Sunday, March 16, 2008

A new phase of sophistication in the internet censorship?

The ongoing riots in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet offer also an interesting opportunity to test the ability of the internet filters in China that should keep information away. While I think I can get still a decent overview of the news - although it is very hard to know what you do not get of course - I have noted a few new features compared to only a few months ago.
First, I noted that my rss-reader is not longer the preferred gateway to get information. On certain moments I could not get parts of my rss-feeds on China news. Especially the China Digital News seemed to be hit, but there might be more than one reason for the blockade to occur. This was really new for me.
Also new was the fact that certain stories, like this one from ESWN, only displayed partially. In the past I would get a story or I would not get a story, but it would not stop displaying after a few paragraphs. When I used a proxy I actually got only a smaller part of the story and I got a bit more after restarting my connection.
More familiar was the disconnection when I switched between different Google news searches: that was already part of the standard censorship package, but certainly no less annoying.
Any other experiences out there?

Update I: I had already been thinking of getting a VPN-service, like imagethief suggests. This might be the moment to take action.
Update II: Interesting: the service imagethief suggest is partly blocked in China. I might set it up when I'm outside China again next week and start a small commission-based service to set up this VPN-service for people inside China. Let me know if you are interested.
Update III: Ah, it is working now. No business here, I fear.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I noticed that the Guardian, Times and Google news were blocked this morning. The pages only partly loaded.This happened overnight. The changes must have been made after the weekend because it was OK yesterday. Doesn't the internet nanny work weekends?

China Herald said...

Typically nanny does not like to do overtime. My guess is that a software system is doing this, not a human being.

Anonymous said...

hi,
i live in beijing.
i would like to get a vpn service. before i do this - i would like to know if it is working good for you? or has it slowed down your internet? does it really enable access to all sites?
hope to hear from you soon
Yermi

China Herald said...

Ah, have not yet set up the VPN. The service that was recommended to me can only be paid through paypal and my account with that service has been screwed up. Will need to find a friend who can do it for me.

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