6 ms·

China bans Youtube

53 points by vaksel 18y ago

garply 18y ago
Does anyone know if the ban is nation-wide? I was under the impression that bans are often province-specific.
- josefresco 18y ago
  They also tend to flicker on and off, I'm reserving judgment on this until some time passes.
jballanc 18y ago
This article is inaccurate. It makes it seem as if YouTube is no longer blocked in Turkey when, last I checked, it still is...
- Retric 18y ago
  Actuality, they don't say it works in Turkey only that: YouTube, which has country-specific sites in 23 countries, has in the past been blocked in certain countries, including Turkey which might suggest it currently works but does not say so. Anyway, while I don't think it's an issue with Turkey I expect China blocking YouTube might become a free trade issue.
  - garply 18y ago
    I hadn't thought about that angle - I'm sure Youku and Tudou, the native competitors, are getting huge traffic surges right now.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
  - utku_karatas 18y ago
    You're right about Turkey, it's no free trade issue here. The bans are about our archaic laws allowing anyone to claim any site for being a threat to our national unity. And these lawsuits usually end up with banning the whole thing. At some point even Blogger.com was gone (probably because some smart-ass didn't like one post and issued a suit). And as for the inaccuracy of the write up, Youtube's status is quite flaky because of all the lawsuits against it - one after another. Even we lost the track of what's going on there - let alone the poor guy :)
    - eru 18y ago
      > You're right about Turkey, it's no free trade issue here. Yes. The last time I noticed, it was about the sexual orientation of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Attatürk. Is that still current?
      - utku_karatas 18y ago
        AFAICR, yes, that was the first tide of the neverending banning wave - an insulting song about Ataturk whose legacy is protected strictly by the current law. I've no clue what the latest reason is though.
  - jhancock 18y ago
    Its not going to become a free trade issue. Not as long as the U.S. needs China to keep buying treasury notes. Pay attention to want _isn't_ being said in the U.S. press about China. This will point you to the laundry list of things China is telling the U.S. to keep its hands off if it wants China to keep buying US$ debt.
petercooper 18y ago
Don't be too quick to blame this on political fear - China probably just wants to increase productivity in the workplace. Next on the chopping block.. Facebook, Digg, and Reddit.
- dinkumthinkum 18y ago
  You've got to be kidding. Stifling another outlet for free speech is just to get a few more widgets produced per day right? Of course it has nothing to do with political fear, even though every other instance of such an action did. Right, you can't be serious.
  - marksutherland 18y ago
    It can't be both? The percieved benefits of protectionism, combined with the squelching of unsavoury opinions and other content must be very appealing.
    - dinkumthinkum 18y ago
      I'm not sure that applies here. Protectionism is not about keeping people from goofing off at work.
      - marksutherland 18y ago
        doh, I missed the root comment (threading isn't very obvious in links).
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Yes, I was kidding. I just didn't realize the ;-) on the end was necessary this time because it was such a ridiculous comment ;-)
    - dinkumthinkum 18y ago
      Sorry. :) You wouldn't believe how many morons actually think like that when it comes to China though.
bk 18y ago
This is hardly big news. Sites rotate in and out of being blocked all the time. wikipedia, wordpress.com, news.bbc.co.uk, etc. have all been blocked at one point or another. The only mainstream site that's been consistently blocked is bbc news. Interestingly, no US news outlets are blocked. It always makes me wonder why. Also, the major cities tend to have more liberal access policies than more remote areas.
- h34t 18y ago
  For the year I was living there Flickr and Wikipedia were blocked 100% of the time.
  - bk 18y ago
    Wikipedia was blocked completely for a long time, later they moved to blocking only certain pages (en.wikipedia.org, I think the Chinese version is still blocked entirely). For flickr only the image hosts (static.flickr.com) were blocked, which led to the strange experience of being able to browse an image sharing site with no images.
- unalone 18y ago
  Not to sound snarky, but US news outlets very rarely deliver controversial information. They tend to avoid edgy stories entirely to stop from offending people.
- chiffonade 18y ago
  > It always makes me wonder why. This doesn't make me wonder at all. The US and China were the two biggest allies in World War 2, became economically unified during the cold war to defeat the Soviet Union (remember the Soviet Union?), and now are the two biggest economic powers in the world. Don't look at official GDP figures, they're meaningless. Look at influence, manufacturing/logistical and financial power centers, and purchasing power parity. After all, what is China but a United Provinces of Asia? You think 1.3B people are naturally part of the same country/culture/creed/flag? No fucking way, to think otherwise is racist ignorance. Japan is quickly being usurped by Korea as well. Once the re-unification of Korea happens and there is a large source of inexpensive labor from the North for the developed economy in the South to employ, Japan will start its relative decline. They've already started to use Chinese manufacturing to remain competitive and leverage what's left of their engineering/design head-start given to them by the Marshall plan and previous Imperialist mindset. The big picture, folks. It's always worth looking at.
steamboiler 18y ago
I wonder if this has any connection to the huge popularity of the "grass-mud horse" online, particularly on youtube? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?em http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?em
phugoid 18y ago
The hard thing to bend my mind around is the fact that many people in China are in favour of Internet censorship. I have witnessed the same thing here in the UAE - even from young Western-educated locals. I suppose that if you grow up in a society where heavy-handed censorship is widespread in all media and even conversation, you'd accept it as normal and perhaps necessary. Self-censorship is even more effective and omni-present. Note: I'm not claiming that censorship is absent in the West, but you'd be silly not to acknowledge that there's less of it. One local told me that he wouldn't dream of giving an unfiltered Internet connection to many of his countrymen, as nothing in their culture has prepared them to deal with what they'd run into. Of course, he himself uses a VPN to dial out.
- chiffonade 18y ago
  > Of course, he himself uses a VPN to dial out. Sounds like class warfare. Same shit, different country.
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  China is less than a lifetime away from its last civil war. I can see how that would make people fearful and cautious. Allowing populism to run a muck could lead to revolution, especially in a young and poor nation like China. Contrary to the romantic ideal of revolution we have in the West, in practice it is a bloody, miserable, and violent thing. Call me a fascist, but I can understand the Chinese authorities' attempts to short-circuit anti-government movements. I can also understand popular support for such actions, given that the current Chinese government is more competent than all but a handful on this planet. Also - I'm just trying to understand and explore their side here. I do enjoy living in a free society where I can support market anarchism and make frequent anti-government comments. I'm just not so much of an idealist to believe that American-style democracy is optimal for all places, times, and situations. For example, I can understand why the Germans chose to ban Nazi publications in the wake of World War II, free speech be damned.
- netsp 18y ago
  No Censorship, like like no economic intervention, no prohibitions etc. are not intuitive concepts. Censorship is not bad just because it's bad (like murder or assault). It doesn't usually hurt anyone directly. In fact it's trying to help. If heroin, fascism, homosexuality or anorexia are bad, why not work to stop them? To oppose censorship, you need to accept that in order to censor bad things, you need to have institutions that decide what is bad (don't we already have those?) and a means of blocking them. This will lead to bad things like censoring good things. There is no way around that, just like outrunning light. That's a pretty flimsy argument to make. If it hasn't been drilled into you, you probably won't accept it. This isn't something that just people in the UAE or China will not 'get.' Australians today will not be convinced that banning pedophilia sites is a bad idea. Try separating a debate about the legalization of drugs from a discussion about how harmful it is to take drugs.
tlrobinson 18y ago
The most surprising thing about this is that it wasn't already banned.

