Dog Owner Takes On China's Web Censors
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BEIJING, Dec. 25 -- Outraged that his Internet posting about dogs had been banned, Chen Yuhua wrote to the mayor of Beijing. No answer. He wrote to the city council. Still no answer. When all else failed, he consulted a lawyer, studied China's civil code and marched into court with a lawsuit.
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(Article Central) Google Inc.&#39;s recently launched news service in China excludes results from Web sites blocked by that country&#39;s authorities, and has many insiders questioning its promise to &quot;do no evil.
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Internet search engine Google has been accused of censoring the Chinese news service that it launched two weeks ago. Web hosting company Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT) reported that Google&#39;s Chinese news
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China shut down 44,000 Web sites and  homepages and arrested 868 people last year in a campaign  against Internet porn which will continue until the end of this  year's Beijing Olympics, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
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HONG KONG -- China has decided to restrict the broadcasting of Internet videos _ including those posted on video-sharing Web sites _ to sites run by state-controlled companies and require providers to report questionable content to the government.
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Just in time for Halloween, Google&#39;s YouTube became available again in China Wednesday, two weeks after it was blocked.Although Chinese Internet regulators don&#39;t comment on why sites are blocked,&#160;YouTube&#39;s blocking&#160;seemed to be tied one or two events: the 17th Communist Party Congress, the Chinese Communist Party&#39;s most important meeting, held every five years; and the launching of YouTube&#39;s traditional language site in Taiwan, both during the same week in the middle of this month. The YouTube Taiwan site is also available in China.However, while YouTube can be viewed again, Blogspot is once again unavailable, one of several sites that see-saw between being allowed or prohibited. Although attempts to reach Blogspot&#39;s homepage rerouted to Blogger.com&#39;s simplified Chinese homepage, neither Blogspot owner Google&#39;s official blog nor the infamous Chinabounder blog -- which features the sexual exploits and political rantings of a foreign English teacher in Shanghai -- could be reached.Blocked throughout the recent changes&#160;is the English-language site of Wikipedia. Its Chinese-language site is&#160;almost always unavailable&#160;here.China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, along with some pornographic sites.&#160;
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Several arrests in Hong Kong for posting sexually explicit images of what appear to be some of Asiaâs best-known pop stars has led to a debate over free speech on the Web.
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(InfoWorld) - Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chinese government for what the press advocacy group considers a move to end anonymous blogging in the communist country. The government, through the Internet Society of China, recently drafted a pact that was signed by at least 20 major blog service providers in the country, including Yahoo and Microsoft, the Paris-based watchdog group said Thursday. "The pact stops short [of] theÂ previous project of making it obligatory for bloggers to register, but it can be used to force service providers to censor content and identify bloggers," the group said in a statement. The pact, unveiled Wednesday, signals an "imminent" new wave of censorship and repression, the group said. Blogging services, which make it easy and simple for people to publish writings, photos, and videos on the Web, have become popular among individuals wanting to anonymously disseminate information that governments would rather keep confidential. The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., Microsoft and Yahoo didn't immediately reply to requests for comment. The pact "encourages" blog service providers to require that people provide their real names and contact information in order to let them post blogs, and then store the individuals' information, the group said. The pact also says blog service providers should "monitor and manage comments" as well as delete "illegal and bad information," according to Reporters Without Borders. In its statement, the group quotes Internet Society of China Secretary General Huang Chengqing as saying: "Blog service providers who allow the use of pseudonyms may be more attractive to bloggers, but they will be punished by the government if they fail to screen illegal information." China's Internet policies, such as the censorship of search engine results, have become a frequent target of criticism by organizations that advocate for human rights and press freedom. These organizations, likeÂ Amnesty International, have also criticized Internet companiesÂ including Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google for going along with Chinese government requirements that these groups charge violate human rights and press freedom. The companies' defense is that they must comply with the local laws of the countries in which they operate. Yahoo in particular has been blasted often in recent years for cooperating with the Chinese government and providing information that has led to the arrest of dissidents and journalists. In April, theÂ wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident sued YahooÂ in the U.S. for divulging information about her husband's Internet activity, which allegedly led to his arrest and torture. The suit was filed by the World Organization for Human Rights USA on behalf of Yu Ling, the wife of Wang Xiaoning, arrested in September 2002 on charges including "incitement to subvert state power." This month, aÂ U.S. congressional committee said it plans to investigateÂ whether or not a Yahoo representative lied during testimony over the company's role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for 10 years. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Wikimedia Foundation's English-language site was accessible in China again on Friday, although its simplified Chinese-language site remained blocked. China censors Internet content that it finds objectionable, usually political material that relating to Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the Falun Gong cult, and occasionally pornography. Although the Web sites of most Western news outlets are available, the British Broadcasting Corp.'s news site remains a noteworthy exception. The English Wikipedia site has been available for various periods over the last three years, and has kept a record of those periods on its site. "Wikipedia is such a popular Web site that almost every foreigner who visits China may try to visit Wikipedia pages. I believe someone at [the Ministry of Information Industry] or another government ministry realized what bad PR a Wikipedia block produces," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based media and Internet site. "Once they had figured out the elegant solution of keeping the Chinese version blocked, and filtering out English Wikipedia pages about Tibet and other 'sensitive' subjects, they were happy to let us access the rest of Wikipedia," Goldkorn said. While English Wikipedia was unblocked, Yahoo Flickr photo service remained accessible from China. However, most photos on the site were blocked and could not be viewed by Chinese users.
