China Completely Banned YouTube

[100%]

China appears to be blocking all access to YouTube. Now, why in the world would it do something like that? I’ve got some theories. First, though, the facts: YouTube use from China started dropping off the map sometime Monday night, with traffic nearly reaching a standstill by Tuesday morning. Google (which owns YouTube) has confirmed the apparent ban, though its staff is not certain of the cause. “We do not know the reason for the blockage, and we’re working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users in China,” a spokesperson says. Google does believe the Chinese government knowingly cut the access. The spokesperson, however, questions why officials wouldn’t have just blocked a specific video, as they’ve done before, rather than nixing the entire site.

YouTube has been banned by other countries as well for allowing users to upload and share videos which foreign governments in Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan and Turkey found embarrassing to their political regimes. Google is working to restore access to the site for Chinese citizens. This is not the first instance in which Chinese users have been unable to access the video sharing site. China blocked YouTube during the Tibet riots in March 2008. During that time protesters were burning shops and vehicles in an attempt to protest the Han Chinese influence. The riots left 19 dead.

Source: Link (http://www.rlslog.net/china-completely-banned-youtube/)

[SBfreak]

Two words: Chinese democracy...Thanks for the news.

[kazuya]

They blocked it so people in the world can't see how others live there and what big scum rules over them:mad2:

[anon]

It's not the first time a Google service is blocked in China. It has already happened with their biggest service, the search engine itself. Google tried allocating extra IPs to bypass the ban, but those ended up being blocked as well. As far as I know the site is now accessible with the condition that "uncomfortable" pages and images don't appear in the results.

The ban is of course fully possible to bypass with proxies/VPN, but in my opinion YT shouldn't be blocked on the first place.

[zatoicchi]

it's not surprising at all that china has done this, maybe they are afraid that sensitive information
will be broadcast all over the net...

[Nobody]

As long as I have access to the chinese versions of youtube that carry full seasons of American TV shows--I've got no problem with it. And I imagine the Chinese don't either.

[100%]

As long as I have access to the chinese versions of youtube that carry full seasons of American TV shows--I've got no problem with it. And I imagine the Chinese don't either.

I second that but the problem is that their servers are too slow... well, you win some, you lose some I guess... :wink:

---------- Post added at 16:16 ---------- Previous post was at 14:43 ----------

Now, here is what it is all about:


China is home to 1.3 billion people and has a highly scalable technological approach based on extensive content filters (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5928) known satirically as The Great FireWall of China. China also uses technology to discourage content creation, deploying cute animated police characters (http://issmatblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/virtual-cops.jpg) to remind Internet users they are being watched. [source (http://report.globalintegrity.org/china)]

And now the good news... ;-)


Online Censorship: Sounds good, but it never works.

While there is much diversity in the style of Internet censorship among the world's worst offenders, one common thread unites them: Internet censorship doesn't work. Cut off one site, and a thousand more pop up. In China, censorship online is sparking criticism (http://commons.globalintegrity.org/2008/02/china-citizen-protests-over-censorship.html) that off-line censorship has rarely seen.

Source (http://commons.globalintegrity.org/2008/02/internet-censorship-comparative-study.html)