by changing the background of my site to black i’m joining the protest against china’s banning on personal websites.
All typepad.com and blogs.com hosted sites are banned in China starting this morning, a week after China has agreed to amend its constitution to respect human rights. This is another move by the Central government to curb free speech and freedom of information on the Internet. This is the first time in two years that China has blocked access to foreign servers that host personal sites. (Correction SECOND time in two years as the last event was in Jan 2003)
read more at glutter’s
sadly, for my presentation on the internet censorship in china next thursday, i have more stuff to add.
Pure-Essence.Net 
I can’t believe that China banned personal websites!! That’s terrible 😦
Are you going to put that presentation online? That would be very interesting to read. If you do, give me a shout.
Good luck.
Yan
Also, this may be of interest to you. It’s the story how China.com got banned and well a first person story of having to sit there and block words like, “june 4th, human rights” etc on the message boards.
http://glutter.typepad.com/glutter/2004/02/how_to_get_a_si.html
i’ve read that one. thanks. i can put my powerpoint file online if you want.
It’s upsetting that personal sites are banned in China, I feel sorry for all of those who had personal and get reach them anymore in China.
Just when I think I’m beginning to understand my country, actions like this are taken 😦 x
Terrible. Absolutely terrible. This is like taking away freedom of thought.
This is starting to get extremely ridiculous. What has happened to the freedom of speech? China is starting to intrude greatly into the personal affairs and activities of others. And in this way, they are overasserting their authority.
Reading articles like this makes me very upset. Especially when I think of others who are residing in an overcontrolled country like China. There is no more freedom of self expression, and the freedom to make their own decisions.
In fact, forced closure of blogs isn’t going to help anyone. In fact, it would give cause the people to have an even greater hatred against the government, and people are STILL going to criticise the government via speech anyway.
My conclusion is that the government is screwed.
“starting” is the incorrect verb to use. “has been” would be more appropriate. the censorship and control had actually gotten better since cutural revolution. but with new technology there has to be new controls.
The C gov is gettin mad!! I hope Taiwan doesn’t fall back in their hands. Anyway, send me a link to the PPT file when you upload it, it will be interesting watching through it if you don’t mind! 🙂