China bans Youtube

53 points by vaksel 18y ago

garply 18y ago

Does anyone know if the ban is nation-wide? I was under the impression that bans are often province-specific.

josefresco 18y ago
They also tend to flicker on and off, I'm reserving judgment on this until some time passes.

jballanc 18y ago

This article is inaccurate. It makes it seem as if YouTube is no longer blocked in Turkey when, last I checked, it still is...

Retric 18y ago
Actuality, they don't say it works in Turkey only that: YouTube, which has country-specific sites in 23 countries, has in the past been blocked in certain countries, including Turkey which might suggest it currently works but does not say so. Anyway, while I don't think it's an issue with Turkey I expect China blocking YouTube might become a free trade issue.
- garply 18y ago
  I hadn't thought about that angle - I'm sure Youku and Tudou, the native competitors, are getting huge traffic surges right now.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- utku_karatas 18y ago
  You're right about Turkey, it's no free trade issue here. The bans are about our archaic laws allowing anyone to claim any site for being a threat to our national unity. And these lawsuits usually end up with banning the whole thing. At some point even Blogger.com was gone (probably because some smart-ass didn't like one post and issued a suit). And as for the inaccuracy of the write up, Youtube's status is quite flaky because of all the lawsuits against it - one after another. Even we lost the track of what's going on there - let alone the poor guy :)
  - eru 18y ago
    > You're right about Turkey, it's no free trade issue here. Yes. The last time I noticed, it was about the sexual orientation of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Attatürk. Is that still current?
    - utku_karatas 18y ago
      AFAICR, yes, that was the first tide of the neverending banning wave - an insulting song about Ataturk whose legacy is protected strictly by the current law. I've no clue what the latest reason is though.
- jhancock 18y ago
  Its not going to become a free trade issue. Not as long as the U.S. needs China to keep buying treasury notes. Pay attention to want _isn't_ being said in the U.S. press about China. This will point you to the laundry list of things China is telling the U.S. to keep its hands off if it wants China to keep buying US$ debt.

petercooper 18y ago

Don't be too quick to blame this on political fear - China probably just wants to increase productivity in the workplace. Next on the chopping block.. Facebook, Digg, and Reddit.

