Via we learn of a bold project to help us China-based Internet users.:
If you are a Chinese user of Google who has received notice that your search has been censored, let us know. We will search Google from the United States and post the results here.
While the thought behind this is appreciated it simply is a dumb idea. For starters, while Google.cn censors results, users in China can still access Google.com. It is still possible do searches in simplified Chinese script on the US-based platform. I doubt many Chinese people will bother to e-mail a presumably English-speaking American requesting that he do a search for them when it is completely unnecessary.
Beyond that, if Google.com were ever to be blocked in China, users would not want to wait for a US-based person to conduct a search for them. There is a 12-hour time difference between Shanghai and New York. If a search needs to be done at 15:00 hours Shanghai time, would the US-based person care enough to get out of bed?
If people in the US want to help people in China and elsewhere access information, they can do as Matthew notes:
If someone here in China really needs to gain access to information, the way to help him/her isn’t by copying and pasting search results into a blog, it’s by helping them to use a proxy. If Stephen and others want to help, they should volunteer assistance to make a bilingual network of websites that offer web proxies– easier, faster, advertising-free versions of Anonymouse — for net bar use and downloadable, easy-to-configure proxy clients for home use.
Offer some bandwidth to TOR or JAP.
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February 2nd, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Google.com is censored in China directly by government.
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
No, it’s not. I’m in China. I can and do use Google.com and Google News directly. ISPs in China do have keyword filtering, but you can get around these with proxy servers.
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:59 pm
From the same Matthew Stinson (among many others):
“Moreover, in terms of usability, the international version of Google suffers from a myriad of limitations within China. While a Google search on google.com for sensitive subjects can return five to ten times as many results as the same search on google.cn, being able to see the results is not the same as actually being able to access those pages. The Great Firewall blocks most sites that are extremely critical of the Chinese government, including the websites of most human rights NGOs and many US government domains. What’s more, when searching for some terms on google.com, the Great Firewall actively interdicts users and locks them out of Google for minutes at a time. In short, what’s been lost on some of Google’s critics — but not on Google itself — is that the Chinese government has already subjected Google to censorship”.
I’ve not said blocked. I’ve said censored.
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:07 pm
I don’t care to get hung up on semantics. But, yes, you said Google.com was “censored.” It’s not. Google.com works fine for most searches, and the results are “uncensored.” What you are talking about is that the ISPs are “blocking” certain sites and keywords. That’s the firewall and it can be avoided by using a proxy server. Google itself is not directly “censored” by the government and the site itself is not “blocked.” But, beyond the semantics, was there something you objected to?
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:39 am
Sorry you get nervous but this is censorship, as Matt Stinson (the same you quoted) has pointed out:
“In short, what’s been lost on some of Google’s critics — but not on Google itself — is that the Chinese government has already subjected Google to censorship”.
You said “users in China can still access Google.com” as if it were a guarantee of open searches and available results. It’s not for the reasons we (Matt, you and I) have pointed out.
The problem with semantics is not mine, I think.