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I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly neve

I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly never been that problematic. I hate SOPA too, but tying SOPA to the restrictions currently in China is absolutely inaccurate. SOPA's main objective (regardless of whether it'll actually do this) would be to attack pirating sites. In China, they don't really care about pirating. Even mid-sized companies and internet cafes use illegal software. When you ask if it's "real" you get a response that's something like "of course it's real, you can use it." internet censorship is used for a completely different reason, and should not be compared.

aMoniker 15y ago
SOPA's main objective is to give the US government an easy, legal way to shut down sites for a variety of reasons. Piracy is a pretense.
- philwelch 15y ago
  SOPA's main effect is to do that. Neither you nor I know anyone's motivations and objectives.
  - schiffern 15y ago
    Your epistemology seems confused. How is it harder to know someone's present intent (just some stuff-in-the-brain) than it is to know the future?
    - philwelch 15y ago
      How is my epistemology confused? SOPA gives the government the ability to legally shut down web sites. That's what the law says. We can know that because we can read the law. Generally, if you read something, you can figure out what it says. That's far firmer epistemic ground than speculating about, as you call it, the contents of someone else's brain.
      - schiffern 15y ago
        Because you're working backward. We don't have a time machine, so neither of us can actually know the effect. So how are you figuring it out? Legislation by itself has no effect – it's just a piece of paper – the enforcement is what counts. And how a law is enforced is based on its intent (its real intent, which is not necessarily the justification given to the public). So you're figuring out its "effect" based on the inferred intent, then turning around and saying that the authors' intent is unknowable.
        philwelch 15y ago
        I'm not inferring intent at all, I'm saying that a law that says "the government can delete your domain from DNS" gives the government the power to delete your domain from DNS. How, when, and where they will use that power, I don't know. Also, laws aren't always used the way they were originally intended, because laws tend to outlive the people who wrote them. But how, when, whether the law is ever actually used is already very much beside the point. The point is that the government would have the ability to do a certain thing, not that they actually would or wouldn't in any given scenario.
denzil_correa 15y ago
> SOPA's main objective (regardless of whether it'll actually do this) would be to attack pirating sites. Regardless of it's so called "main objectives" SOPA hands omnipotent power in someone's hands. It's like handing machine guns to monkeys.
- michaelty 15y ago
  "SOPA...It's like handing machine guns to monkeys." I've gotta try this out as an explanation of SOPA to non-techies.
Natsu 15y ago
SOPA would require sites to be blocked at the DNS level. This is not so different from how the Great Firewall of China is actually implemented. See this, for example, for how it works: http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china/ http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peop... And here's what kind of harm that can cause: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_sopa/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_so... While they promise to block "only" pirate sites, they'll soon find that the blocks are ridiculously unworkable until they block all the sites that allow you to bypass them. I don't know whether or not they'll do this, but I strongly suspect they will, because it's the choice every other country who has ever set up a blacklist has made. I've yet to see one where they didn't abuse it, either, for political reasons. This will drag all sorts of non-pirate sites into the fray and hobble the services, such as VPNs, which can be offered to the public.
- ballard 15y ago
  One can only begin to imagine how SOPA would be legally administered, what sort of due-process appeals may exist and more basically, how it would a implemented technically. It would be seem all too easy for patent trolls and the like to misuse SOPA in an attempt to bludgeon disruptive startups and silence critics under a banner of righteousness. "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." Poor Richard's Almanack 1738
jbester 15y ago
Wouldn't this hit anyone who linked to wikileaks-like sites?
xiaoma 15y ago
>I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly never been that problematic. China has changed since you (apparently) grew up or lived here. There hasn't been a single day in years that I've found YouTube, facebook, Twitter or any of the major blogging sites have been open. Google is generally blocked only for sensitive terms, cache or queries with too many ? query terms in the URL. Gmail, on the other hand is becoming less and less reliable. The internet is barely usable for international sites, especially now that everyone is putting facebook and twitter buttons all over the place. It's worth pointing out that the pain described above is caused through centralized control of DNS servers... which is exactly what SOPA would create in the US. Also, in my experience internet cafes don't claim to have 正版 (as you put it "real") software when they don't. They would think you were a bit odd for caring though.
- shimon_e 15y ago
  Actually, you can access the servers that host the youtube flash videos. For example, using a VPN start loading a youtube video. Then disable the VPN. It will continue loading.
  - zrgiu_ 15y ago
    not true, just tried it.
- wisty 15y ago
  You need adblock to self-censor. Otherwise every site with Facebook's trojans (i.e. "Like" buttons) will hang while you try to access facebook's blocked domains.
  - zizee 15y ago
    Or ghostery http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/.
- Shenglong 15y ago
  I didn't experience any blocking in 2008, and I could access most sites in summer of 2010. I suppose your experience is more recent, though.
chadp 15y ago
You are absolutely correct, SOPA is totally different in concept for the blocking of sites. But there are lots of sites and companies that are not alive because the government doesn't allow it. Want to start a video site? sorry, that is regulated. anything to do with online payments? need a license. social network or any communication website. Yup, need a license. As a foreigner here in China a blocked or crippled internet is zero effect or relevance on daily life. We just VPN out to the "real" Internet daily. But if SOPA is approved, there may be no more real internet. Not because facebook or big sites will be blocked however. It will be because the government will have the ability to cut innovation and entrepreneurship off by seizing sites at will. China doesn't allow social networking sites. What will America and Co. not like and allow?
- PakG1 15y ago
  China has plenty of social networking sites inside of China. China doesn't allow major foreign social networking sites, but they do allow minor foreign social networking sites. Out of curiosity on that last sentence of mine, I just checked MySpace. It works. If the Chinese government doesn't even care to block it... how the mighty have fallen. :)
  - wangweij 15y ago
    MySpace can be accessed in China because there's very little Chinese using it, at least not using it to do anything the government dislikes. On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are totally inaccessible. Take DropBox for example. At the beginning, there is no problem using it. But when people found out they can publicly share documents there, it was blocked. Now you can still use it as a backup service, but public sharing is not available.
    - PakG1 15y ago
      Yes, my point is that that if MySpace were popular, it could easily be considered the way Facebook is considered.
cleaver 15y ago
For up-to-date reports on outages, check: http://www.herdict.org/ http://www.herdict.org/
nekojima 15y ago
"I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly never been that problematic." It is problematic when you are being monitored 24/7 and don't have the alternative of waiting a few days until you are in a free country. It is problematic when you want to have an overseas hosted blog, website, files or photos and you can not access them when and where you want. As myself a regular visitor to, and on-off resident of, China, there could well be a number of reasons why you don't find sites blocked. Most obvious would be using in the airport or at a major western or expensive hotel chain which have a different level of internet access. Where in the country can also have an effect, with Guangdong/Shenzhen/Shanghai (and sometimes Beijing) being the most open. In rural areas and 'political sensitive' there is significant disruption to non-officially sanctioned sites. Which local access provider has an impact too, along with what part of the national intranet you are using (this also links to location, but literally your results may vary depending on provider). The computer you are using, if local, may have software (pre- or unknowingly installed) which blocks or hinders sites or searches, and if you bring a laptop with you, these level can be overcome. Political issues and party campaigns can have significant short-term impacts on particular sites and their availability, this includes locally sanctioned or owned sites. Most importantly, when in China you may only check a few times on gmail, fb, whatever sites and they may work from those locations or at those times you try. If you are local or living locally as an expat, your results over time will be far more telling.

