Why would they block Language Log?
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From a reader in China:
This is screamingly funny.
Less funny is that that link seems to be blocked in China. I had to use a proxy server to read it. Why in the world would they block Language Log???
Well, we were once blocked by Websense (one of those "internet filtering" systems used by libraries and schools and such), but it turned out to be a mistake. In this case, I'm tempted to think that one of Bill's posts on Tibetan might be to blame, but maybe it's just another case of bycatch.
Victor Mair's comment:
China is blocking so many things that, before long, I wouldn't be surprised if they start blocking communications from the Communist Party itself!
It would be perfectly logical, really. After all, what deviationist ideas are more dangerous than those promulgated by the party itself?
Victor also sent a link to Juliette Ye and Geoffrey Fowler, "Chinese Bloggers Scale the 'Great Firewall' in Riot's Aftermath", WSJ 7/2/2008, which includes an image of a widget that transforms left-to-right top-to-bottom text into a top-to-bottom right-to-left orientation, which apparently is enough (for now) to get past the text analysis filters in the Great Firewall.
As Victor noted, "It's ironic that writing the traditional way from top to bottom, right to left format can evade China's high-tech censors". But if diagnosing and blocking this trick takes more than a few hours after its publication in the WSJ, then the censors are either not very technically competent or not trying very hard.
Bruce Rusk said,
July 3, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
A few years ago, some art students in Beijing were blocked from distributing a text entitled "The Manifesto" on the street. It was the Communist Manifesto. The point of their performance piece was proven, I think.
Randy Alexander said,
July 3, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
First I have to say what? I tend to read LL almost every day, and I didn't notice it being blocked. If it really was it couldn't have been for very long.
Second, I have to note that from what I've seen (living in China for close to six years now), things are getting blocked less and less. When I first came here, Yahoo mail and Hotmail were regularly blocked and unblocked at irregular intervals of a few days to a few weeks. Even Gmail got blocked occasionally. Later all that calmed down. Then Wikipedia got blocked when it started getting popular, and then Blogspot.
Right after the recent Tibet stuff happened, YouTube got shut down. But only for two or three weeks, if I remember correctly. Then gradually they all became unblocked. The Chinese Wikipedia is blocked, but the English version isn't. Some other small websites are blocked seemingly at random. But it's very easy to use a proxy, so it's really not a big deal for people who actually want to go beyond the Great Firewall.
If keeping information from people were really a big deal for the Communist Party, they could certainly do a better job. I don't get the impression that they really want to do a better job. It seems to me more that they want to put a veil up, or, to steal an image from Mao Zedong, a paper great firewall (he said the US was a paper tiger).
Anyway, yes, censorship does exist here, but I think it's decreasing overall.
John Cowan said,
July 3, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
The censorship probably prevents "undesirable" sites from becoming a mass phenomenon. For that, only a little bit of discouragement is necessary; otherwise, why would Internet Explorer still have 80% of the browser market?
As for the Communist Manifesto, similar things have happened in the U.S. to people trying to get others to sign the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. Most people won't sign, and eventually the cops get called.
Bill Poser said,
July 3, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Or it could be criticism of simplified characters, which really gets them where it hurts. :)
Garrett Wollman said,
July 3, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
I was under the impression that the proper name for China's Internet-censorship system was the "Golden Shield".
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
July 3, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
That'd be like referring to the Iraq war as "Operation Iraqi Freedom".