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China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

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Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#11

Post by csydas »

kem wrote: post #9

This seems more ominous to me than it normally would... All this sort of thing worldwide makes me wonder why there isn't more of an exponential growth in movement to decentralized or federated platforms. It's definitely seen a lot of growth, but with concerns about centralized censorship and monitoring in various places, it seems like it should be getting more attention. Maybe it's irrelevant in the case of China, or…

Probably because in a lot of the places where this happens, the owners/operators of the infrastructure have to actually live there and deal with the consequences of undermining the powers that be. On top of that, sometimes it pays to play -- thereby be a human rights cost but there's a real payout whether it's monetary, accruing favor with the local powers, or just being able to operate.

I think it's very easy to look at the state of the world and judge it to be an egregious violation of human rights, and the solution is simple. Implementing it, however, is complicated by external factors and always is in these situations.

Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#12

Post by anonnyj »

BoorishBears wrote: post #5

Is something getting lost in translation or is this targeted at businesses and not individuals? (Still a big deal, but I thought VPNs were already banned?)

Not entirely sure, seemed banned, have vague memories of people being harassed for using proxies.

In any case proxied have definitely been soft banned. If you try searching for vpn/proxy you'll get dead connections. If a url has the same, you'll also get a dead connection (as opposed to a "this is banned" page)

Also perhaps of note... When a law isn't working (ie indoor smoking ban) they have been known to just re-issue it.

Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#16

Post by methou »

Last time I was trying to `bootstrap` a new OS with my ownVPN, it's been quite difficult if without commercial services. Most materials you need for a brand new computer to freely surf the internet can't easily be found on the Chinternet, it's quite difficult to filter out the malware from a legit.

They've given a quite (technically) reasonable timeline for this, so believe they are serious on this one. If they put punitive, even the slightest like cut the wire or urge your ISP to stop service.

Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#17

Post by schuke »

Here's my translation as a Chinese native, though I'm no technical expert.

Companies that provide IDC, ISP, CDN services, without authorization, are prohibited to set up or lease connections (including virtual private networks), to conduct business operations across borders.

I guess it means if you're a ISP etc, you're not allowed to sell VPN services without authorization.

It says nothing about individuals purchasing VPN services from foreign providers.

It's nonetheless a chilling sign that they're restricting VPN access, which is consistent with the overall tightening of internet control that's been going on for quite a while.

It comes as no surprise though, given 2017 will see the Party's 19th national congress. A lot will happen to make sure the internet does absolutely nothing remotely similar to what happened in the Middle East in 2010.

Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#19

Post by methou »

BoorishBears wrote: post #5

Is something getting lost in translation or is this targeted at businesses and not individuals? (Still a big deal, but I thought VPNs were already banned?)

I'm not sure about today, but at least a year ago, there's still a lot of small/private ISPs selling _private networks_ with _global_ internet access, the notice itself sounds like the Ministry is trying to reform the businesses like this. There's a good reason (other than censorship) to do so because the market is a real mess and most of the bandwidth used by them wasn't acquired from a _proper_ way.

Re: China tightens Great Firewall by declaring unauthorised VPN services illegal

#20

Post by deepfriedbits »

BatFastard wrote: post #10

When my daughter was in Beijing last year in school, virtually all of the U.S. students in her class used VPNs to access Youtube and other american content. I got the impression they were quite common amongst the Beijingers too.

Every hotel I've stayed at in China that caters to Westerners had a VPN in place. You could check your Gmail at the hotel but not outside of it (unless you had your own VPN).
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