Meta

When I tried to upgrade my skype this morning, it's found that the skype.com site is not accessible here. However, if i apply proxy, it can been seen. I'm wondering if this site is becoming GFW's new blackname.

Actually, the site is often not so easy to be loaded from this year on. I'm wondering that the p2p application is getting more attention by GFW system. Though GFW can't block skype's advanced communication, they are trying to stop more and more people downloading the tool from it's web site.

Bittorrent as a Free Access protocal

I had a good talk with Ashwin Navi, COO of Bittorrent.com, who was visiting China in the passing week. We talked about China's internet market and some business features, as well the Free Access issue. We brainstormed some ideas to use bittorrent as a distributed protocal to access blocked web sites without proxy. The ideas is yet to be confirmed by Bittorrent's father Bram Cohen, anyway, it's a possible way in some longer future.

Xiaoqiang: China's First Web-Organized Protests

Andrew forwared me Xiao Qiang's article on AWSJ( THE ASIAN WALL STREET JOURNAL), "China's First Web-Organized Protests". Of course, it's about the anti-japan protests over China in last several weeks:

> From an organizational point of view, the Shanghai
> demonstration was a decentralized, bottom-up event, organized by
> taking advantage of the opportunities presented by digital
> communication technologies. Chinese authorities may have initially
> given the demonstrators some political space because it wanted to let
> out some of the virulent nationalistic steam. They may also have used
> this demonstration of Chinese "public opinion" as a lever to support
> Beijing's diplomatic goal of opposing Japan's bid for a seat on United
> Nations Security Council.
> But whatever political space the anti-Japan activists were
> initially given, the success of their technology-enabled protests now
> poses a serious challenge to the Chinese authorities' traditional
> mechanisms of social control. That was demonstrated by the failure of
> Shanghai authorities efforts to use such technology to dissuade
> students from attending the march. According to information posted on
> Chinese online bulletin boards and Web blogs, Shanghai authorities
> broadcast text and email messages in the run-up to the April 16
> protest reminding people that, "demonstrations must be approved ahead
> of time through proper application procedures." Numerous personal
> accounts of the April 16 march mentioned having received such messages
> or seeing them online.

Just in these two days, China gov tighten the control of internet to prevent from any callings on new protest. Yesterday, the spokesman of Minisry of Public Security warned that any online organizing or gossip on gathering are illegal. The official voices in these two days are mainly one point: all the people should keep stable as the first priority thing. It means that gov is worrying about the protest could evolve into anti-gov movement.

That's the myth in today's China. Gov wants to use civilian's protest to presssure on JP gov. They will also control the information to expose those only supportive to their policy and censor other opinions. Definitely, all the official media has been tamed to one tune already. They are trying a lot to do the same thing in cyberspace even with many so shortsight tricks. Anyway, it's obvious a mission impossible today, there rasied more reactions already in blogosphere(BBSs are totally controlled in these days), can be summaried into four types:

1. We common people can do nothing now, but only rely on gov
2. The gov is usefulless in solving the problem, they will eventually comprise and sacrifice people's benefit to keep their regime
3. The gov can do only limited things to reach real mutual understanding, the gap between people in the two countried will widen unavoidably
4. We won't trust the gov anymore, not just for this issue, many issues in this country are connected

Wikiobituary

Tian compose a new item in Wikipedia about the death of Eduardo Paolozzi. I commented on her blog, "It's a great digital model that pedia down along the meme of ones passing away...."

Comparing to other format of news and media report, isn't "Wikiobituary" a best way to memorize one ever lived in this world?

A comprehensive audio interview program on global thinking with blogging

After travelling from Kyrgyzstan and China, Benjamin Walker edited a comprehensive audio document to show the changes in not only the two countries but the global blogosphere. It's around the Berkman Center's research works but extend to more frontiers around the world including Iran, Malaysia and other countries.

It's very interesting that two 'anonymous' executives in a Chinese blog hosting company, Kenny and Lunny, also talked about censorship of their service and political blog in China. Let's guess who they are?

Ben seeems get a lot of ideas and perspectives from this long trip. So it's not strange that he did a great job. If I myself fall into trouble with this program, i will just ask him to do a special audio report for me, ;)

Video from Shanghai of start of Anti-Japan protest

Joi has posted the video of Shanghai anti-japan protest to a bittorent site. The video:

shows the initial gathering and starting to march of the protesting in Shanghai. It was taken by my family member while I was not in Shanghai.

Cheers!

