Blocked China Web users rage against Great Firewall
293548
Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent about China's "Great Firewall".
705382
China has protested to the United States over its &quot;unacceptable&quot; blockade of fish and shrimp imports, a government website said on Saturday.
39895
Efforts by countries like China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told an audience of Stanford University students Tuesday.&quot;I don&#39;t see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet,&quot; he said. &quot;You cannot control the Internet.&quot;China has grappled with the issue of Internet censorship&#160;in recent years and Microsoft, along with several other U.S. companies, has come under fire for aiding in this effort. In late 2005,&#160;Microsoft shut down the blog of journalist Zhao Jing, also known as Michael Anti, when he blogged about a newspaper strike in the country.In the long run, however, free speech will win out, Gates said.That&#39;s because of business requirements. Restrictions on free speech will curtail business activity and so commercial forces will work against censorship, Gates said. &quot;If your country wants to have a developed economy... you basically have to open up the Internet,&quot; he said.Gates made the comments following a talk on &quot;Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back,&quot; which focused mainly on his two favorite topics: the future of technology and the philanthropic goals he has set for himself following his retirement from day to day work at the company he founded in 1975.Microsoft&#39;s founder will step down&#160;from his daily work at the company entirely in July, but he has set some big follow-up goals for himself: including the fight against HIV/AIDS and a campaign to eradicate polio and malaria.Another ambition is to find new ways to&#160;drive innovation that will benefit the world&#39;s poorest countries.This is a major problem, Gates said. Today, with millions still dying from malaria, 90 percent of the world&#39;s medical research relates to conditions that occur in the world&#39;s richest countries. &quot;Consider how much money should be spent on baldness versus malaria,&quot; he said.Fifty times the amount spent on researching malaria goes to finding a cure for baldness, he said.&quot;We have this disparity where, as great as our system is, if there&#39;s not a market need, it doesn&#39;t drive innovation.&quot;Gates would like to see that change.&quot;One of the things I&#39;ll be spending time on is reaching out to both universities and companies and encouraging them to get more involved in this,&quot; he said.The 52 year-old Gates seemed apprehensive about his upcoming career as a philanthropist. Stepping down from Microsoft &quot;could be traumatic for me,&quot; he said. &quot;I was 17 years old when I started working full-time on Microsoft and I&#39;ve done it basically every day of work since then. So who knows what it will be like to make the change.&quot;&#160;
255682
Hackers operating through Chinese Internet servers have launched a debilitating attack on the computer system of a sensitive Commerce Department bureau, forcing it to replace hundreds of workstations and block employees from regular use of the Internet for more than a month, Commerce officials said...
109664
In what was speculated to be a reaction to a possible DoS attack, the Bush Administration has blocked at least some foreign visitor access to its official campaign Web site.
100241
A Japanese-developed adult-themed  computer game has incensed some of China's Internet surfers who  deem it a bawdy slur on the classic novel, "Dream of the Red  Chamber."
208542
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.
580149
Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google&#160;and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these&#160;sites was redirected&#160;to Chinese search engine Baidu.com.The claim first surfaced on TechCrunch, a U.S. blog that largely covers Internet startups before being picked up by other sites. The headline of that post alleged &quot;Baidu hijacking Google traffic In China,&quot; but offered no evidence to prove the claim apart from an undated, modified screenshot showing Baidu&#39;s Web page below the URL for Google Blogsearch.In a follow-up post, TechCrunch said &quot;new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.&quot; That report cited posts on other blogs, where users claimed to have been redirected from U.S. search sites to Baidu.A Google spokeswoman in Beijing did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.However, several Internet users -- four in Beijing and two in Shanghai -- reported on Friday morning that search engines operated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, including Google Blogsearch, one of the sites reportedly most affected, were accessible. Attempts to reach these sites had not been redirected to Baidu, they said.Internet censorship is a serious problem in China, and regulators routinely&#160;block access to sites&#160;with content they don&#39;t like. But Chinese officials very rarely comment on censorship efforts, making it difficult for users to determine when a site has been blocked or is inaccessible for other reasons.Timing can be an important factor, with Chinese censors blocking access to some Web sites around politically sensitive dates, such as the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the Chinese Communist