China = Online Censorship strictest??

Let's talk about China's online censorship today.. Is China's online censorship really the strictest? Let me show you all some examples.. For instance, an internet user in China searches for the word "persecution", he or she will see a blank screen showing that "page cannot be displayed." There are lots more words that the internet users in China cannot search for.. such as "Tibetan independence", "democracy movements" or weird sounding terms like "oriental red space time" which is the code for an anti-censorship video made secretly by reporters at China's state TV station. An activist on AIDS and other issues, Hu Jia was sentenced to 3½ years in jail for articles that he had wrote for Boxun.com, a U.S based Chinese language website that was blocked in China. Gillian Chung, the Hong Kong pop duo "Twins" was involved in a sex video scandal and China had blocked her even though she apologized.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRWyYNab898

However, the Chinese government had denied that anyone has been arrested for internet postings, despite a series of dissidents jailed in recent years for online comments criticizing corruption and calling for democratic change. They said that no one should ever be prevented from posting news online or writing a blog which taps more than 100 journalists who are keeping them informed. Aren't they too strict in online censorship? Does anyone agree with me??

These are the methods that China used to suppress information:

Creating Bottlenecks

According to journalist James Fallows, internet traffic to China is channeled through three computer centers which are near Beijing, Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou. Chinese authorities can easily monitor all traffic into or out of the country by building in chokepoints.

Checking Internet Traffic for Subversive Material

This is like police dogs that sniff airport luggage for illegal drugs. The Chinese install “packet sniffers” and special routers to inspect data as they cruise past the chokepoints. They can block the connection when the detectors spot a Chinese internet user trying to visit a suspect website. Web users will get a note that warn them to behave or apologizing for technical problems.

Demanding Self-Censorship

Beijing’s internet controls are strictest where Chinese authorities control commercial websites for what appears on them. The authorities even issue orders to website managers through mobile phone text messages and demand that they comply within 30 minutes.

Issuing Propaganda

The Chinese authorities in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen had created two cartoon cybercops- the male named Jingjing while the female named Chacha that will pop up on websites to remind internet users that they are being watched. Chinese officials also order websites to reprint official propaganda such as a report encouraging internet users to tolerate by online etiquette.

Getting Outside Help

China had policed the internet with assistance from U.S firms- Cisco Systems. For example, China used original routers that supplied by Cisco to monitor internet traffic. Google had created a censored search engine for China. Users at other countries who search for images of “Tiananmen Square” through Google can get pictures from the 1989 pro-democracy protests that ended in a crackdown that left hundreds dead and included the iconic photograph of a lone man staring down a line of Chinese tanks. While in China, users can only get tourist images of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City across the street. Yahoo turned over e-mail that authorities used to jail a Chinese journalist who leaked information about China’s attempts to censor coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.

Censorship Loopholes

A company named Dynamic Internet Technology created a software, Freegate that finds holes in the firewall and takes Chinese internet users to banned websites. The owner of Dynamic Internet Technology, Xia sent millions of e-mail messages into China for customers such as Voice of America and the activist group Human Rights in China. The e-mails contain links to forbidden sites at an ever-changing list of temporary internet addresses, part of an effort to stay a step ahead of Chinese censors. The Chinese government was reluctant to admit anything had gone wrong, so users turned to defector websites to get practical information on weather conditions and rail service. Chinese authorities even constantly find new ways to plug the holes that Freegate finds. Chinese internet users also use decidedly low-tech methods to avoid official attempts to censor their e-mail or online commentary. The authorities had try to update their list of banned terms which now running into the hundreds to include those with creative punctuation.

Can you all believe it?? China is really strictest in online censorship.. They eventually have so many methods to censor on the internet and some of it I can’t even believe that they will use the method… I hope that they will loosen their online censorship..

Kindly drop me a comment.. =)

Sources:
URL: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2008-04-22-InternetBandits_N.htm
URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/08/tech/main2164867.shtml

Vote Results


Do you know what is online censorship?

The first poll question of week 1 shows 91% of people have agreed that they know what is online censorship and 9% of people have agreed that they don’t know about online censorship.

