Internet: September 2007 Archives

By Bruce Einhorn and Xiang Ji | Business Week
September 10, 2007

Chinese search engines make it easy to steal Net tunes

Eric Zhu is just the sort of customer that Western music labels want to reach in China. The 28-year-old Beijing resident is a sales director for a local company and enjoys listening to Western pop, from the Backstreet Boys to the Spice Girls, on his MP3 player. Zhu doesn't pay for his tunes, though. Like millions of other young Chinese, he downloads them for free using Baidu.com (BIDU), the country's biggest search engine. Baidu makes it so easy--just hit the MP3 tab on the home page, type in the name of the song, and click. What's more, Zhu doesn't believe he and his friends are doing anything wrong. "I think it's a problem with the law, not with us users," he says.

China, home to a thriving commerce in counterfeit software and bootlegged films, has also become the world capital of pirated music. Almost 100% of music downloaded from the Net is stolen, according to Leong May See, Asia director for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an umbrella group that includes Sony BMG Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music. It doesn't help that two of the country's most popular search engines, Baidu.com and Yahoo China (YHOO), help users find and download songs quickly, and, Leong alleges, illegally. The two provide "deep search" services that allow listeners to download free MP3s from the databases of other sites without ever having to go to those sites themselves. "We have huge problems in China," says Leong.

It's not just the international music in- dustry that has a beef with China's search engines. Google China (GOOG) is struggling to compete against Baidu, which has an edge thanks to its music downloads. Local startups trying to build businesses around selling music online also gripe about Baidu and Yahoo China. "Baidu is at the root of the problem of illegal music downloading," says Wu Duanping, chief executive of online music seller Zhejiang Flyasia Electronics Business Co., based in Hangzhou. Baidu and Yahoo China declined to comment.

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By Feng Changle | The Epoch Times
September 07, 2007

With the Chinese Communist Party's Seventeenth Congress around the corner, another wave of Internet traffic controls are sweeping across the nation.

Ministry of Information Industry Blocks Websites Nationwide

On August 27, 2007, Miao Wei from China Telecom declared, "To respond to the Ministry of Information Industry's project "to purify and improve the Internet environment and to combat Internet pornography," China Telecom has blocked 8,808 illegal web addresses, cut off 265 virtual hosts without IDC (Internet Data Center) permits, and 9,593 unregistered websites.

Additionally, Yu Xijian from China Netcom (CNC) said it has blocked 587 websites which were unregistered from the IDC (Internet Data Center) or the ISP (Internet Service Provider), and 112 websites without IDC/ISP permits.

The action actually started in April. The Qiushi Journal, a publication of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), claimed, "On the Internet, noise of various ideologies, phony information and stirred emotions are propagated. It adds variety to our nation's ideology. However, our task is to defend ourselves from our enemies' plots to westernize and divide us, which becomes more important. The current situation is very difficult."

According to the CCP's Qiushi Journal, by the end of 2006, there were 137 million Internet users in China (population 1.3 billion) and 80 percent of them were under 35.

"The Current Situation Is Very Difficult"

Recently, some mainland BBS members forwarded the reporter notices from their BBS website administrators, it states, "The situation has been very tough. Due to the coming CCP Seventeenth Party's Congress, the intensity of Internet surveillance and control has reached a record high. About 90 percent of the internal forums and websites of the Public Safety system have been cleared. I must remind everyone again: the current situation is very tough! The most sensitive topics are those that

-involve the Party, state, government, governmental departments and units;

-involve Japan, Darfur in Sudan, issues in Tibet and Xinjiang;

-involve appealing crowds, parades, demonstrations and livelihood issues; and

-involve overseas Falun Gong, the rightists, exiles from Tibet and Xinjiang.

The administrators asked everyone to "report and delete such postings immediately!"

Some Internet surfers think that the Internet provides a special environment for freedom of speech and that is what attracts numerous users. Freedom of speech is the lifeline of the Internet. The government has a hard time adapting to it and is always suspicious, causing conflicts between the current political system and opinions online.

  Read the article in Chinese

by Dakshana Bascaramurty  | The Charlatan
September 05, 2007

Lhadon Tethong was deported from China due to her political and social views of Tibet and China relations

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), visited China for the first time after years of protests and campaigns against what she views as an invasion of a free people and state.

She blogged her way through Beijing with her colleague Paul Golding, documenting her views on beijingwideopen.org and China's "illegal occupation of Tibet," she says. She strategically timed her travels to take place exactly one year before the 2008 Olympic Games.

Though not a member of the group that unfurled a 450-square foot banner over the Great Wall of China that read: 'One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008', Tethong says her blog entries led to her deportation.

Arrested on Aug. 8 and detained in a downtown Beijing police station, she was questioned for six hours by the metropolitan and plain-clothes police.

"[They] were interested in what we were doing, why were in China [and if] were we trying to recruit for our cause," she says. 

Tethong was detained for less than 12 hours before being deported to Hong Kong. 

"In the end, I was deported from China because I was, [according to the police], undermining the stability of the Chinese government," she says.

Tethong grew up hearing about Tibetan issues and its standing on the international stage, especially from her Tibetan father.

Yet it was only at a Free Tibet concert in San Francisco in 1996, that she became actively involved in the cause.

That same year, the history student at Nova Scotia's King's College started a chapter of the organization in Halifax.

After graduating Tethong worked at the Toronto Stock Exchange. But she packed her bags and left Toronto after applying and receiving the program co-ordinator post at the SFT's New York City location.

As one of three staff members, Tethong says she was in charge of many things including seminars, public speaking and campaigns.

Now, with four years as executive director under her belt, the organization has chapters in countries worldwide, including Australia, Cameroon and the Czech Republic.

While Tethong has dealt first-hand with how information on freedom for Tibetans is heavily restricted by Chinese authorities, she uses the Internet as an activist tool.

"It's illegal to discuss the issue [of Tibet] if you are over there [in China]," she says while waiting in an airport for a flight to Canada after her tumultuous trip.

She says this interview and story would have been impossible to complete if she were back in the communist state.

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By Steven Schwankert, IDG News Service | via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
September 06, 2007

Wikipedia's English site is blocked again in China, after over two months of being accessible, continuing a saga of on-again, off-again availability.

Users in Shanghai and Beijing confirmed Wednesday and Thursday that they were no longer able to visit the site. Wikipedia's own account states that the block resumed on August 31, although some users in China said the site has only been unavailable starting this week.

China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, along with some pornographic sites. The Chinese government does not announce or comment on when a site is blocked or made available.

Because the version of events or political views expressed on Wikipedia are not necessarily in line with those of the Chinese government, the government may be blocking access to the site.

The current blocking may be related to the upcoming Communist Party Congress, which begins Oct. 15 in Beijing. Held once every five years, the meeting is the Chinese government's most important political gathering, used to create five-year plans, which are the bedrock of China's centrally-planned economy. It is also often used to reshuffle government positions or for leaders to consolidate their power.

While Wikipedia's English site is occasionally available, its Chinese-language sites are almost permanently blocked, although access is sometimes permitted for one or two days at a time.

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