Internet: February 2006 Archives

BBC News
February 21, 2006

Google has denied accusations that its new Chinese-language search engine is operating without a licence.
It follows a report in the Beijing News that Google did not have the correct paperwork for its China site.

The web giant has rejected the allegation, saying it was operating under the licence of its business partner, Ganji.com.

Google's China service blocks politically sensitive material to comply with Chinese censorship rules.

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By Ben Blanchard | REUTERS
February 15, 2006

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is being forced on the defensive over its media censorship policies, fending off attacks from United States and even, unexpectedly, its own aging Communist Party officials.

This week, Beijing has had to defend its controls over the Internet, just days after U.S. Web giants faced bipartisan criticism in Congress for bowing to Chinese government demands to block sites and help track down critics who communicate online.

At the same time, a former secretary to Chairman Mao Zedong and a dozen other senior Chinese scholars and ex-officials denounced the shutting down of an investigative weekly as a "historic incident".

And the U.S. State Department has set up a task force to help American technology companies protect freedom of expression in countries like China that censor online content.

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By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
February 12, 2006

SO what does the Dalai Lama look like, anyway?

Chinese Tibetans or other Buddhists who might be curious could try finding images of the spiritual leader on Google.cn, a new search engine that Google tailored for China and is now, two weeks after its unveiling, on full display to local Web users.

Is he that guy with puffy cheeks wearing a Western suit? No, that's Liu Jianchao, China's foreign ministry spokesman, demanding that the Dalai Lama stop trying to split the motherland. What about that balding man leading a big delegation? No, that's Chen Yi, a late Chinese vice prime minister, offering grain to the Tibetan people.

Only one of the 161 images produced by searching in Chinese for the Dalai Lama on Google.cn shows the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet since 1940. He is pictured as a young man meeting senior Chinese officials. That was before 1959, when China's People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet and the Dalai Lama fled into exile.

For people outside China, or Chinese who can circumvent the Internet firewall, the 2,030 images on unfiltered Google.com favor the Dalai Lama of today. He is the genial-looking guy in the burgundy and saffron robe, here meeting President Bush, there speaking to 40,000 people in New Jersey.

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The Epoch Times
February 8, 2006

By Dynamic Internet Technology

Various searches were recently performed comparing google.com and its communist version, google.cn. The tests occurred between Jan 25 and Feb 3. It was determined that google.cn is using two blacklists to censor results. Additionally, both www.google.com when accessed from China and www.google.cn, include more web pages from China in their search results. Combined with Google's best search ranking technologies, google.cn has become a crown-jewel in the Party's propaganda system.

1. Impact on User Results

On issues that are highly sensitive to the CCP regime, a search within "all sites" will be silently limited to websites inside China. This ensures that results will closely follow the Party's line.

As an example, search results for the Chinese word "Falun Gong" on both google.com and google.cn return dramatically different results. Half of the search results from google.com are websites outside of China ("overseas") and are supportive of Falun Gong. All search results from google.cn are filled with slander.

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BBC News
February 9, 2006

The internet giant Yahoo has been accused of providing China with information that led to the jailing of a second internet writer.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders claims that Yahoo released data which led to the arrest of Li Zhi.

The online writer was jailed for eight years in 2003, after posting comments that criticised official corruption.

Last year Yahoo was accused of giving information to Beijing which led to the imprisonment of reporter Shi Tao.

Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo to release the names of all internet writers whose identities it has revealed to the Chinese authorities.

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BBC News
February 3, 2006

US congressmen have condemned major IT firms including Microsoft and Google for helping China censor the internet.
Members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus said four US firms were putting profits before American principles of free speech.

The hearing follows Google's decision to block politically sensitive terms from its new Chinese search site.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and Google were also criticised for not attending the hearing in Washington.

Yahoo and Microsoft defended themselves in a statement, saying they did not have the power to force change on governments.

Their services had, they said, "enabled far wider access to independent sources of information for hundreds of millions of individuals in China and elsewhere".

'Caved in'

Tom Lantos, top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said: "There has been a string of disturbing incidents in which US-based Internet companies have bowed to pressure from Beijing."

"These massively successful high-tech companies, which couldn't bring themselves to send representatives to this meeting today, should be ashamed. They caved in to Beijing for the sake of profits."

The Chinese government enforces strict laws on internet use, blocking content it considers a threat, including references to the Tiananmen Square massacre and notable dissidents.

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