6 ms·

404: Disney Scrubs Winnie the Pooh Off the Internet

• xiweini 7y ago
  123
• ikeboy 7y ago
  What?
  • mpiedrav 7y ago
    Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek monicker for Xi Jinping. While it's banned behind the Great Firewall, it _should_ be available outside China. But, outside China, the link now redirects to a generic regional Disney site. Nowadays, anything that upsets the Chinese government seems to be out of bounds for large corporations. It's always about profit and reputation. Edit: redirection through JS is in place for some countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211422 Way simpler than editing DNS zones.
    • HenryBemis 7y ago
      Seriously, even if someone doesn't like South Park (I'm more of a Rick and Morty type) you/we all have to watch South Park - Band in China. A very simple way to describe how China is playing this game (and we let them win).
      • mpiedrav 7y ago
        > (and we let them win) That's indeed the key point. While the Chinese government can censor whatever it pleases and enforce any policies on its citizens, it's up to US corporations to decide whether they want to keep in line with them. For what it's worth, corporations will be gradually replacing public institutions and governments in a few decades from now (at most in a century). Not by coups, but by making them largely irrelevant in everyday life. Democracy will then be as archaic as monarchies.
        • smitty1e 7y ago
          And governments will do victory laps about protecting free speech, while the tyranny is outsourced to corporations.
          • jrs235 7y ago
            That's the point of (politicians) supporting mega corps. When only a few mega corps determine if you have a job and therefore can buy and survive they can indirectly control the masses.
      • Moru 7y ago
        Awkward, that episode is not awailable in Sweden on their homepage. You get redirected to another site that does not have season 23.
• th0ma5 7y ago
  Site seems up for me https://winniethepooh.disney.com https://winniethepooh.disney.com
  • Krasnol 7y ago
    Up for me too from Germany.
    • zmix 7y ago
      Redirected me to https://www.shopdisney.de/disney/disney-filme/winnie-puuh-freunde https://www.shopdisney.de/disney/disney-filme/winnie-puuh-fr... from Germany, which is a Disney online shop, that wants to sell me stuffed animals.
  • tjoff 7y ago
    Swedish 404 for me.
    • llarsson 7y ago
      Works for me in Sweden (Ownit as ISP).
    • toxik 7y ago
      Same
    • glenndebacker 7y ago
      Also in Belgium as it redirects to Disney.be/Winnie which does not exist
  • vnchr 7y ago
    Site is up but empty of content for me.
  • Sendotsh 7y ago
    Redirects to the Disney.com.au homepage for me (Australia).
• catalogia 7y ago
  Where are you that it's 404ing? Works fine for me in Japan.
• jdkee 7y ago
  I am not sure why we are allowing China to censor the internet. The internet was designed to route around damage, which in this case is the prohibition of free speech. Despite what a despotic regime would prohibit.
  • oarsinsync 7y ago
    Layer 2 and Layer 3 of the internet continue to permit routing around damage at Layer 1. Layer 8 continues to be able to create new damage at Layer 7. There's no technology in the world that can prevent people doing things that other people disagree with.
    • dbtqgoat 7y ago
      I thought you were talking about layers of a networking frame until I realized there’s no L8 layer.
      • oarsinsync 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8
  • ReptileMan 7y ago
    China is not censoring anything. American companies are trying not to offend them.
    • remarkEon 7y ago
      This. Redirect (or bifurcate) your anger, fellas.
    • JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
      What spineless imbeciles are at the head of these companies? Removing Winnie the Pooh? It’s like living in an absurd Monty Python sketch gone haywire.
• spats1990 7y ago
  Seems up for me but redirects to Disney Korea's site because I'm in Korea.
• idlewords 7y ago
  The site redirects with javascript based on the location you view it from. You can see the redirect table in the source.
  • mroche 7y ago
    For those of us on mobile, is it feasible to paste the source here?
    • idlewords 7y ago
      Here you go: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGfd3mTVUAA98k2?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGfd3mTVUAA98k2?format=jpg&name=...
  • hayksaakian 7y ago
    Would you care to share the code? I can't find it in the source at a glance
• Razengan 7y ago
  Whomever said they didn't know how World War III will be fought has their answer: Censorship and tariffs. It has begun, and it's not nations versus nations, it's corporations versus citizens.
  • joshspankit 7y ago
    I feel like World War III was economic, and China already won.
