7.01.2007

The Great (Fire)Wall

Being all about censorship as communist governments have generally tended to be, the People’s Republic of China has constructed a massive firewall to restrict certain internet sites that the government doesn’t think its citizens should have access to.

The popularly-named “Great Firewall of China” blocks sites including Wikipedia and the BBC, but through this neat website where you can test your URL on the firewall, I discovered that The Doc File isn’t blocked—I guess I’m just not that controversial.

Before I ran the test, I thought I understood why I wasn’t getting a lot of hits and page views from China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, but now that I know that my blog isn’t one of the sites being blocked, I’m completely at a loss.

Maybe I should write more posts in Mandarin?

6 comments:

Jared Dockery 7/1/07, 10:12 PM  

I'm betting http://session3.ning.com/ ain't blocked either. Why haven't you joined yet, jerk?

Anonymous 7/2/07, 12:56 PM  

What's session3.ning.com?

Anonymous 7/4/07, 3:25 PM  

My blog is blocked. Maybe because I've been writing about how much I love Switzerland...?

Luke Dockery 7/5/07, 8:51 AM  

Alex,

Surely they can’t be too bad about you loving Switzerland…they’re neutral and everyone loves them, right?

I do think I remember reading somewhere that Wordpress blogs are generally blocked, and this seemed to be the case when I tested a few WP blogs that I knew of.

Shoot, even Elrod’s blog was blocked, and if the PRC government doesn’t approve of his leftist views, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Anonymous 7/31/07, 1:57 PM  

Apparently, Luke, all you need to do is have the words "democracy" or "freedom of speech" in your blog to get blocked. Matter of fact, I may have just done that for you.

Luke Dockery 7/31/07, 5:03 PM  

V,

Anything that makes me a concern to the PRC is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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