You know something's up when the Chinese government, quickly becoming renowned for its trigger-happy use of the censorship gun, is aiming at sites like Flickr and Youtube. Censorship in general is repressive to a country's success, a fact that most communist nations historically don't seem to understand. China clearly still doesn't. The walls barring Chinese from exploring these harmless sites have been collectively named "The Great Firewall" and the latest fad on the Chinese part of the information superhighway is finding ways around the roadblock. Bloggers are blogging about backdoors and secret loopholes to watch that really interesting clip on Youtube.
Okay, I'm being a bit harsh here. The real mystery, besides why China won't even acknowledge that this censorship is taking place, is what threat could Flickr possibly hold? Are people suddenly posting evil capitalist secrets alongside their pics of vacation in New Mexico? Even though more and more Chinese are getting into this internet war of free information, the Chinese government is also worrying about an equally increasing number of sites: online mulitplayer games and eBay. Some of us are curious at this point, not even surprised, just wondering what possible danger there could be?
The one service that Chinese censors mostly refuse to touch are the many ways to get pirated...everything. Which is good because I use tudou every once in a while to keep up with my stories.
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