Japanese Porn Actress Entices Chinese Net Users To Scale Great Firewall

from the motivation dept

It's no secret that porn can be a tremendous driver for the adoption of new technologies: VCRs, DVD players, cable and satellite TV, and the internet. But apparently it's also helping teach Chinese folks how to scale the country's Great Firewall. A few days ago, the Twitter name of a Japanese porn actress got "discovered" in China, and thanks to her apparent popularity, tons of people started trying to access her Twitter page. Twitter, though, is blocked in China, and since the woman is a porn actress, information on her is blocked as it "could cause harm to youngsters' mental and physical well-being". These blocks are apparently driving people to learn how to use software to get around the Great Firewall (via Jan Chipchase) so they can follow the actress on Twitter. Perhaps the best way to deal with China's internet censorship isn't technical tricks, but to point Chinese surfers to porn so they'll learn about how to get around the wall on their own?

Filed Under: china, great firewall, porn

DNS Screwup Accidentally Extends Great Firewall Of China To Chile And The US?

from the yes,-but-could-you-use-Google? dept

A bit surprised this story didn't get more attention, but apparently some sort of DNS networking "error" meant that certain computers in both the US and Chile came up against the infamous Great Firewall of China -- meaning many sites were suddenly inaccessible (and, one assumes, Google sent folks to Google Hong Kong):

Security experts are not sure exactly how this happened, but it appears that at least one ISP recently began fetching high-level DNS (domain name server) information from what's known as a root DNS server, based in China. That server, operated out of China by Swedish service provider Netnod, returned DNS information intended for Chinese users, effectively spreading China's network censorship overseas. China tightly controls access to a number of Web sites, using technology known colloquially as the Great Firewall of China.

The issue was reported Wednesday by Mauricio Ereche, a DNS admin with NIC Chile, who found that an unnamed local ISP reported that DNS queries for sites such as Facebook.com, Twitter.com and YouTube.com -- all of which have been blocked in China -- were being redirected to bogus addresses.

I'm reminded of the case when Pakistan tried to block YouTube and ended up blocking YouTube around the globe. Just a bit of a scary reminder of how fragile and interconnected the internet can be at times.

Filed Under: chile, china, dns, great firewall, us

How China's Attempts To Censor The Internet Are Failing

from the nice-try dept

Just as Bono is claiming that the world should look to China's success in censoring the internet as a good example of how other countries can fight unauthorized internet file sharing, the Wall Street Journal is reporting on just how badly China's "war" against the internet is going, noting that the more it tries to censor, the more trouble it's having in doing so:

The Internet has enabled more Chinese to have more access to information today, and given them greater ability to communicate and express themselves than at any time since the founding of the People's Republic.

Because of that, even as China tries to crack down, it simply leads to more people figuring out ways around the barriers:

But for each critic the authorities stop, more rise. "There are simply too many people," says Xiao Qiang, a scholar who studies the Chinese Internet at the University of California at Berkeley. "They can do that to a very small group ... but the approach certainly is not good enough to intimidate all the voices online."

Mr. Xiao points to the example of Liu Xiaobo, detained in December 2008 for his role in creating Charter 08, a sweeping call for political and legal reform in China. Mr. Liu was sentenced on Christmas Day to 11 years in prison for subversion. But since his detention, thousands more Chinese have signed Charter 08 through Internet sites that disseminate the document.

That's not to say that the government hasn't become good at cracking down on things it doesn't like, and the article certainly notes just that the government is "losing," not that it has "lost." However, it also points out that rising voices of complaints are having an impact, noting how China's "Green Dam" plan to install internet filters on all PCs was eventually stopped due to public protest over the idea. So, yes, the government has continued to censor the internet in China, and many users have more trouble reaching certain sites or types of information, but that does not mean that internet censorship works or that it's been successful in suppressing opposition content and discussion online. No matter what Bono believes.

Filed Under: activism, censorship, china, great firewall, internet

China Raises The Great Firewall Even Higher, Claims It's To Stop Piracy

from the higher-and-higher dept

The NY Times is reporting that the Chinese government appears to be raising the walls on the Great Firewall of China even higher, shutting down a bunch of sites, limiting the ability to let individuals put up their own websites, and completely restricting the ability to offer third party mobile content. Here's where it gets sneaky. The Chinese government claims that it's an effort to stop "piracy." And, indeed, some of the sites that were shut down appear to be sites related to file sharing. But this is great for the Chinese government -- because US lobbyists and diplomats have been complaining about Chinese "piracy" for ages, even as US diplomats have complained about free speech restrictions online in China. So, by hiding a more massive crackdown behind the claim that the government is really "cracking down on piracy," China knows that the US can't complain too much. After all, it's been demanding a crackdown on piracy for so long. So what if that "crackdown" also massively limits the ability of individuals to communicate freely online?