Party Congress, a political confab held once every five years to choose top leaders and set policy that is now underway in Beijing.Access to a search engine can also be blocked if a user searches for a politically sensitive word, such as a search for information on the banned Falungong religious sect.Tracking the ebb and flow of censorship efforts can be a challenge, as access to sites can be blocked and opened, seemingly by whim. On Wednesday, Wikipedia remained blocked in China and access to YouTube was shut off. But censors eased off on other sites, opening up access to Google&#39;s Blogspot blogging service and permitting users to view pictures on Flickr, which had been blocked even though the site was accessible in China.Even when Web sites are accessible in China, there can be moments when sites cannot be reached. For example, one of the Chinese Internet users in Beijing contacted for this story said he was unable to reach Google.com three days ago. Attempts to reach the site were not redirected to Baidu, and Google has been accessible during the last couple of days, he said.While the Chinese government may not be redirecting search-engine traffic to Baidu, censors did this in 2002, just before the previous Party Congress opened in Beijing. At that time, censors cut off access to Google and redirected traffic to several local search engines, including Baidu. However, the rerouting did not affect all users and did not appear to be done at a national level, analysts said at that time.&#160;
253140
Symantec is to stop classifying a software utility that enables Chinese surfers to view blocked websites as a Trojan horse. The reassessment follows stories earlier this week questioning the designation of
62229
When Chinese Web surfers try to the big three U.S. search engines, they're reportedly redirected to Baidu. Recent political events, including Dalai Lama's American award, may be to blame.
400722
Unpalatable A Chinese user's attempt to sue Symantec for damage caused as a result of dodgy anti-virus signature update files is unlikely to succeed, according to security experts.â¦
193609
&#160;China watchers, get your scorecards out: Google&#39;s YouTube is blocked,&#160;Wikipedia is still blocked, but, for the moment, Google blog site Blogspot.com is available and some pictures from Yahoo&#39;s Flickr photos can once again be viewed.China-based users accessing YouTube since Wednesday afternoon began receiving the dreaded &quot;The server at www.youtube.com is taking too long to respond,&quot; the typical response when a user attempts to view a site that has been blocked.Google&#39;s blog site, Blogspot, is currently available after being blocked in June. An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author&#39;s sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog. Google did not respond to a request for comment on YouTube&#39;s block and Blogspot&#39;s availability.Photo site Flickr is once again displaying most of its photos, after its pictures, but not the site itself, were blocked in June. The Flickr photo block was the most obvious indicator that China&#39;s blocking technology goes beyond simple domain restrictions, but could target sub-domains. Even now, some Flickr images remain blocked while others display. For example, searching for the term &quot; Beijing &quot; from a China-based computer displays the larger photos on the left, but the avatars of users do not load.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. However, while both Playboy.com and Penthouse.com are available, the British Broadcasting Corp.&#39;s news site is not. The Chinese government does not announce or comment when a site is blocked or made available.The current blocking may be&#160;related to the Communist Party Congress, which began Oct. 15 in Beijing and ends Sunday. Held once every five years, the meeting is the Chinese government&#39;s most important political gathering, used to create five-year plans, which are the bedrock of China&#39;s centrally-planned economy. It is also often used to reshuffle government positions or for leaders to consolidate their power.&quot;It is never clear why the authorities block or unblock access to Web sites,&quot; said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based, English-language media blog. &quot;With the 17th Communist Party Congress currently taking place in Beijing, China&#39;s media regulators and media organizations are on high alert for anything the Party might find objectionable.&quot;
173523
Web-surfers outside the US have been blocked from visiting the official George W. Bush campaign website. UK-based internet monitoring firm Netcraft first noticed the blockage Monday morning.
415515
The re-election website of President Bush is blocking overseas visitors because of "security reasons".
61696
Flickr.com, one of the world's most  popular online photo-sharing sites and owned by Yahoo Inc.  , is likely being blocked by the Chinese government,  Yahoo's Hong Kong unit said on Tuesday.
658895
China watchers, get your scorecards out: Google Inc.'s YouTube is blocked, Wikipedia is still blocked, but, for the moment, Google blog site Blogspot.com is available and some pictures from Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr photos can once again be viewed.
25249
Flickr.com, one of the world&#39;s most  popular online photo-sharing sites and owned by Yahoo Inc.  , is likely being blocked by the Chinese government,  Yahoo&#39;s Hong Kong unit said on Tuesday.