"If you open the window for fresh air, you should expect some flies to come in."
This is a famous quotation of Deng Xiaoping, the then head of China who was the man behind liberalization of Chinese Economy. It is intended to say that, opening the doors of Chinese Economy will lead to allowing of various unnecessary things and unwanted ideologies.
The communist government of China imposes internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. Various laws and administrative regulations are brought into picture with respect to the usage of internet. As per these laws, censorship systems are implemented by state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations. This censorship is one of the world’s most sophisticated one.
As per the regulations, No one can use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:
A project to automatically filter the content that falls under above mentioned category was started in 1998 and went on till 2006. The project was named as 'Great Firewall of China'. The Golden Shield Project consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the Internet gateways blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through.
In China,
In 2006, an activist shared some information to outer world on protests via yahoo.Yahoo was summoned to provide the information of the user. He was later sentenced for ten years of imprisonment.
It is estimated that, at least 18,000 websites are blocked in mainland China. Certain topics like Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, agitations related to freedom of speech and democracy, Taiwan independence, Tibetan independence movement etc are blocked forever. Foreign media websites such as BBC News, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia are occasionally blocked. On the twentieth anniversary of the government suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the government ordered internet portals, forums and various other sites to shut down their servers for maintenance. When the Wenzhou train collision happened in China, the news reached the outer world after many days. Such an effective internet regulation is operational in China.
However, one cannot stop the technology and innovation. A search engine called 'Elgoog' was developed. It is nothing but 'Google' spelled backwards. It gave results with all the strings reversed. Thus, they escape the Chinese firewall as it makes harder for the blockages to track on what users are looking for.
Kapil Sibal is planning for a similar firewall to control internet usage in India. Let us wait and see how it works here.
This is a famous quotation of Deng Xiaoping, the then head of China who was the man behind liberalization of Chinese Economy. It is intended to say that, opening the doors of Chinese Economy will lead to allowing of various unnecessary things and unwanted ideologies.
The communist government of China imposes internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. Various laws and administrative regulations are brought into picture with respect to the usage of internet. As per these laws, censorship systems are implemented by state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations. This censorship is one of the world’s most sophisticated one.
As per the regulations, No one can use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:
- Encouraging the breaking of Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations
- Encouraging the overthrow of the government or the socialist system
- Encouraging the division of the country, harming national unification.
- Encouraging the hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities.
- Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society.
- Promoting feudal superstitions, gambling, violence, murder.
- Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity.
- Openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people.
- Injuring the reputation of state organizations.
- Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.
A project to automatically filter the content that falls under above mentioned category was started in 1998 and went on till 2006. The project was named as 'Great Firewall of China'. The Golden Shield Project consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the Internet gateways blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through.
In China,
- One cannot participate in social networking, where information will be shared across the globe.
- One cannot call for protests or propagate inflammatory speechs via internet.
- Discussions in forums are not not allowed.
In 2006, an activist shared some information to outer world on protests via yahoo.Yahoo was summoned to provide the information of the user. He was later sentenced for ten years of imprisonment.
It is estimated that, at least 18,000 websites are blocked in mainland China. Certain topics like Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, agitations related to freedom of speech and democracy, Taiwan independence, Tibetan independence movement etc are blocked forever. Foreign media websites such as BBC News, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia are occasionally blocked. On the twentieth anniversary of the government suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the government ordered internet portals, forums and various other sites to shut down their servers for maintenance. When the Wenzhou train collision happened in China, the news reached the outer world after many days. Such an effective internet regulation is operational in China.
However, one cannot stop the technology and innovation. A search engine called 'Elgoog' was developed. It is nothing but 'Google' spelled backwards. It gave results with all the strings reversed. Thus, they escape the Chinese firewall as it makes harder for the blockages to track on what users are looking for.
Kapil Sibal is planning for a similar firewall to control internet usage in India. Let us wait and see how it works here.
That,Firewall thing sounds good but it I don't think that something like that would last for long here in India...That is good though,though it sounds to be advantageous in some ways it also feels weird at the same time..And also,people must learn to discriminate between the right and wrong from the information provided to them,mere blocking of content is not always useful i feel..
ReplyDeleteYes.. Exactly. Thanks for your time in going through this.
ReplyDeleteIn India, it must not be feasible.
We cannot do it like China. Self regulation is very much needed.
Let us wait and see :-)