ONI released country report on Internet Filtering in China

ONI just released a report on China Internet Filtering(also, PDF), covering almost all kinds of censorship/blocking and survillence methods in this country:

China��s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world.Compared to similar efforts in other states, China��s filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple
methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages.

The report doesn't hints why people in China never ask the question, "where the huge budget of this system from? From people and for the people?"

More photos about Shanghai Anti-Japan protest

Seems somewhat late post, but i have to work more on recovering my web site in past days. One of my family members took those photos and copy to me.

(Thanks for Andrew's sharing of one flickr pro account that I can post more photos now)

blogger.com runs slowly again here.... sigh

I'm studying some possibility to reach Free Access via Skype-like P2P tunnel without the pain of setting up unstalbe proxy manually. The solution is to utilize the wide spreading Skype and other P2P tools to build data transferring tunnel and enable transparent proxy to prevent from censorship. With this mechanism, the censors are so headache to block in any point. It can avoid the risks and filtering, as well single piont failure in theory.

Though the model is yet to be finalized and tested, we can see the hope from "Garden News" case(please search this contact in your skype directory and add it as your contact, then type any thing to interact with it)

Any team wants to follow up the technical details?

World conversation by TAG

After a high frequent email conversation between some bloggers, a new tag, "cn_jp_dialog", born for Chinease/Japanese dialogue. It's a small but profound test by harnessing the fourth power of blogosphere(link, rss, trackback, then tag) to conduct people connection and conversation in a wide scope.

You may try to add the tag to your blog by following Rebecca's instruction on Global Voices Online. Also you can try to tag your photos, urls to Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. in the same way.

- Blogs tagged with "cn_jp_dialog"
- Photos tagged with "cn_jp_dialog"
- URLs tagged with "cn_jp_dialog"

and yours more ideas?

Blogger Milkliker was censored by... his ISP, too.

He tried to claim his site to recover the site, according to the new regulation on "non-profit web site registration". However, when the clerk heard it's a blog site, he/she 'persuade' him not trying to register because it won't be passed with an independant blog site.

Now I'm really curious what's the real goal of "non-profit web site registration".

Recovering....

Isaacmao.com is in recovering from censorship by Great Firewall. Please stay tuned...

The figure was drafted last night to show my findings on Great Firewall through "Apirl Fool".

Definitely, it's not complete, some guys commented on my Chinese blog I didn't consider DNS filtering. I will try to experience it first for more understanding of the so-said 1b RMB system.

Entrepreneurs blog

I encourage every entrepreneurs in China to create their own blog to keep updating their ideas and communicating with either investors or cusomers. Soon there are a few guys followed up(Yang bo, Adam, Xuer). I believe they will soon realized how blog is important to help them improve and shape their vision.

Shanghai Daily: Blog firms search for money making model

I made some comments on Shanghai Daily on blog business in China:

There are now approximately 670,000 bloggers, according to cnblog.org, a non-profit Website which tracks the development of domestic blogs.
"The blog-hosting companies need to attract more people to become bloggers," said Isaac Mao, founder of the Website.
According to Mao, when the number of bloggers reaches 5 to 10 million - which he estimates will take up to two years - it won't be difficult for the companies to break even, or start turning a profit.
Integrating blogging into daily life is desirable as more youngsters become addicted to the idea of learning, sharing and interacting via the medium.

China blogger witness anti-japan protest in Chengdu

Zheng posted on cnblog that some bloggers(e.g. Drunk Dream) blogged the protest and chaos by some students in Chengdu universities. There were also some body conflictions between plicemen and students. No official reports in mass media in China.

Experiencing Great Firewall in April Fool

Ha, so interesting experience. I post an April Fool page on my Chinese blog home page today. "isaacmao.com was exiled to Silberia..... what do you want to visit now?.....", then I link 10 interesting sites i visited recently, then really funny things happened after hours.

The first link is to an open letter by a Beijing-based academy to Minister of Education in China who is said ordering the shut down many BBSs in unversities recently. After one morning when the page were visited for thousands of times( accordingthe visiting log), the domain can't be accessed any more. I tracked the DNS, it's good. In my guess, the Great Firewall monitored the content i linked is sensitive one, and after times of visiting, it can't bear it anymore, so blocked my site. Hopefully, it's a daily effect, i think the site can be recoverred soon after midnight of today. You know, the Great Firewall will flush it's cache in each midnight to keep it's efficiency. Good experience, once again.

Some friends called via skype to ask if the April Fool is so big. Isn't it?