aMoniker 15y ago

SOPA's main objective is to give the US government an easy, legal way to shut down sites for a variety of reasons. Piracy is a pretense.

philwelch 15y ago
SOPA's main effect is to do that. Neither you nor I know anyone's motivations and objectives.
- schiffern 15y ago
  Your epistemology seems confused. How is it harder to know someone's present intent (just some stuff-in-the-brain) than it is to know the future?
  - philwelch 15y ago
    How is my epistemology confused? SOPA gives the government the ability to legally shut down web sites. That's what the law says. We can know that because we can read the law. Generally, if you read something, you can figure out what it says. That's far firmer epistemic ground than speculating about, as you call it, the contents of someone else's brain.
    - schiffern 15y ago
      Because you're working backward. We don't have a time machine, so neither of us can actually know the effect. So how are you figuring it out? Legislation by itself has no effect – it's just a piece of paper – the enforcement is what counts. And how a law is enforced is based on its intent (its real intent, which is not necessarily the justification given to the public). So you're figuring out its "effect" based on the inferred intent, then turning around and saying that the authors' intent is unknowable.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        I'm not inferring intent at all, I'm saying that a law that says "the government can delete your domain from DNS" gives the government the power to delete your domain from DNS. How, when, and where they will use that power, I don't know. Also, laws aren't always used the way they were originally intended, because laws tend to outlive the people who wrote them. But how, when, whether the law is ever actually used is already very much beside the point. The point is that the government would have the ability to do a certain thing, not that they actually would or wouldn't in any given scenario.

denzil_correa 15y ago

> SOPA's main objective (regardless of whether it'll actually do this) would be to attack pirating sites. Regardless of it's so called "main objectives" SOPA hands omnipotent power in someone's hands. It's like handing machine guns to monkeys.

michaelty 15y ago
"SOPA...It's like handing machine guns to monkeys." I've gotta try this out as an explanation of SOPA to non-techies.

