>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 nev

>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.