From this analysis on the poll question we can conclude that majority of them know about online censorship and only a minority of people doesn’t know about online censorship. Yet we would like to make a note that, those who know about online censorship wouldn’t know the purpose of it. I bet many would be saying, ‘Yeah of course I know what online censorship is, just that I do not know the purpose of it.'

Online censorship remains anonymous to many people. To avoid such circumstances, from the young age children has to be taught on the right exposure and beneficial usage of the internet. Where as, the youths of today are regardless seemed not to know the purpose and the use of online censorship. This leads to the misusage of the internet in the wrong way and getting engaged into immorality behaviours.

At this stage, online censorship stands as the fencing to stop the over exposure of elements like explicit or violence which can affect the mentality of an individual and more or likely to be taken into action. Creating awareness on the purpose and the need of online censorship will help many people to learn and understand it better.

I hope the information that we posted makes the first move as in to help in creating awareness about online censorship to the youths of today. Do stick with us, we’ll be back with more information and discussions. =)

Online Censorship - A "faithful assistant" to Parents

Observing the formation of a child from an embryo to foetus and to a new born is simply amazing. It is even exhilarating to watch them develop from a child to an adult. Can you believe it? A child’s first day of discovery starts in the mother’s womb itself.

The mind of a child symbolizes a piece of white cloth signifying purity and innocence. Parents hold a heavy responsibility to paint colours of morality, attitude and character on it. Especially in this era, parental guidance is so crucial in developing a child healthy lifestyle. Nonetheless, materialistic parents who are busy chasing wealth and their careers have neglected their little ones in terms of their psychology and social development. This cause the child addicted to internet to keep them entertained with online games and websites with inappropriate content.

The early years are indeed a time of extremely rapid development, when children acquire motor skills, thinking abilities, social skills, capacities for feeling and regulating emotion, and other characteristics that will last a lifetime. Language development includes the development of vocabulary, grammar, and the pragmatics of language use. ( A-B-C ?)

A child's language development is incredibly fast as a lightning. They can easily recall if a particular word is been repeatedly spoken. Profanity is a vulgar or irreverent speech or action. Ever wondered how they get to know profane statements or actions? Through, songs and movies published in video sharing websites commonly Youtube, Metacafe, Imeem and others. Profane music videos and movies give a child the wrong perception of life. A child is easily manipulated as they idolise adults and imitate their actions without even knowing the meaning of it. Online video sharing is making things a lot easier for kids to search. That's one of the reasons Youtube is being censored by the Brazilian authorities.

Moral development is development of moral values and behaviour. Moral values are beliefs about what is right and wrong while moral behaviour refers to actions consistent with these beliefs. Let me give you an example. Harry believed that taking drugs is wrong; therefore he does not associate himself with drugs. His action is actually his moral behaviour. The ability to think and reason enables moral judgment, social and emotional development leads to moral values and empathy, and personality development includes the growth of conscience.

The issue that cause a huge worrisome among parents is video games. Now, with the advent of widespread local area networking technologies and Internet based online capabilities, online gaming gains more popularity than video games. It has becoming more fascinating, realistic and fun. Many parents fear the online games played by their children may affect later actions. According to the findings of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit emotional arousal and diminished control, focus and concentration.

Out of curiosity, I went to test out the game which my male friend is so into it. Here it is 13 Days of Hell. The player is supposed to shoot the lost souls before they slash your head with their blades. The next thing I knew was blood oozing out and splashing across on the monitor screen. I recalled back, I was actually murmuring "die die die" when I pointed the cursor to the lost souls. Just see how online games turn you in just split seconds. VIOLENT

13 Days of Hell - Picture for visualisation

In conclusion, we have seen how internet powering over the young minds from being lovable to something monstrous. Online censorship has been a ‘faithful assistant’ to parents in controlling their children. But that doesn’t give an excuse for parents to neglect their duties in guiding the little ones. What do you think ?

Sources

Rick Nauert, Psych Central official website, Violence Video Games Leave Impact [Online, HTML], Retrieved 20th January 2009.
URL:http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/11/29/violent-video-games-leave-impact/439.html

Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2008 official website, Developmental Psychology [Online, HTML] Retrieved 21st January 2009
URL:http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761571074/Developmental_Psychology.html

WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc., Profanity [Online] Retrieved 21st January 2009
URL: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/profanity

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3558/13daysinhellhi3.jpg