Natsu 15y ago

SOPA would require sites to be blocked at the DNS level. This is not so different from how the Great Firewall of China is actually implemented. See this, for example, for how it works: http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china/ http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peop... And here's what kind of harm that can cause: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_sopa/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_so... While they promise to block "only" pirate sites, they'll soon find that the blocks are ridiculously unworkable until they block all the sites that allow you to bypass them. I don't know whether or not they'll do this, but I strongly suspect they will, because it's the choice every other country who has ever set up a blacklist has made. I've yet to see one where they didn't abuse it, either, for political reasons. This will drag all sorts of non-pirate sites into the fray and hobble the services, such as VPNs, which can be offered to the public.

ballard 15y ago
One can only begin to imagine how SOPA would be legally administered, what sort of due-process appeals may exist and more basically, how it would a implemented technically. It would be seem all too easy for patent trolls and the like to misuse SOPA in an attempt to bludgeon disruptive startups and silence critics under a banner of righteousness. "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." Poor Richard's Almanack 1738

jbester 15y ago

Wouldn't this hit anyone who linked to wikileaks-like sites?

xiaoma 15y ago

>I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly never been that problematic. China has changed since you (apparently) grew up or lived here. There hasn't been a single day in years that I've found YouTube, facebook, Twitter or any of the major blogging sites have been open. Google is generally blocked only for sensitive terms, cache or queries with too many ? query terms in the URL. Gmail, on the other hand is becoming less and less reliable. The internet is barely usable for international sites, especially now that everyone is putting facebook and twitter buttons all over the place. It's worth pointing out that the pain described above is caused through centralized control of DNS servers... which is exactly what SOPA would create in the US. Also, in my experience internet cafes don't claim to have 正版 (as you put it "real") software when they don't. They would think you were a bit odd for caring though.

shimon_e 15y ago
Actually, you can access the servers that host the youtube flash videos. For example, using a VPN start loading a youtube video. Then disable the VPN. It will continue loading.
- zrgiu_ 15y ago
  not true, just tried it.
wisty 15y ago
You need adblock to self-censor. Otherwise every site with Facebook's trojans (i.e. "Like" buttons) will hang while you try to access facebook's blocked domains.
- zizee 15y ago
  Or ghostery http://www.ghostery.com/ http://www.ghostery.com/.
Shenglong 15y ago
I didn't experience any blocking in 2008, and I could access most sites in summer of 2010. I suppose your experience is more recent, though.

chadp 15y ago

You are absolutely correct, SOPA is totally different in concept for the blocking of sites. But there are lots of sites and companies that are not alive because the government doesn't allow it. Want to start a video site? sorry, that is regulated. anything to do with online payments? need a license. social network or any communication website. Yup, need a license. As a foreigner here in China a blocked or crippled internet is zero effect or relevance on daily life. We just VPN out to the "real" Internet daily. But if SOPA is approved, there may be no more real internet. Not because facebook or big sites will be blocked however. It will be because the government will have the ability to cut innovation and entrepreneurship off by seizing sites at will. China doesn't allow social networking sites. What will America and Co. not like and allow?

PakG1 15y ago
China has plenty of social networking sites inside of China. China doesn't allow major foreign social networking sites, but they do allow minor foreign social networking sites. Out of curiosity on that last sentence of mine, I just checked MySpace. It works. If the Chinese government doesn't even care to block it... how the mighty have fallen. :)
- wangweij 15y ago
  MySpace can be accessed in China because there's very little Chinese using it, at least not using it to do anything the government dislikes. On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are totally inaccessible. Take DropBox for example. At the beginning, there is no problem using it. But when people found out they can publicly share documents there, it was blocked. Now you can still use it as a backup service, but public sharing is not available.
  - PakG1 15y ago
    Yes, my point is that that if MySpace were popular, it could easily be considered the way Facebook is considered.

cleaver 15y ago

For up-to-date reports on outages, check: http://www.herdict.org/ http://www.herdict.org/

nekojima 15y ago

"I go back to China quite often, and I've never had Google blocked for me. Facebook has been blocked on occasion, and most blog sites are, but it's honestly never been that problematic." It is problematic when you are being monitored 24/7 and don't have the alternative of waiting a few days until you are in a free country. It is problematic when you want to have an overseas hosted blog, website, files or photos and you can not access them when and where you want. As myself a regular visitor to, and on-off resident of, China, there could well be a number of reasons why you don't find sites blocked. Most obvious would be using in the airport or at a major western or expensive hotel chain which have a different level of internet access. Where in the country can also have an effect, with Guangdong/Shenzhen/Shanghai (and sometimes Beijing) being the most open. In rural areas and 'political sensitive' there is significant disruption to non-officially sanctioned sites. Which local access provider has an impact too, along with what part of the national intranet you are using (this also links to location, but literally your results may vary depending on provider). The computer you are using, if local, may have software (pre- or unknowingly installed) which blocks or hinders sites or searches, and if you bring a laptop with you, these level can be overcome. Political issues and party campaigns can have significant short-term impacts on particular sites and their availability, this includes locally sanctioned or owned sites. Most importantly, when in China you may only check a few times on gmail, fb, whatever sites and they may work from those locations or at those times you try. If you are local or living locally as an expat, your results over time will be far more telling.