dinkumthinkum 18y ago
You've got to be kidding. Stifling another outlet for free speech is just to get a few more widgets produced per day right? Of course it has nothing to do with political fear, even though every other instance of such an action did. Right, you can't be serious.
- marksutherland 18y ago
  It can't be both? The percieved benefits of protectionism, combined with the squelching of unsavoury opinions and other content must be very appealing.
  - dinkumthinkum 18y ago
    I'm not sure that applies here. Protectionism is not about keeping people from goofing off at work.
    - marksutherland 18y ago
      doh, I missed the root comment (threading isn't very obvious in links).
- petercooper 18y ago
  Yes, I was kidding. I just didn't realize the ;-) on the end was necessary this time because it was such a ridiculous comment ;-)
  - dinkumthinkum 18y ago
    Sorry. :) You wouldn't believe how many morons actually think like that when it comes to China though.

bk 18y ago

This is hardly big news. Sites rotate in and out of being blocked all the time. wikipedia, wordpress.com, news.bbc.co.uk, etc. have all been blocked at one point or another. The only mainstream site that's been consistently blocked is bbc news. Interestingly, no US news outlets are blocked. It always makes me wonder why. Also, the major cities tend to have more liberal access policies than more remote areas.

h34t 18y ago
For the year I was living there Flickr and Wikipedia were blocked 100% of the time.
- bk 18y ago
  Wikipedia was blocked completely for a long time, later they moved to blocking only certain pages (en.wikipedia.org, I think the Chinese version is still blocked entirely). For flickr only the image hosts (static.flickr.com) were blocked, which led to the strange experience of being able to browse an image sharing site with no images.
unalone 18y ago
Not to sound snarky, but US news outlets very rarely deliver controversial information. They tend to avoid edgy stories entirely to stop from offending people.
chiffonade 18y ago
> It always makes me wonder why. This doesn't make me wonder at all. The US and China were the two biggest allies in World War 2, became economically unified during the cold war to defeat the Soviet Union (remember the Soviet Union?), and now are the two biggest economic powers in the world. Don't look at official GDP figures, they're meaningless. Look at influence, manufacturing/logistical and financial power centers, and purchasing power parity. After all, what is China but a United Provinces of Asia? You think 1.3B people are naturally part of the same country/culture/creed/flag? No fucking way, to think otherwise is racist ignorance. Japan is quickly being usurped by Korea as well. Once the re-unification of Korea happens and there is a large source of inexpensive labor from the North for the developed economy in the South to employ, Japan will start its relative decline. They've already started to use Chinese manufacturing to remain competitive and leverage what's left of their engineering/design head-start given to them by the Marshall plan and previous Imperialist mindset. The big picture, folks. It's always worth looking at.

steamboiler 18y ago

I wonder if this has any connection to the huge popularity of the "grass-mud horse" online, particularly on youtube? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?em http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?em

phugoid 18y ago

The hard thing to bend my mind around is the fact that many people in China are in favour of Internet censorship. I have witnessed the same thing here in the UAE - even from young Western-educated locals. I suppose that if you grow up in a society where heavy-handed censorship is widespread in all media and even conversation, you'd accept it as normal and perhaps necessary. Self-censorship is even more effective and omni-present. Note: I'm not claiming that censorship is absent in the West, but you'd be silly not to acknowledge that there's less of it. One local told me that he wouldn't dream of giving an unfiltered Internet connection to many of his countrymen, as nothing in their culture has prepared them to deal with what they'd run into. Of course, he himself uses a VPN to dial out.

chiffonade 18y ago
> Of course, he himself uses a VPN to dial out. Sounds like class warfare. Same shit, different country.
jacoblyles 18y ago
China is less than a lifetime away from its last civil war. I can see how that would make people fearful and cautious. Allowing populism to run a muck could lead to revolution, especially in a young and poor nation like China. Contrary to the romantic ideal of revolution we have in the West, in practice it is a bloody, miserable, and violent thing. Call me a fascist, but I can understand the Chinese authorities' attempts to short-circuit anti-government movements. I can also understand popular support for such actions, given that the current Chinese government is more competent than all but a handful on this planet. Also - I'm just trying to understand and explore their side here. I do enjoy living in a free society where I can support market anarchism and make frequent anti-government comments. I'm just not so much of an idealist to believe that American-style democracy is optimal for all places, times, and situations. For example, I can understand why the Germans chose to ban Nazi publications in the wake of World War II, free speech be damned.
netsp 18y ago
No Censorship, like like no economic intervention, no prohibitions etc. are not intuitive concepts. Censorship is not bad just because it's bad (like murder or assault). It doesn't usually hurt anyone directly. In fact it's trying to help. If heroin, fascism, homosexuality or anorexia are bad, why not work to stop them? To oppose censorship, you need to accept that in order to censor bad things, you need to have institutions that decide what is bad (don't we already have those?) and a means of blocking them. This will lead to bad things like censoring good things. There is no way around that, just like outrunning light. That's a pretty flimsy argument to make. If it hasn't been drilled into you, you probably won't accept it. This isn't something that just people in the UAE or China will not 'get.' Australians today will not be convinced that banning pedophilia sites is a bad idea. Try separating a debate about the legalization of drugs from a discussion about how harmful it is to take drugs.

tlrobinson 18y ago

The most surprising thing about this is that it wasn't already banned.