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Blog posts tagged with 'China'
Monday, July 12
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google, which has been scuffling with the government of China lately, had its licensed renewed by the government last Friday. The renewal allows the search giant to keep its Chinese web address, but the government can still revoke it whenever it sees fit.
Wednesday, June 16
Via the Telegraph comes the story of a Chinese Internet addiction center, crack of dawn wake-up calls, and 14 teenagers who made a daring dash for freedom.
Monday, March 22
Via CNet, word has it that after fights over censorship — and a major cyber attack — Google is preparing to pull out of China:
After months of negotiations over whether it can run Google.cn with or without restrictions, it seemed that Google was getting ready to make a decision in the near-term future. However, according to a Financial Times report last week, Google is now “99.9 percent” certain that it will shut down Google.cn.
The rumored date for Google’s departure is April 10.
Update, courtesy of Ars Technica:
Google has officially stopped censoring search results in China, but in a somewhat roundabout way. Google.cn no longer works as a search portal—instead, visitors are being directed to Google’s service based out of Hong Kong, where taboo topics are not regulated by the Chinese government.
Whether China will simply block Internet users in the mainland from accessing Google Hong Kong remains to be seen.
Thursday, February 25
China, already one of the most restrictive nations when it comes to the Internet, is now forcing anyone who wants to create a website to meet with regulators and show proof of ID.
Monday, February 22
CNN looks at the role the U.S. government accidentally played in the recent Google hack from China:
The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated—we knew that already—it’s that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.
In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.
Friday, February 19
Last month, Google announced it would be ending its business efforts in China following an apparent cyberattack on the company and others from the nation. Now, the New York Times reports, an investigation conducted in part by the National Security Agency has traced the attacks to two schools in China:
If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.
Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.
Friday, January 29
Investor’s Business Daily explores a possible effect the recent Google-China dispute could have on the Internet as a whole:
China, which has imposed censorship on its Internet users and used filtering software to block Web sites, is determined to have a role in shaping next-generation Internet standards, analysts say. China wants rules governing cyberspace to be compatible with its political aims. In any event, analysts say China probably has the tools to create and manage its own cyberspace, if it so chooses.
“We are seeing the world moving away from the global Internet to a series of national networks,” warned Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu at the New America Foundation on Wednesday.
Friday, January 15
Earlier this week, Google announced it and other companies had been victims of a major cyber attack from China. Today the LA Times looks at what has become a major problem:
The attacks against the U.S. are ramping up, according to the congressional U.S.-China commission, which noted in October that Chinese espionage was “straining the U.S. capacity to respond.”
The report focused on an attack on one company, concluding that it was supported and possibly choreographed by the Chinese government. The report also alleged that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, is responsible for aspects of cyber spying and has created cyber warfare units.
Wednesday, January 13
Yesterday, Google revealed that it had been the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack from China, and that one of the goals of the attack appears to have been accessing the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. In the wake of the attack, Google has announced it will end its controversial practice of censoring search results in China, and may be ending its business ties to the nation altogether:
We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered—combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web—have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
Reactions to Google’s announcement have, for the most part, been positive. But Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch believes that while the human rights angle is worth applauding, at the end of the day Google’s decision may be more about business:
Does anyone really think Google would be doing this if it had top market share in the country? For one thing, I’d guess that would open them up to shareholder lawsuits. Google is a for-profit, publicly-held company at the end of the day. When I met with Google’s former head of China Kai-fu Lee in Beijing last October, he noted that one reason he left Google was that it was clear the company was never going to substantially increase its market share or beat Baidu. Google has clearly decided doing business in China isn’t worth it, and are turning what would be a negative into a marketing positive for its business in the rest of the world.
Tuesday, November 17
President Obama held a town hall with students in Shanghai yesterday, and while his confession that he’s never personally used Twitter is getting a lot of attention, the New York Times reports that his willingness to criticize Internet censorship in one of the most restrictive countries in the world, is a much more noteworthy event.
Wednesday, October 21
Via Current comes the bizarre story of a news report about a fictional lesbian commune in rural Sweden, the legion of Chinese men who went online to investigate, and the Swedish ISPs who watched their service crash as a result.