Filed Under: censorship, china, control, great firewall, piracy

China Says Its Okay For Users To Delete Its New Censorware

from the wasn't-expecting-that dept

Well, this is certainly something of a surprise. Earlier this month, China required new censorware be installed on all computers sold there. Of course, this upset a bunch of people and also raised serious security concerns. Still, we didn't expect the Chinese gov't to back down. However, a variety of lawsuits and public protests in China has resulted in at least some backing down by the government. The gov't is now saying that while the software will come installed on all new PCs, there's no requirement that it be used. Of course, it's not at all clear how easy it is to disable the software. The software is apparently uninstallable (or so the makers claim), but this new statement from the government makes it clear that there shouldn't be sanctions against those who do go through with the uninstall.

Filed Under: blocking, censorship, china, great firewall, security

China's New Censorware Software Has Serious Security Flaws

from the is-that-a-surprise? dept

This probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to anyone, but China's new mandated censorware that is required to be installed on all new PCs sold in the country has serious security flaws that put users' computers (and their data) at risk. Of course, censorware/spyware type software almost always does that -- and, it seems likely that the Chinese government isn't all that concerned about the privacy of citizens and their computer usage. Still, the bigger fear is that the security flaws can (and will) be used to basically hijack all those computers and turn them into a botnet. That should certainly be a bigger concern, especially given the Chinese governments' insistence that it wants to crackdown on the widespread use of Chinese servers for spamming operations anyway.

Filed Under: blocking, censorship, china, great firewall, security

Local Version Of China's Great Firewall Now Required On All PCs In China

from the yeah,-that'll-work... dept

There have been plenty of stories on the inner workings of China's "Great Firewall," whereby various ISPs are threatened with liability if they don't block "bad stuff." Yet, it's all been done at the ISP level. Apparently, that's about to change. A report is making the rounds that, as of July 1st, all PCs sold in China will be required to have client-side censorship software. You have to wonder if the censorship software also includes spying software.... Either way, you have to imagine it won't take long at all for people to figure out how to disable such software.

Filed Under: censorship, china, filters, great firewall

Is Anyone Actually Surprised That China Has Blocked Social Media Sites For Tiananmen Anniversary?

from the great-firewall-at-work dept

To be honest, stories about China using its "Great Firewall" to block certain sites are hardly new. They've been happening for years. And yet, tons of people have been submitting variations on the news that China appears to have upped the blockade by including sites like Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and the new Microsoft search engine Bing, recognizing that it's the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown which is (not surprisingly) expected to draw quite an online discussion. I wasn't going to write anything about it, but a few thoughts occurred to me, as more and more people submitted it:

• Is anyone actually surprised that this has happened? China regularly bans and unbans a variety of different sites, often based on what's happening in the news. To think that it wouldn't raise the gates for such an event seems naive.
• Does it really do any good for the Chinese gov't? It pisses off those who use those services who are in China, certainly, but it also serves to call more attention to the heavy hand of gov't censorship in that country. Now, many don't seem to care one way or another -- and so it doesn't impact those people either way. But for those who do care, it reinforces their feelings about it, but hardly stops news from spreading.

So in the end, I'm still left wondering what the gov't thinks it accomplishes in being so heavy handed in censoring such sites, other than thinking that if they stick fingers in their ears, they can pretend no one's talking about this stuff online.

Filed Under: blocking, censorship, china, great firewall

China Looks To Build Human Firewall With Fun, Prizes

from the snitching-pays dept

China's experiment with crowdsourcing internet propaganda -- in which it reportedly pays people 50 cents for each positive post they make about the government or its policies -- must be going well. The government there is now looking to engage citizens' help in purging the internet of porn and other undesirable content by giving people rewards for reporting porn sites. This follows the government's push to get search engines to try and prevent people in China from accessing porn by threatening them with punishment if they don't. While China's "Great Firewall" does manage to block a lot of content, it certainly isn't foolproof. And if people can find ways around it to discuss contaminated milk, one has to imagine that this latest hurdle won't prove too difficult for porn fans to navigate.

Filed Under: bureaucracy, censorship, china, great firewall, propaganda

Internet Companies Apologize To China For Being Too Good

from the in-the-future,-we'll-miss-more-stuff dept

We noted that the Chinese government had called out a bunch of search engines for allowing access to porn recently, and I find it amusing to see that pretty much all of the search engines called out have issued apologies. What I'm wondering is exactly what are they apologizing for? The fact that other people put pornography online? The fact that they're too good as search engines and are able to find that content?

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, search engines
Companies: baidu, google