Google Approach In China: Redirect To Hong Kong

from the let's-see-what-happens-now dept

Google obviously made a big splash earlier this year when it threatened to leave China in response to a hack attack. There's been a lot of back and forth, and some questions about whether or not Google would really leave. Just last week, China ratcheted up the rhetoric, warning Google not to stop censoring search results. Now Google has made its strategy a bit clearer, by saying that it's going to redirect all Google Chinese searches to the Hong Kong version of its search engine, which is not censored. And, now, it waits for China's response. Amusingly, Google has also set up a little dashboard that highlights what Google services China is currently blocking. The next big question, of course, is whether or not Google will also start looking for ways to help people get around the blocks...

Filed Under: censorship, china, hong kong, search
Companies: google

Officials In Hong Kong Arrest 14-Year-Old For Music Sharing

from the how-dare-you! dept

TorrentFreak has the story of how a 14-year-old boy in Hong Kong has been arrested for sharing Cantonese pop songs online. He may now face up to four years in jail. As the author of the story notes, when he was 14 he had plenty of music on cassette tapes that he would share with friends, and how ridiculous would it be to think of going to prison for that? Kids share music -- it's part of what they do, and in most cases it's because they love the music and want more people to hear them. They're not "stealing" the music (and, at that age, probably can't afford most of it anyway.) They're simply expressing how much they enjoy the music -- and now at least one may go to jail for loving music too much. This isn't to defend unauthorized file sharing, but to simply question the response to it, compared to what's actually happening. Something does not seem properly aligned when kids who are expressing their love of music by trying to get others to listen to it are facing jail time.

Filed Under: file sharing, hong kong, jail, music

Chinese Gov't Scolds Baidu For Not Doing The Impossible

from the you-must-block-all-of-these-pictures dept

Over the last few weeks, there's been a big scandal in Hong Kong concerning photos of certain celebrities caught in various states of undress and various "adult" activities. The police in Hong Kong have had some trouble dealing with this, apparently first claiming that anyone possessing these images was breaking the law and then bungling an investigation into who leaked the images. Now, to top that off, the Chinese government is "censuring" the popular search engine Baidu for allowing people to find these controversial images. It's not entirely clear how the government expects Baidu to simply know that these pictures are illegal and to stop people from finding them, but as we've seen, that's the method by which the Chinese government enforces its censorship -- not by explicitly stating what needs to be banned, but by telling search engines and ISPs that they'll get in trouble if they allow anything "bad" to get through. That leads to aggressively blocking anything that the ISPs or search engines feel might get them in trouble. Of course, to make that work, the government occasionally does need to publicly scold some of the firms for failing, even in doing the impossible, as that gives increased motivation for everyone else to just keep on blocking stuff.

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, hong kong, sex scandal
Companies: baidu