Censorship+in+China


 * Internet Censorship in China**

__January__ As the drive intensifies, observers warn it is affecting politically sensitive content too. Later in the month, Chinese media censors the inauguration speech of the US president, Barack Obama: state TV cuts away from the live feed after a reference to communism and leading websites remove the word from translated texts. __March__ China blocks YouTube after denouncing as "a lie" footage appearing to show security forces beating Tibetans in Lhasa last year. __June__ China blocks Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail days ahead of the 20th anniversary on the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. Later in the month it blocks Google services, with search functions and Gmail inaccessible for over an hour. The biggest news of all is the massive outcry as the government orders PC makers to install its controversial censorship software, Green Dam. Following complaints from internet users, businesses and foreign governments the authorities back down, saying it will not be compulsory. __July__ Internet access is cut across the entire north-western region, home to more than 19 million people, after deadly ethnic riots in its capital. Some sites are later restored but as of January 2010 access remains extremely restricted. Facebook reports access problems and remains inaccessible from China as of January 2010. Later in the month the government says it plans to implement a five-year programme advocating clean online games, starting in 2010. It bans websites featuring or publicising online games that "glamorise mafia gangs". __August__ The government drops its plan to install the controversial Green Dam software on every new computer sold in China, despite official comments the previous month that it would go ahead after all. __September__ It emerges that news websites in China have begun requiring new users to register their true identities before allowing them to post comments. __November__ Obama criticises internet controls during his visit to China, describing himself as "a big supporter of non-censorship". __December__ The government says its campaign against pornography on the web and through mobile Wap sites will continue until May 2010. It later emerges China has issued new internet regulations, including what some interpret as an attempt to create a "whitelist" of approved websites that could potentially place much of the internet off-limits to Chinese readers, and ordering domain management institutions and internet service providers to tighten controls over domain name registration. At the end of the month police say the crackdown on internet porn has brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations during 2009.
 * **Internet censorship in China: a timeline of the last 12 months**

[]

[] Internet sites on democracy, Tibet and Taiwan were among Web destinations most frequently blocked by the Chinese government, a study of Chinese online access shows.
 * **Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (Social and politics issues)**
 * China's Internet Censorship - news from CBS

Researchers at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society said Tuesday that other sites blocked included those on health, education, news, entertainment, religion and pornography.

Ben Edelman, a Berkman researcher, and Jonathan Zittrain, the center's co-director, checked more than 204,000 Web sites, identified in part using search engines Google and Yahoo!, and found more than 19,000 inaccessible at least some of the time.

The top 10 Google results using the key words "Tibet," "Taiwan China" and "equality" were all blocked, as were eight of the top 10 results using "democracy China" and "dissident China."

Seven of the top 10 were blocked using "Taiwan" alone and "revolution."

China has been trying to combat independence movements in Tibet and considers Taiwan its territory. Democracy and human rights have also been politically sensitive topics for the communist government.

The country often blocks an entire Web site, even if only parts of the site contain sensitive information, Edelman said.

For instance, it blocks several sites for leading U.S. universities, including Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Edelman noted that the blocked university sites host campus pro-democracy groups. One, MIT, also hosts scrambling software that makes e-mail unreadable to censors.

According to a test Tuesday using Berkman's tools, The Associated Press also found that Berkman's site was inaccessible in China, though Harvard's site was reachable. Edelman said the Berkman site had been available before the censorship report was posted.

Edelman said the center launched the research because few specifics were available about Internet censorship in China, though China is widely known to control its residents' access.

"People often ask us and ask others, what is it that's blocked in China?" Edelman said. "For that kind of a person, we found that producing a list of blocked sites was helpful."

The availability of sites in China were tested first by dialing from Berkman's offices in Cambridge, Mass., the phone numbers of several modems used by Chinese service providers.

When that stopped working, researchers turned to about 50 Chinese-based proxies, which are computers that can relay requests for Web pages and make them appear to come from China. Many of those proxies had been left open to the world inadvertently.

Tests were conducted from May to November. [] image from []
 * **Google may quite China - from BBC news**

Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country. [] [] Chinese government requires the installation of a specific filtering software product, Green Dam, with the publicly stated intent of protecting children from harmful Internet content.  An article about Green Dam - []
 * **China web filter software - Green Dam**

Some useful information from library 1. Cyberspying fears help fuel China Drive to Curb Internet [] 2. Google: a win for liberty—and strategy [] 3. China paints google issue as not political [] 4. Asia: flowers for funeral; google and China [] 5. **Freedom house presents,…china and the internet: an uphill fight for freedom []