague messages to ISPs about what sort of content is concerning to the government, leading those ISPs to block broadly to avoid liability. However, this structure is apparently a bit too chaotic, and Vic alerts us to the news that China is now centralizing its internet censorship apparatus. Apparently, part of the reason for this was that two of the separate agencies who helped manage the censorship campaign got into a disagreement over who had the right to regulate World of Warcraft. So, the Chinese response: build one big bureaucracy, called the State Internet Information Office, which will have broad powers to "direct, coordinate and supervise online content management and handle administrative approval of businesses related to online news reporting."Among its listed duties? "To investigate and punish websites violating laws and regulations." Yeah, the Great Firewall is dead... long live the Great Firewall. It will be interesting to see if this leads to any noticeable changes, but some are already warning that with a centralized organization running this, there may be greater crackdowns and fewer loopholes going forward. Either way, it'll be worth watching to see how this new organization handles its online censorship duties.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, great firewall
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/sarc
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The more you tighten your grip
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Well, it's Walls. Plural
Even the Great Wall is a set of walls. New and old. Everywhere you go in China walls set things apart. It's related to (see wikipedia) hukou, and Confucian 'control freakism'.
The wall might start in the building you are living in, inside China. A security guy (who might also play with the doors to keep you out of your own place sometimes, if it's a common electronic door) will adjust things. And change them if a local company having a difficulty with you nudges him a bit. One implicitly asked for double payment in Guangzhou so I bypassed with a cell modem, which had it's own differing electronic walls - they often want to foist a Chinese homepage on you, and market and limit choices from it.
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A Step Backwards
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