China blocks Wikipedia. Again.
p2pnet.net News:- People in China had “unfettered” access the Wikipedia, said various reports yesterday.
Access was not, of course, unrestricted by any means and in fact, “Subjects that are still off-limits on Wikipedia include high-level politics, the crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Falun Gong movement and certain historical events,” said the International Herald Tribune, which had used the word ‘unfettered’.
But by today, even this partial relaxation had been curtailed and it was business as usual, ie, no business. As usual.
“An update late Saturday, early Sunday,” blogs Andrew Lih.
Wikipedia is still inaccessible for most everyone in PRC.
The current block is actually a bit more restrictive than before October 10, since any mention of the string ‘zh.wikipedia.org’ in any URL seems to be blocked.”
For example:
http://www.google.com/search?q=zh.wikiepdia.org
will not go through, and will get you a ‘Connection reset’ error.
In an earlier post, “To the media, and folks who have been checking this site for stories, please do wait another day before drawing too many conclusions,” says Lih. “The Great Firewall is a distributed system, and not a monolithic one. It will take some time to figure out the state of affiars, and it is not unusual for access to be in flux over a number of days.”
He also has a quote from a Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference in Beijing:
Q: The Chinese website of Wikipedia, which had been blocked since last October, was unblocked last week, do you have any comments?
A: I do not know the details about the website you mentioned. The Chinese [PRC] government actively supports and promotes the development of Internet. By 2005, there have been over 123 million Internet users and 788,000 websites in China. China has become the second largest country for Internet in the world. We oversee the Internet according to laws, this is also what every country in the world does commonly.
“Today China blocked again WIKIpedia ! as seen on tv… I read also on CNN.com website,” says a p2pnet comment post, going on:
“You can fight censorship via proxy sites like: http://www.surfinter.net and http://www.hidemyway.com – it is easy and free, anonymous and also hides your IP address. You can also access wikipedia, myspace or other blocked sites from work or school. Fight back for your freedom.”
(Thanks, Michael)
Also See:
“unfettered” access – Wikipedia online in China, November 17, 2006
International Herald Tribune – China lifts its Wikipedia ban, but some topics are blocked, November 16, 2006
blogs – Wikipedia in China Update, November 18, 2006
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win ~ Mahatma Ghandi
If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
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November 24th, 2006 at 10:35 am
You can still access wikipedia or other blocked sites via web proxy server like: http://www.surfinter.net or http://www.msproxy.net !