Friday, March 9, 2007
Great Firewall of China: Useful, or Not?
|
greatfirewallofchina.org
According to "Great Firewall of China," Poynter Online is coming through just fine in the People's Republic. |
Did you ever wonder whether your site can be enjoyed from China? In the People's Republic, censorship decisions can change day by day. The
Great Firewall of China is a new site that helps you determine whether a site is blocked by Chinese government online censorship.
Enter any site's URL to see in real time whether it is censored in China. The site's Dutch organizers -- a documentary maker with a Chinese background, and a media artist who organized some financial support from a few cultural funds -- route your URL request through to the server in China, and share the results back to you. So not only will you learn whether your site is available; you'll also get to see it as the Chinese do. (Editor's note: The "view the site in China" feature was not working when I tested it just now.)
Wired reports that all 1.8 million LiveJournal sites are still blocked, and that Wikipedia remains unavailable.
|
RELATED RESOURCES
|
Get E-Media Tidbits as an RSS feed:
* Copy this link and add it to your feed reader
Subscribe to receive E-Media Tidbits by e-mail:
* Sent Monday-Friday, 5 p.m. ET | |
Tidbits contributor Fons Tuinstra, who is based in China, adds these caveats for using the site: "For Chinese online veterans, the firewall is not a problem, since there are dozens of easy-to-use tools to get around it. What I'm missing at a site like this is an overview of those tools, so newcomers can access them more easily.
"Another problem with this site is that it creates the illusion of a centralized organized censorship. In fact, much Chinese censorship is locally organized. When the rumor of a new IP-block goes around, people here start checking how the situation is in different regions of China. That pattern is not as straightforward as this site suggests."
E-mail this item |
Add/View Feedback (1) |
QuickLink this item: A119624
E-Media Tidbits Archive
MAIN
|
Back to Top
