China’s two biggest Net fears
p2p news / p2pnet: Two new Internet bans may offer insight into the Communist China`s biggest fears, says Julien Pain, who heads the Internet Freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders in Paris.
One bars Internet news services from inciting illegal assemblies, marches and demonstrations, while the other prohibits activities on behalf of illegal civil groups, says Britain`s Associated Press.
Pain, who heads the Internet Freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders in Paris, is quoted as saying, What is more difficult to censor are usually the forums and chat rooms and, blogs, cell-phone text messaging and e-mail lists all potential outlets for unchecked political commentary.
The two new speech prohibitions, appear directed at discouraging protests and restricting dissidents, says the story. The other nine including bans on rumors, pornography and defamatory statements online were largely lifted from the 2000 regulations.
Somewhat understating the situation, Microsoft Corp. took some heat from human-rights activists for agreeing to incorporate software in its Chinese blog service to automatically reject `democracy,` `human rights` and other words deemed taboo by the government, The Telegraphs says, pointing out that earlier this year, authorities ordered all Web sites, including private, noncommercial blogs, to register and identify the person in charge.
The new regulations require sites to post only news on current events and politics without any commentary, normally a staple of blogs.
The new rules supplement the government`s efforts to block foreign news sources through technical filters and to restrict online use by regulating and closing down cybercafes that serve as a primary access point for many Chinese users, says the story.
But it has it has Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, saying complete enforcement is “virtually impossible in a country with 100 million Internet users second only to the United States but the rules will let the government ‘cherry pick` the most troubling cases”.
Nonetheless, he said, resourceful Internet users have typically managed to bypass controls in the past, forcing authorities to regularly `restate the rules in a way to get more compliance from people and close potential loopholes`.
RWB recently reported China is blocking access to Wikipedia.
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See:-
Associated Press – Despite new bans, government still has trouble policing Internet, October 23, 2005
understating – Microsoft bows to China, June 13, 2005
blocking access – China blocks Wikipedia, Octrober 22, 2005
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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.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
October 25th, 2005 at 2:50 am
Typical bureaucrat’s response to a situation they can’t control. Ignore the fact that they can’t control it, and pretend that they can. Also set someone else up to take the inevitable fall when the higher up’s realise that it never was controllable.
Their biggest problem, in fact the biggest problem with all this legislation to “control” the net, is that the ppl who are caught and punished are NOT the ppl they should be worried about. It’s the ppl smart enough to not get caught.