    • Razengan 7y ago
      Rich people won. The peasants lost. As it should be, eh?
• awa 7y ago
  Works fine in the us right now
• nneonneo 7y ago
  Site works for me. It appears to be a dynamic JavaScript redirect in certain countries: Disney.redirect = new Disney.Rdr({ "can:qc": "http://www.disney.ca/", "usa,gum,pri,asm,vir,mnp,can": true, "bel": "http://www.disney.be/winnie/", "bgr": "http://www.disney.bg/disney-knigi-i-spisanija/", "cze": "http://www.disney.cz/medvidek-pu/", "zaf": "http://www.disney.co.za/winnie-the-pooh/", "bra": "http://www.disney.com.br/winniethepooh/", "dnk": "http://www.disney.dk/peter-plys/", "esp": "http://www.disney.es/winnie-the-pooh/", "fin": "http://www.disney.fi/nalle-puh/", "grc": "http://www.disney.gr/winnie-the-pooh/", "hun": "http://www.disney.hu/micimacko/", "isr": "http://www.disney.co.il/winnie-the-pooh/", "nld": "http://www.disney.nl/winnie-de-poeh/", "nor": "http://www.disney.no/ole-brumm/", "pol": "http://www.disney.pl/kubus/", "prt": "http://www.disney.pt/winnie-the-pooh/", "rou": "http://www.disney.ro/winnie-de-plus/", "swe": "http://www.disney.se/nalle-puh/", "tur": "http://www.disneyturkiye.com.tr/winnie-the-pooh/", "jpn": "http://character.disney.co.jp/winnie-the-pooh/", "chn": "http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/", "kor": "http://www.disney.co.kr/", "twn": "http://www.disney.com.tw/pooh/", "hkg": "http://www.disney.com.hk/characters/", "sgp": "http://home.disney.com.sg/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/", "mys": "http://home.disney.com.my/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/", "rus": "http://www.disney.ru/pooh/", "col,ven,ecu,pry,ury,chl,per,bol,mex,cri,dom,slv,gtm,hnd,nic,pan,blz,arg": "http://www.disneylatino.com/winniethepooh/", "bhr,egy,jor,kwt,lbn,omn,pse,qat,sau,som,are,yem,dza,mar,tun": "http://www.disneyme.com/winnie-the-pooh/", "ita,vat,smr": "http://www.disney.it/winnie-the-pooh/", "aus,nzl": "http://home.disney.com.au/disneyfilms/winniethepooh.html", "gbr,irl": "http://www.disney.co.uk/winnie-the-pooh/", "deu,aut": "http://www.disney.de/winnie-puuh/", "fra,glp,mtq,reu,hti,myt": "http://www.disney.fr/winnie-l-ourson/" }).run() In some jurisdictions (Quebec, Korea, Hong Kong) it redirects to a generic landing page, but in others it goes to a country-specific Winnie the Pooh page. Interestingly, in China it appears to redirect to "http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/" http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/", although I cannot access that page from where I am (Canada). EDIT: Note that the redirects for Quebec, Korea and Hong Kong are not new. They were all there in earlier pages, e.g. in September 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130914105628/http://winniethepooh.disney.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130914105628/http://winniethep...
• gamblor956 7y ago
  Winnie the Pooh is still visible from America.
• shakna 7y ago
  I wonder if this means efforts to release my family's IP from Disney would be more likely now. I'm a cousin so I'm less directly involved, but the Milne's have been trying to get Pooh released to the Public Domain for years.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• pcl 7y ago
  It works for me from my VPN sites in: US, NL, IN, AU, JP It fails from my sites in: NO, HK, CN (Shanghai; redirects to the HK domain), SG, IL In many of the failing countries, it simply turns into a redirect to the country-specific Disney domain, but Norway and HK get not-found messages after the redirects, and the Singapore domain doesn’t load at all. (I couldn’t test my Canada VPN site, as my corporate VPNs stopped connecting, presumably due to some sort of rate limiting.)
• rambojazz 7y ago
  But what was the problem with Winnie the Pooh? Who is offended by it so much to require a complete removal?
• mizzao 7y ago
  Only one comment so far in this thread has mentioned the obvious timing: Winnie the Pooh is often used to poke fun at Xi Jinping, and as the Hong Kong protests have started to garner more attention the CCP is starting to pressure more companies to censor undesirable content.
• thegreatco 7y ago
  Works fine for me in the US