China's "Friends" highlights Web freedoms
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SONGJIANG NEW TOWN, China, Feb X  - "Soul Partners", a new comedy series described as China's version of the U.S. TV hit "Friends", features six people in their 20s who live together after being separately tricked into buying the same apartment.
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"China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes."  China on Tuesday denied a report that its military had hacked into Pentagon computers, saying the allegations were "groundless" and that Beijing was opposed to cybercrime. via The Oregonian
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In a digital arms race, China's Internet controls might be used for more than censorship.
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China&#039;s Internet regulators are stepping up controls on blogs and search engines to block material it considers unlawful or immoral, the government said Friday.
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By Bruce Einhorn and Ben Elgin  Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft endured a wave of public disapproval earlier this year over their compliance with Chinese censorship of their websites.
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Several news stories have noted that China's internet user base increased by more than 70 million in 2007 to a count 213 million at year's end. Little noted is that 23 percent of these users use the internet from mobile devices.
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InfoWorld - The Chinese government took steps during 2006 to&#160;increase its control&#160;and monitoring of Internet access by the country&#39;s growing Internet population, the U.S. Department of State said in a human-rights report released on Tuesday.
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Facebook, the social networking  Internet site that is sweeping the globe with a quarter million  new members every day, has targeted the world's second-largest  Internet market, registering a local Web address in China.
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'Today, the great and handsome government...' Despite scant internet access outside major metropolitan centres, blogging in China is enjoying a boom to match its manufacturing industry.â¦
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Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)  Beijing, 17 December: China's army of Internet users and operators are beginning to question the practicality and purpose of new controls on network - mostly on-line - music.
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Also: Internet boom in China built on virtual fun. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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By Li Weitao  China has made a major step forward in Internet technology, which could offer faster, more secure access and ease worries over network capacity, industry insiders said this weekend.
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Google Inc. (GOOG)'s recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil."    Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China...
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The Chinese governmentâs censorship of some Web sites with no discernible political content has fostered a backlash among Internet users.
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China will take a new step Thursday to tighten control of the Internet when rules go into force limiting online video-sharing to state companies
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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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China will take a new step Thursday to tighten control of the Internet when rules go into force limiting online video-sharing to state companies. But regulators, wary of hurting a fast-growing industry, are expected to let private operators work around the restrictions.