What’s Next?

It turns out my site is blocked in China. Obviously deeply subversive.

Give sites a go at:

http://greatfirewallofchina.org/test/

While the news that someone dropped their ipod in the toliet and triggered a security alert is amusing, my favour bit of the story is how cool he is, despite causing security alert, in answering this question:

I waited in total silence for about 10 minutes as he
kept searching and searching, until I finally asked him, “What are you
looking for?”

“Contraband,” he said without looking up at me.

“Such as?”

“Child pornography, hate propaganda.”

“Child porn I can understand, that’s illegal. But hate propaganda is protected speech.”

Now he looked up. “What country do you think you’re in?”

“Oh, it’s illegal in Canada?”

“I honestly don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?”

I paused for a long time while I thought about what I should say to this. “Yes.”

“Yes, you do have a problem?”

“Yes, I do. If it’s illegal in Canada I’ll understand, but saying
‘I don’t want it in my country’ isn’t good enough when you’re a
government official.”

Principles are important!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web censorship: Correspondent reports

Google, for example, has modified its Chinese language search engine so that it does not show results for sites the Chinese government deems “harmful”.

Not quite true, google.cn, the google based within China does indeed self-censor (but is unique among censoring search engines in that if some results are not being shown, a small disclaimer of this fact is given), while the chinese language version of google.com is completely uncensored (but often subject to large delays from within China, hence the establishment of google.cn).

Some may have noticed the new Amnesty sign on the sidebar, it’s part of their new Campaign against Internet Censorship. I totally agree with this and believe it’s an initiative well worth supporting. But there IS a problem with this sign thing -  the idea given that this helps get around censorship by loading censored content onto lots of websites. Of course, in reality the quotes come from the central database which is blocked by the censors, rendering the quotes useless to those inside the firewall. Added to that, the quotes are too short to possibly be of any use to anyone. It is however a call for support from the uncensored internet and I have it for that reason. I just wish it wouldn’t be advertised as being helpful to people behind the firewalls when in actual fact it’s not for anything more than drumming up support.