Header Image; Typepad and Wang Xiaofeng Blocked
I discovered the current header image for this blog via the post on Danwei, More Chinese mockery of Net Nanny.
Danwei explains:
The text reads:
GFW
2008 — Let our society be even more harmonious
China’s Internet blocks everything under the sunIt’s a spoof of [a China Netcom] ad. The original ad (currently used as a banner on CNC’s home page) reads:
CNC
2008 – Let the stage of our dreams be even broader
China’s Internet broadens everything under the sun
As far as I can tell, the image was created by 王俊煜, a blogger and third-year student at Bei Da. The contents of his blog are protected under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons License, which means that by giving him credit I can use the image. Of course, CNC would probably have issues with his use of the original image, but since they are involved with blocking all WordPress.com blogs, including this one, screw ‘em.
Fittingly for the new header image, as of this morning both TypePad and popular Chinese blogger Wang Xiaofeng’s site are inaccessible for me.
The TypePad homepage itself is accessible, but all subdomains, which means all TypePad blogs, are inaccessible. At least one TypePad blogger in China is reporting that his TypePad blog has been blocked too.
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Update 3:30 PM: Wang’s site is still inaccessible for me, but there are many comments on a recent post dating from today, as well as a new post, none of which mention his site being blocked. With this in mind, the problem is probably just with my ISP. Would be interesting to hear what others are seeing behind Beijing’s universities-wide ISP, CERNET.
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Wang Xiaofeng staged a closing of his blog last year just to take the piss out of the western media. Can you blame him? I just read this pile of misinformation on CNN (via Reuters) today,
Yang’s fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend’s holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site.
Hello? CNN, Reuters? Anyone there? It is much more likely this was to do with the Xiamen PX protest. 6/4 photos have been up on Flickr for years and the image servers weren’t completely blocked before.
Anyway, this time Wang’s blog is accessible via proxy while being inaccessible at the same time via direct link, typical of a GFW block.
封天下, indeed.
Tags GFW, China, CNC, Humor, Spoofs, Internet Censorship, Censorship, TypePad, Wang Xiaofeng
June 20, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Burn. When in doubt and unable to verify, rampantly editorialize! Maybe they should stick to financial news and let us bloggers do the rest?
Another blooper from Reuters, the first sentence of their report on the PX protest (which by my estimates came several hours after the Asia Sentinel story and of course over 12 hours later than the Bullog reports, which were instantaneous): “Thousands of protesters wearing gas masks…” Yeah, more like one professional protester who wasn’t even there for anything related to the pX plant.
June 20, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Why haven’t they changed that sentence yet, or point out the obvious mistake? Does “witnesses said” absolve them from all error?
June 20, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Being safe here in Denmark, the GFW problems always made me smile a bit inside. Couldn’t help but find it a bit funny. Now that I may soon end up having the problems myself, my smile has slowly turned into a frown. The whole idea of the GFW is ridiculous. Especially now that CN is preparing a more guest friendly, open and clean BJ for the Olympics.
June 20, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I will be very interested to see the level of internet censorship in the lead up to and during the Olympics, and whether it will have any lasting impact on the level of internet censorship in China after the Olympics is over.
On the one hand, I think China would like to show that it is open to the world and as a result will unblock (or if they don’t reblock it again before the Olympics then not reblock) Wikipedia, WordPress.com, BBC News, etc. (with the likely exception of content on 6/4, Taiwan Independence, etc.), yet on the other hand I doubt that the government can gracefully handle open public discussions in China–over which they have little to no control–of the issues they consider sensitive.
In any case, I agree with Twitter user Foxmachia who states, “maybe some links in wiki would be blocked, but others would, GFW will be more dynamic and flexible as i predict,” and in Chinese , “我的猜测是 gfw在使得自己更加动态化 自动化 智能化 可以做到每日调整 每小时调整规则.”
June 24, 2007 at 9:03 pm
my typepad account is now inaccessible in Xining (where I live). it was accessible until just a week ago…i can author still but cannot view my web pages. hen mafan.
June 24, 2007 at 9:04 pm
scratch that last comment. it’s open again…
June 25, 2007 at 7:36 am
Hey yeti. It’s still being blocked by my ISP here in Beijing.