China and the Internet (from Phil)

Be sure to read the article by Zittrain and Palfrey on Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study. It is a chilling reminder about what could happen here if government agencies are allowed to control what you can and cannot see when you surf the Web:

China's Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. Compared to similar efforts in other states, China's filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages. Our testing found efforts to prevent access to a wide range of sensitive materials, from pornography to religious material to political dissent.

What is blocked?

[We] sought to determine the degree to which China filters sites on topics that the Chinese government finds sensitive, and found that the state does so extensively. Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square incident, opposition political parties, or a variety of anti-Communist movements will frequently find themselves blocked. Despite conventional wisdom, though, [we] found that most major American media sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, are generally available in China (though the BBC remains blocked). Moreover, most sites we tested in our global list's human rights and anonymizer categories are accessible as well. While it is difficult to describe this widespread filtering with precision, our research documents a system that imposes strong controls on its citizens' ability to view and to publish Internet content.

I guess this corroborates the view by some of us in this country that the U.S. news media is more entertainment than news. {:-)

How does the news get filtered or blocked?

Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China's filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be dynamic, changing along a variety of axes over time. This combination of factors leads to a great deal of supposition as to how and why China filters the Internet. These complexities also make it very difficult to render a clear and accurate picture of Internet filtering in China at any given moment.

To read more on this topic, visit the website of Human Rights in China, one of the U.S.-based groups mentioned in the Zittrain and Palfrey article. They have an especially useful section on Technology and Human Rights.