China blocking some Google search results

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I thought, how can it be possible? if the servers are already in Hong Kong, how can it still be 'meddled with'?

Beats me. But with an international issue like this, it makes us step back to ask why. Why is China so keen to get Google block some search results? Is China wanting to keep a 'clean slate' facade to the world? Everybody already knows what happened. Is China trying to keep from its local citizens what really happened, or how those past events are seen from the eyes of those not living in China, not controlled by China?

Whatever, read the news article here, and do leave your comments. You are most welcome!

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Google has confirmed that the Chinese authorities have begun blocking certain terms from a local search engine, after the company said it would no longer censor results for those terms itself.

The Chinese government's Golden Shield, which uses Cisco routers to censor terms deemed inappropriate by the authorities, is filtering out sensitive search terms used on Google.co.hk, the search company told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.

Read Special Report: Google, China showdown

"Certain terms seem to be being blocked by the firewall," said a Google spokesperson, referring to the 'Great Firewall of China', the popular nickname for Golden Shield.

The Chinese government has not made any comment on whether it is blocking search terms on Google.com.hk. However, it has reacted to Google's actions, saying on Tuesday that the company was "totally wrong" to stop censoring its Chinese language search results, according to Chinese government portal Xinhua.


Source article is here.
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Not just porn, no to 'health' sites too

Image by El Tipo Gráfico via Flickr

05:55 AM Jun 26, 2009

BEIJING - China's crackdown on Internet pornography will be extended to health-related sex information, according to new regulations that tighten supervision of such content.

The authorities will monitor such information to prevent obscene content from slipping through and stop pornographic operations posing as health websites, said the rules posted on Wednesday on the health ministry website.

"It is strictly forbidden to disseminate vulgar content in the name of spreading sexual knowledge," it said.

The new regulation comes as China steps up a campaign to wipe out Internet pornography. The government has told computer makers that all personal computers sold from July 1 must be shipped with anti-pornography software.

United States trade officials sent a letter to their Chinese counterparts on Wednesday urging them to revoke an order that requires a controversial Internet filtering software to be installed on computers.

The new regulation applied to websites that bill themselves as health-based, including those run by research institutes and private companies. Violators face fines of 3,000-10,000 yuan ($640-$2,130) in the case of non-commercial websites and more than 10,000 yuan for commercial sites.

However, the paper said authorities should make sure access to legitimate sex information is not cut off, calling it a key sexual education tool.

Yesterday China accused Google of spreading pornography after Chinese users were unable to connect to the search giant's site. "We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

He said the authorities summoned Google representatives and told them to "remove the material immediately". He did not respond to questions on whether the government was responsible for the outage. Agencies

From TODAY, World – Friday, 26-Jun-2009; see the source article here.

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Google briefly cut off in China

Posted: 25 June 2009 1350 hrs

BEIJING: Google's main English-language website was inaccessible for more than two hours in China, state media reported, as Beijing continued to pressure the Internet giant to eliminate pornography.

The outage occurred Wednesday night, the China Daily newspaper said, adding that its Chinese-language website google.cn was unaffected.

A Google China spokesperson could not immediately be reached by AFP.

However, the company's China public relations firm confirmed that Google had received complaints from Internet users.

"Google did receive reports from users yesterday that google.com was not accessible for some time. But we have no further comment on that," said a spokeswoman with Ogilvy, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official China Daily said a Google spokesman confirmed the service cut in comments to the newspaper but would not speculate on the cause.

The paper said the outage also cut off access to Gmail, Google's email service.

Google's sites in both languages appeared to be working normally on Thursday.

Google promised last week to work harder to eliminate pornography from its Chinese Web searches after a government Internet watchdog accused the firm of continuing to allow such results.

China has vowed to crack down on Internet content that it deems unhealthy, which has included pornography and information critical of authorities, a censorship system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Computer makers were notified by the government recently that all personal computers sold from July 1 must be shipped with anti-pornography software, a move that has led to widespread censorship fears both inside and outside China.

China has the world's largest online population at nearly 300 million Web users and the country's Communist Party rulers have struggled to control a proliferation of online content in recent years.

- AFP/yt

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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