Forum Moderators: goodroi
Is this affecting anyone else? Or is it only China? (or only me?)
Editted because I didnt see the link back to the forum, they still didnt cite this forum as to where they got the info though
[edited by: Knowles at 3:44 pm (utc) on Sep. 2, 2002]
[edited by: heini at 3:36 pm (utc) on Sep. 2, 2002]
[edit reason] check sticky please [/edit]
HTTP reset is issued by the giant CISCO router and great firewall.
I can not view dailynews.yahoo.com, where the report from Reuter is located, but I managed to download the article with a wget on my Linux box.
BBC.uk is IP blocked,so no way to retrieve the page.
Doooooomed.
Access to Google sites apparently being blocked by official agencies in China has got major exposure in mainstream media by now. We are in a situation, where we are not only watching, but are to a certain extent involved.
So lets all be a bit careful in this situation.
Thanks for your understanding.
Looks to me as if the Google cache is the issue, they are not just a pointer to information, they are a repository of the content itself.
Has the WayBack machine been blocked?
There is a surprising amount of free speech in China, much more than people overseas suspect. But there are limits. For various reasons, the Chinese government cannot afford to allow a completely free flow of information among its citizens.
The government has made sustained efforts to bring the Internet under control. When Yahoo knuckled under last month, it should have been clear that Google was next. Google's untrammelled and (largely) unbiased flow of information could not go unchecked.
Google is not yet a big player in China, although it is growing. Most Chinese go through local portals like Sina and Sohu. These are pay-for-listing portals and are well controlled. Sina used to be a single worldwide portal but was split into separate portals (U.S., China, Taiwan, etc.) a few years ago due to Chinese pressure.
The blocking of Google should not be seen as a mindless action - the Chinese are more sophisticated than that. The Chinese government has essentially served notice that they have both the willpower and the technical wherewithal to block any site that does not accommodate their wishes. I would not be surprised if this were the opening gambit in forging an agreement to restrict the kind of information that Google offers to Chinese users, perhaps a filter on political material similar to filters on pornographic content for juvenile users.
I suspect that this may be something of a test case for Google. Google's main attraction is that it has so far resisted the kind of commercial pressures that have compromised the credibility of other search engines. If Google caves in to Chinese government pressure, will it be the beginning of the end of the Google myth? It will be interesting to see how events unfold.
With the contract extension (yahoo back fill provider [webmasterworld.com]) reported by cnet to be up yesterday, I just see this whole thing some how connected to that.
It's quite a shock. I've always considered google my lifeline to the outside. As mentioned, that cache function was always useful...and most certainly a thorn in the side of the government.
We'll have to see how things turn out. At the very least, there are ways around this situation.
[google.com...]
china is the only one not represented with specific queries here:
[google.com...]
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
Christopher Bodeen Associated Press Writer is located in BEIJING
Article says that Google could not be reached for comment.
[edited by: Mike_Mackin at 12:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 3, 2002]
It certainly is getting a lot of airplay. And to think, but for a man in a bathrobe, the rest of the world may have taken a little longer to cotton on.
Onya
Woz
[added] Mike, that link is coming up 404.
By contrast, a search on Sina.com, another portal that is popular in China, turns up just 1,600 mentions of Jiang. The Chinese-language service of American search engine Yahoo! turns up just 24 results. "
[boston.com...]
WooHoo 24 results
Bathrobe and other blocked users:
You may try a program by Cult of the Dead Cow called "peak-a-booty," specifically written for these instances:
Peek-A-Booty is a peer to peer proxying network that uses SSL to obfuscate the nature of content being sent over connections to the network. In theory, a user specifies a network node (there is no facility for auto-detection for security purposes), and then they can route their real requests for data through that node to conceal what they are actually wanting. It's essentially just an anonymous proxy service that has the advantage of using a network of smaller and hopefully less visible nodes to make it difficult to block off the network by applying firewall filters.
[peek-a-booty.org...]
Don't know if it works or not, but it may be worth a try...
"'We are currently working with Chinese officials to get our full service restored to the millions of Chinese users who depend on Google every day,' [Google] said in a statement." From [news.bbc.co.uk...]
Wow! Way to go Google :)... except, I hope that it doesn't involve censoring SERPs... doh! I guess censored Google is better then no Google...
I am not so sure. Books used to be "Banned in Boston" which turned out to be a great marketing tool for the books and probably increased sales in the long run. ;)
If I were Google, rather than compromise and censor, I would wear it like a badge of honor and use it as a seal of editorial integrity. Great marketing opportunity here for Google. :)
here most people are learning how to find proxy or any other available method to reach google....
we are conquering ....
2000c com
Although I don't get what google would be doing to work on this. It isn't like google really has anything to offer an oppressive regime.
I doubt the people of China want their google censored.
China needs to get with the program.
Google needs to run their search engine.
