Who’s afraid of the big bad blog?
LiveJournal is functionally dead in China right now. The Chinese government tossed another 1.8 million blogs into the cyber- shadows by cutting off access to the service.
According to Wired LiveJournal announced on Monday that they had joined the ranks of Technorati, WordPress.com and a host of other banned services.
The GreatFirewallofChina.org, surprisingly unblocked and loaded with condemning comments, first spotted the block Friday. It is not the first time LiveJournal has gotten the cyber-axe and some folks think there may be a partial pardon coming: Xiao Qiang, a Chinese dissident and founder of China Digital Times (CDT is also flying in China’s no-see zone), the best comprehensive aggregator of China News on the planet, speculates that the timing of this shutdown suspiciously corresponds to the start of the National People’s Congress meeting in Beijing. The government wants to ensure the silence of blogger guns by not allowing them to even load.
While Livejournal could be freed from virtual detention after the march meeting, Xiao states, “You never know when they are going to block it again.”
I often see no rhyme or reason regarding blocks. even with today’s announcement that new Internet Cafes would not be licensed in 2007, due to concern for porn and game addictions, I have seen “body art” sites flourish while some pro-China expat blogs have gone dark after a single rebuttal of policy.
To date here are a few of the services that have been blocked:
http://blogger.com
http://wordpress.com/
http://www.blogspot.com
http://egoweblog.com
http://www.blogspirit.com/
http://www.blogeasy.com/
http://www.blogzor.com/
http://www.mazeme.com/
http://www.yesblogger.com/
http://www.tblog.com/
http://joeuser.com/
http://typepad.com/
I cannot view many of the sites that link to me or have important information I feel I need to read. Some banned spaces can be accessed through services like Feedburner, Bloglines, Delicious , and through great humanitarian sites like Global Voices Online or via proxy servers, but others are impossibly hard to get to…
The Great Firewall appears determined to outlast its historical namesake.
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Members of any of the blog services mentioned above can show that they care about these issues by linking back to any of the banned blogs or any of the stories referenced.
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2007/03/internet-is-closed.html and http://bargainprofessor.wordpress.com/ I received a trackbacks from you, but cannot view you as you too are blocked here…I will look for you…
11 responses so far
[…] reports about China has blocked livejournal and Onemanbandwidth has a up -to-date summary of blocked blog hosting sites. Oiwan […]
Ah, well, Lonnie – time to brush off the Banned in China button again!
And to think I used the Wire Jacket and the Death of a Thousand Cuts as a political metaphor about our new Governor in my latest post!
Peter, that is a great post!! Ouch, I feel the stinging all the way from here…
Just re-added you to the blogroll…You were lost in the crash…
I would like to get the banned blogs blogroll going again , but folks don’t seem interested in Free Speech much these days…
Ideas?
Thanks to David Micheal Porter for first passing along the block info….
I am a fierce advocate of free speech. Yet, I think any significant change must come from within China and most likely from university students.
Those in the West can want free speech on the mainland, but unless change is initiated within momentum, as we have learned, will be quickly lost.
The issue because why aren’t more university students standing on their desks and yelling for the free flow of information?
Are Chinese students shallow and only worried about getting a ‘good job’?
Has the gov’t effectively stolen away the desire for free speech by random blocks, intensive monitoring, and the jailing of dissidents and free speech advocates?
I have sat with Chinese students on numerous occasions and had them marvel at the fact that I, a non-Chinese, was so passionate about the issue of free speech in China.
It is not until those same students rise up and demand free speech that free speech will be realized.
It is not until those same students actively engage in free speech and say damn the censors that free speech will be realized.
It is not until….
You get the point. China doesn’t have free speech today because not enough people in China want free speech today.
Yep, it is hard enough to get them to tell you they can’t hear you in class much less they hate the idea of a repressed media…When they HAVE spoken out, the government has closed their BBS sites and more…It is a dangerous proposition to be a squeaky wheel here…But, I think change is coming…
I think America has undergone a death of outrage as well…I did a post (lost) that marvelled that a student using Facebook (http://facebook,com) got 99,999 members in a group so he could win a keg of beer while the humanitarian groups there floundered…Facebook could be a huge agent for social change, but nobody seems to give a damn…
As an example: One College in America prides itself in an Office of Social Committment, but send their China fellows to two top tier schools where the population is well-heeled, haughty and unappreciative….The rural kids stay poor and underprivileged…Some social commitment!
I have asked Bear again at http://truthlaidbear.com to open up a banned blogs alliance and hope he sees the need…
I just keep puttering along….Ideas?
I feel so lucky to have chosen typepad as my bloghost. In the last year, it has only been blocked once and that was just for a few weeks.
I’m not so sure about the NPC being the reason for blocking LJ, because Blogger was un-blocked just a few days before LJ went dark. But again, this is China, where almost everything seems illogical…
[…] Onemanbandwidth: An American Professor in China » Blog Archive » Who’s afraid of the big bad blo…Another man down. LiveJournal in China geblockt. […]
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Great Fire Wall from Ideas…
I can never understand why China chooses to censure web sites or why they try to order the organic process to join the world economy.
It almost seems to be an attempt deliberated to order expression, and by the expression, learning. Most of study is qu…