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Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

cnn.com

31–40 of 48 posts

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#31

Trust me CNN, it is hardly different from how we wage a war on the Internet (CISA, CISPA, TPP and what not). Do you not use that ton of cruft on your site with similar designs?

It is different - US is chasing monetarily goals mostly and NSA want to read everything. Chinese are trying to prevent thought crimes and political discourse. Although there are few isolated cases where DMCA was abused to stifle discourse, they are far and between.

I think it's also partly monetary in China. For example, Baidu is thrilled that Google is blocked.

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#32
post #6

Honest question: what is it that Chinese officials fear would happen, if they let their citizens have free access to the internet?

Chinese spring.

I thought you were being an ass but I googled 'chinese spring' anyways and found out about the Arab Spring. For those who don't know here is an article on it: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100535405

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is different - US is chasing monetarily goals mostly and NSA want to read everything. Chinese are trying to prevent thought crimes and political discourse. Although there are few isolated cases where DMCA was abused to stifle discourse, they are far and between.

> "Want to read everything"? How is NSA wanting to read everything (if they don't already) any different from Chinese authorities reading everything? Different my foot. Looking at the quality of discussion here it seems we're living in that dumbfuck's paradise. For they say: when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It's only painful and difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid. There is litt…

The Chinese authorities are preventing their citizens from reading things they find counter to their aims. You don't have to create this false equivalence to find both actions undesirable.

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#34
post #27

Says the BBC, from a country that silently introduced a country-wide firewall of it's own for protecting people from porn, extremists and pedophiles. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/censorship "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." I know there are issues in China, but maybe fix our own problems first. P.S.: I've been to China, and I've seen people using tech even i…

1.) Association fallacy (guilt by association) – arguing that because two things share a property they are the same

2.) "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." - pretty sure journalism doesn't work that way

3.) you didn't give any proof supporting the fact that innovation isn't being killed in China. Since you live in UK, what Chinese Brand/Product innovation do you see in stores in UK?

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#35
post #27

Says the BBC, from a country that silently introduced a country-wide firewall of it's own for protecting people from porn, extremists and pedophiles. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/censorship "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." I know there are issues in China, but maybe fix our own problems first. P.S.: I've been to China, and I've seen people using tech even i…

There's a pretty big difference between blocking porn and blocking popular services used for communication by much of the rest of the world.

I don't see a problem with one journalist or media outlet criticizing another country's policies. Given free access to information, people should be able to decide for themselves.

The question is, when will Chinese citizens earn the right to openly criticize their government without fear of being locked up?

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#36
post #26

Most of my friends here in China just do good without the open internet. Like the article says, for every major blocked application or website, there is a home-grown substitute. People can get the information or the service they need from these substitutes. I personally find that that the Chinese version of Wikipedia is blocked is annoying. If the Great Firewall must exist, I'd like it to be more advanced. This way,…

So where does your friend go to get information about

1.) a list of corrupt officials and what activities they're involved in

2.) the richest 70 members of China’s NPC have a larger combined wealth ($89.8bn in 2011) than that of all 535 members of the US congress?

3.) Tiananmen square

4.) Great Famine

5.) China is insolvent?

?

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#37
post #27

Says the BBC, from a country that silently introduced a country-wide firewall of it's own for protecting people from porn, extremists and pedophiles. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/censorship "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." I know there are issues in China, but maybe fix our own problems first. P.S.: I've been to China, and I've seen people using tech even i…

It wasn't silent, it is optional. You'd have a stronger point if you mentioned the torrent sites that get blocked by court order - these at least go in front of a judge, but they're not optional for the relevant ISPs. (but easy to bypass for users.)

Comparing an optional firewall with Chinese oppression is weird.

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#38
post #26

Most of my friends here in China just do good without the open internet. Like the article says, for every major blocked application or website, there is a home-grown substitute. People can get the information or the service they need from these substitutes. I personally find that that the Chinese version of Wikipedia is blocked is annoying. If the Great Firewall must exist, I'd like it to be more advanced. This way,…

"Instead of blocking a whole website, it can block an individual webpage that annoys it."

In order to get enough coverage, the government would need to MITM HTTPS connections by spoofing certificates. They probably control a trust root CA, in which case they could achieve this except for sites that use certificate pinning.

But, would you really put up with your HTTPS traffic being monitored, just to get slightly more internet access?

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#39
post #37
post #27

Says the BBC, from a country that silently introduced a country-wide firewall of it's own for protecting people from porn, extremists and pedophiles. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/censorship "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." I know there are issues in China, but maybe fix our own problems first. P.S.: I've been to China, and I've seen people using tech even i…

It wasn't silent, it is optional. You'd have a stronger point if you mentioned the torrent sites that get blocked by court order - these at least go in front of a judge, but they're not optional for the relevant ISPs. (but easy to bypass for users.) Comparing an optional firewall with Chinese oppression is weird.

Weird? Why would it be? How do you know if something is filtered out by the ISP level filtering in the UK? What prevents them of filtering out anything they consider harmful? How do you know if opt-out is actually working for everything?

No, it's not weird at all. At least China has the spine to admit it.

Re: Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

#40
post #27

Says the BBC, from a country that silently introduced a country-wide firewall of it's own for protecting people from porn, extremists and pedophiles. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/censorship "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." I know there are issues in China, but maybe fix our own problems first. P.S.: I've been to China, and I've seen people using tech even i…

1.) Association fallacy (guilt by association) – arguing that because two things share a property they are the same 2.) "Whoever is without sin among you, let him be the first to cast a stone at her." - pretty sure journalism doesn't work that way 3.) you didn't give any proof supporting the fact that innovation isn't being killed in China. Since you live in UK, what Chinese Brand/Product innovation do you see in sto…

1, nope, the statement was that there's internet censorship working in the 'free' internet land as well

2, I was trying to point out that maybe there could have been some articles about the issues in UK/EU as well with similat tones, not stating that this is for our protection.

3, Xiaomi, Oppo and similar, for example has some pretty good stuff on Amazon, and since Amazon is a massive market share in the UK, we can state, you have access, and the products are usually either surprisingly cheaper and/or better than the 'originals'. ( Another example could be the MIUI ROM, which was probably the best ROM for the HTC Desire; also Chinese. )

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