Friday, September 25
Next week is the 60th anniversary of communist rule in China, and to celebrate the nation’s government is once again cracking down on Internet use, reports the New York Times.
With the debate over net neutrality gearing up here in the States, it’s good to remember that despite whatever complaints Americans have about the Internet, it could be much, much worse.
Friday, August 21
Up until now, treating people for so-called Internet addiction was mainly left to China and South Korea. But now a new treatment program called “reStart” is being offered right here in America, in the town of Fall City, Washington.
How much will it cost to cure yourself of your overwhelming addiction to Facebook and World of Warcraft? Try $14,500 for a 45-day stay — and that’s after the initial $200 filing fee, and the $800 screening.
Wednesday, August 05
When it comes to blocking websites and social networking applications from citizens, China is one of the leaders of the pack. But a new study from the group Netpop Research (via Read Write Web) finds that despite their government’s attempts at censorship, 92% of Chinese citizens use social media sites—a higher percentage than the U.S.
Monday, July 27
A new study from the group LogMeIn finds that 85% of small business workers say they prefer to stay connected while on vacation. This prompts Om Malik of GigaOm to wonder whether vacations of the future will be all about staying away from the Internet.
That’s certainly a better solution for Internet addiction than shock therapy—just ask China.
Tuesday, July 21
Just how seriously does China take Internet addiction? So seriously that they’ve been using shock therapy on teenagers in attempts to break excessive online habits. Egads.
Thankfully, as China Daily recently reported, this absurd practice of scrambling adolescent brains has been brought to an end:
The Ministry of Health has ordered a halt to a controversial electroshock treatment intended to help treat Internet addiction in teenagers, the Beijing News reported on Tuesday.
The Ministry said the therapy, which was administered by a clinic in Linyi, Shandong province, has not been proven to be safe.
Kong Lingzhong, editor of a domestic Internet addiction-themed portal told the Beijing News that there was still fierce debate over whether electroshock therapy was appropriate for young internet addicts.
“We have no clue whether this freaky treatment has side-effects,” Kong said.
Friday, June 19
China continues to “protect” its citizens from Internet content deemed unhealthy. Reports Ars Technica:
An impatient Chinese government has begun blocking some results from Google China Friday, just one day after the country’s Internet watchdog group criticized Google for “disseminating pornographic and vulgar information.” The blocks were instituted by China’s national office for Internet pornography crackdown and targeted at search results that contained unsavory content. The office also apparently asked Google to stop searching foreign sites.
Oddly, only Chinese language sites were affected by government blocking.
Thursday, June 11
China, known for its strict Internet rules, recently ordered every PC in the country have screening software installed in order to protect citizens from unseemly—and political—content. But via the BBC comes word that the mandated software may, in fact, put computers at risk:
The Chinese government has mandated that all computers in the country must have the screening software installed.
It is intended to filter out offensive material from the net.The Chinese government said that the Green Dam Youth Escort software, as it is known, was intended to push forward the “healthy development of the internet” and “effectively manage harmful material for the public and prevent it from being spread.”
“We found a series of software flaws,” explained Isaac Mao, a blogger and social entrepreneur in China, as well as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Among the flaws is the fact that communication between the software and the developer’s servers is not encrypted, meaning a hacker could easily install code that would essentially allow them to seize control of almost every computer in China.
Thursday, June 04
Twenty years ago today, pro-democracy student protesters were crushed by the Chinese government in Tiananmen Square.
In leading up to the anniversary, the government had started blocking such popular social networking sites as Twitter and Flickr, fearing that the protests would flare up again. But as the Guardian UK reports, such censorship hasn’t stopped an online protest from taking place:
Chinese internet users are rebelling against an internet crackdown brought in on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Twenty years after the pro-democracy protests that claimed the lives of hundreds – or even thousands – of unarmed civilians in Beijing, a number of websites appear to be making a veiled protest at state censorship by referring to the date sarcastically as “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day”.
Wednesday, March 25
China, long at the forefront of blocking the Internet form its citizens, has once apparently blocked YouTube — again. The reason, the BBC reports, are videos that show Chinese police beating Tibetan monks and other civilians.
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