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A new Chinese news service launched by Google displays no results from websites banned by China's officials. The search engine that promises to do no evil says why include links that come up empty? anti-censorship advocates are watching.
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China is blocking access to the Web site Google News, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday, and accused the US-based company of being complicit by filtering its Chinese-language site.
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China will intensify controls of the  growing numbers of bloggers using the Internet to lay bare  their thoughts, politics and even bodies, the country&#39;s chief  censor has announced.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Congressman Chris Smith said that top American technology companies are failing to prevent censorship and other human rights abuses in China, writing Saturday in a letter to The Wall Street Journal. "There is enormous profit potential, but entering the Chinese market means challenging a repressive regime on basic human rights tenets. Sadly, some of America's largest tech firms are currently failing this new test of corporate responsibility," wrote Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and a member of the Foreign Services Committee. Smith said that representatives from Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft appeared at an April, 2006 Congressional hearing he convened and "they all acknowledged that their companies have enabled dictatorships to censor democracy and human rights promotion on the Internet." He also said that "Yahoo and Cisco have evenÂ helped the Chinese government incarcerate Internet usersÂ for pro-democracy activity." Court documents and evidence from human rights groups have shown that Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary, Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), cooperated with Chinese police in cases against journalist Shi Tao and political activist Li Zhi, and that material provided by the company may have led to their conviction. Shi was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, Li to eight years. In January, Smith re-introduced "The Global Online Freedom Bill of 2007," would give individuals like Shi and Li the right to seek redress in U.S. courts, if they believe their freedom of expression was compromised by a U.S. company. Internet companies would be required to inform the Office of Global Internet Freedom -- to be created if the bill is signed into law -- of keywords and search parameters they are filtering. They must also notify the Office of any restrictions on Internet information access with which they must comply in order to do business in a foreign country. Companies can be fined up to $2 million for violation of these principles, with individuals liable for up to $100,000. The bill provides for $50 million to establish the Office of Global Internet Freedom. The bill cited nine countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, for blocking, restricting, and monitoring the Internet and its citizens' use of it, according to a January 8 statement from Smith's office. Later in January, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Vodafone Group agreed to develop aÂ code of conductÂ with a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights. Eighteen NGOs are participating in the guidelines' development, including: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders. One observer felt the tech firms were now between a rock and a hard place. "Technology companies now have the unenviable position of moving into the media realm, which is tightly controlled in China," said Danny Levinson, publisher of BDL Media's ChinaCSR.com and the China CSR monthly magazine. "When dealing with corporate social responsibility in China, foreign technology companies are easier targets than firms in other sectors because they are much more high profile than, say, the mining companies providing poor labor oversight and textile companies polluting the environment," Levinson said.
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&quot;China is censoring Google News to force Internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports,&quot; said a statement from Reporters Without Borders.
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BEIJING  -- Fearful of soaring Internet addiction  and juvenile crime, China has banned the opening of new  Internet cafes this year, state media reported on Tuesday.
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China released a self-discipline pact for Chinese search engine providers to reject web porn Wednesday. The new regulation, promulgated by the Internet Society of China (ISC
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The Chinese government's filter for objectionable Internet content is actually a "panopticon," or an area where everything is visible, and not a true firewall at all.