Posted Friday, June 8, 2007 at 10:46 a.m. by Chris Amico in News
Good thing I shaved my head this week. Otherwise I'd be yanking my hair out about now. Here's a photo the Net Nanny ought to see:
Yee reported last night that Flickr's photo feed is blocked in China. The site itself is still running, but photos come up as empty boxes.
John Kennedy of Global Voices links the Net Nanny's latest temper tantrum to recent protests in Xiamen, where photos of the anti-PX rallies made their way to the photo sharing site.
Yee agrees:
Any reasons of baning this excellent photos share websites? So many! Especially in this June, like Xiamen people's march against PX project happened on 1st June and someone did a live report of the whole process on flickr.I wonder what this will mean for Yahoo's plan to create a Chinese Flickr.
Update: The San Francisco Chronicle has a story on the blocking (h/t China Webmasters), though it makes no mention of the Xiamen protests and the role Flickr may have played there.
The Web site also hosts a smattering of images that may be frowned upon by Chinese censors, including student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which includes the famous photo of a man blocking the progress of Chinese army tanks, and bodies of students who were killed in the streets as part of a government crackdown.China's tight control over the Internet has become a high-profile issue in recent years as the online world makes increasing inroads with its vast population. Authorities routinely block access to online information about political opposition groups, Taiwanese independence and overseas Web sites such as BBC News, prompting outrage from human rights advocates.
Comments:
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jun 10, 2007 at 8:59 a.m. // Alex said:
Is it blocked for you? It's not blocked for me.
Perhaps it just has to filter through, perhaps it was just a momentary block at a time of caution. I don't know, but at the moment I can use Flickr as usual.
jun 10, 2007 at 9:36 a.m. // Chris said:
Yup, still blocked. Like I said above, the site loads, the photos don't. The Firewall is blocking two of Flickr's photo storage servers. I can't see the photo in the post right now, which is linked through Flickr.
(Btw, if anybody really wants to see it, drop and email to eyeseast at gmail.com and I'll email it to you.)
jun 10, 2007 at 11:58 a.m. // Alex said:
From my, perhaps somewhat privileged perspective in this case, this is a great example on the level of filter levels in China. From my company's connection (massive IT company in China) I can access Flicr and view sites feeds are posted on, no eyebrows raised.
Yet from a regular ADSL connection I am too barred. Censorship on part of the ISPs but not the government? I smell a court case, if anyone has the balls?
They're available from inside China on my connection. They're not available, also inside China, on your connection. Looking into this stuff would be a nightmare, but I'd be interesting.
jun 11, 2007 at 4:46 a.m. // Pandapassport said:
They weren't available friday at work.
I wrote up a little thingy about all this crap this morning. [HTML_REMOVED]a href="http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/blog/littleredblog/0,39056119,62020371,00.htm" title="CNET Asia" rel="nofollow"[HTML_REMOVED]Flickr Blocked: Great Firewall, your mother's in for a long night[HTML_REMOVED]/a[HTML_REMOVED]
You'd have thought my mediocre titles would have stopped by now...
jun 11, 2007 at 7:03 a.m. // Jenn said:
Having all the photos be blank means they might as well just block the whole damn thing. Isn't Yahoo supposed to have good relations with China?
Damnit. I am still uploading, but not being able to see the photos makes titling, tagging, etc difficult unless you upload like 3 photos at a time.
jun 11, 2007 at 8:09 a.m. // kelly said:
路过……
jun 11, 2007 at 11:03 p.m. // Chris said:
Jenn, I had the same problem. I had just uploaded a half-dozen to [HTML_REMOVED]a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisamico/" rel="nofollow"[HTML_REMOVED]my page[HTML_REMOVED]/a[HTML_REMOVED] when the block came down, so there are a lot with no info at all. It's maddening.
Rick, Great post. Keep up the good work.
Alex, indeed. Very interesting.
jun 28, 2007 at 5:38 a.m. // SEO in China said:
Probably a strong message to the new Yahoo! CEO from the Chinese authorities...
sep 27, 2007 at 8:06 a.m. // andrea said:
gawddamn it i have important photos on flickr that i GAWDDAMNIN NEED. if theyre gonna block it why dont they fckin tell us first so we can do what we have to do???????
sep 27, 2007 at 8:08 a.m. // andrea said:
btw is it blocked in taiwan? im going there for business and i need those photos... theyre graphs for my milliondollar investment
sep 27, 2007 at 8:11 a.m. // andrea said:
ok what the hell does the retarded chinese people want flickr is just FINE do they have to gawddamn BLOCK it?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
i am so damn complaining... THIS IS MY FUTURE DESTROYED.
sorry for the crap :P
sep 30, 2007 at 3:11 a.m. // Chris said:
Andrea: Go two posts forward in time and you'll see a Firefox plug-in to take care of this. Here's the post:
http://www.chrisamico.com/2007/06/13/a-fast-flickr-fixr-to-flip-off-the-firewall/