China Blocks YouTube, Again

from the repeat-offender dept

Lots of headlines today about how China has blocked access to YouTube, apparently because of some videos posted by a Tibetan exile group. Of course, this isn't the first time China's blocked the site -- it did so about a year ago, again because of videos related to Tibet. Around the same time, it also started enforcing laws against non-government owned video-sharing sites, and took action against more than 50 of them. This latest block shouldn't be particularly surprising to anybody, but it stands as a reminder that the flow of outside information into China on the internet is like a faucet the government can shut off at any point. The only real question is when did the country lift last year's YouTube block?

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China Realizes It Doesn't Need To Block All Of iTunes

from the just-the-stuff-it-doesn't-like dept

Following last week's news that China was blocking access to the iTunes store in response to a Tibet protest album that some Olympic athletes had apparently downloaded, it appears that China's Great Firewall experts have figured out ways to block on a per album basis. Yes, iTunes is now available again in China -- but that particular album remains off limits. Of course, you would think that if China had simply ignored the issue altogether, it would have received a lot less press. But that doesn't exactly seem to be how they think about things in the Chinese government these days.

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China Blocks iTunes After Olympic Athletes Download Pro-Tibetan Music

from the so-much-for-the-lack-of-censorship dept

So, while it turned out to be a myth that China would drop the Great Firewall during the Olympics, it's still a bit surprising to hear that China is apparently blocking at least some access to iTunes. Apparently, an organization put out an album of pro-Tibetan songs, and asked Olympic athletes to download the songs and put them on their iPods as a sort of quiet protest. Of course, then the group put out a press release, claiming that 40 Olympians had done so... and, suddenly folks in China are having trouble accessing iTunes. Not surprisingly, a "semi-official news portal" of the Chinese gov't claims that folks in China are denouncing Apple for even offering the music, and are calling for the musicians featured on the album to be banned from playing in China.

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Videos Of Tibetan Protest Get YouTube Banned In China

from the onto-the-list-it-goes dept

We can now add China to the axis of NoTube as it has blocked all of YouTube after videos from news reports concerning the protests in Tibet began to show up on the video hosting site. What's interesting is that this comes just a few months after new rules went into place in China, demanding that all video hosting sites be approved by the government (and also be state-owned or controlled). However, given the uproar from a number of local video hosting sites, the government decided to ignore its own rules for the time being. However, given the itchy trigger finger on taking down any site or content that the government deems questionable, it's no surprise that this has happened again.

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