China Now Blocking RSS Feeds

Phurge passed us an Ars Technica link covering China's newest internet-based crackdown: RSS feeds. Real Simple Syndication has apparently been a fairly foolproof way to get around Chinese government censors in recent years. As long ago as August, though, access to feeds has been curtailed by the Great Firewall. "More recent reports tell us that the PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with 'feeds,' 'rss,' and 'blog,' thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites — including ones that aren't blocked in China, such as Ars Technica — useless ... there are a few workarounds, some of which may be simpler than others. Some of our readers in China tell us that web-based feed aggregators, such as NewsGator Online, (sort of) help provide access to RSS feeds. One reader says that if he has the aggregator set to display the full post (or however much of the post is made available) and clicks through to read more, everything is just fine."

If it is just the heading that gets blocked.

Change RSS to LSS and we'll call it even.

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Ludicrously simple syndication?

Nefarious?

We've heard of other nefarious tricks to get around the firewall, too. One involves an SSH connection to somewhere outside the country, such as the US, in order to have unrestricted access to RSS, the web, you name it. Another involves the popular Firefox extension gladder, which is a proxy tool that advertises itself as a "Great Ladder" to get over the Great Firewall. Finally, the Tor tool is also popular; it allows a client computer to access the Internet anonymously through a network of virtual tunnels--a series of tubes, one might say. This would allow Chinese users to eventually gain access to the Internet through a Tor node that is located outside of the country.

1. Tor is nefarious? Isn't nefarious necessarily something evil (as opposed to tricky)?
2. Wouldn't you be in deep trouble if they caught you using a bypassing method? I wouldn't put it above the government to make you "go missing" after they catch you. SSH,

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Isn't nefarious necessarily something evil (as opposed to tricky)?

nefarious :
* abominable; atrociously sinful or villainous
* extremely wicked; "nefarious schemes"; "a villainous plot"; "a villainous band of thieves"
Yes

why not use http?

That's all feed:// URLs use, innit? A fake protocol always seemed bogus to me. You already have a MIME type.

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I've never heard of feed:// before this point. All my RSS feeds have used http://./ [.]

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Safari uses the feed:// "protocol" for RSS/Atom feeds, even though it's still really just HTTP under the hood. It allows you to enter, for example, feed://slashdot.org and it will automatically find the appropriate feed for the site instead of having to ty

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i think they meant the hostname or path part of the URL, not the protocol (as "blog" isnt a protocol, is it?).

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blog:// is a popular protocol for wide distribution of disinformation and factoids.

The ironic thing

All China really has to do in order to control information flow nationwide is to deregulate the media and force them to compete vigorously against one another. They'll be so cost-pressured that they can't really do any journalism; instead, they'll end up so short-staffed that all they can do is publish the stuff that the government wants them to publish.

Barring that, the internet will simply detect the censorship and route around it, just like it always does...

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All China really has to do in order to control information flow nationwide is to deregulate the media and force them to compete vigorously against one another. They'll be so cost-pressured that they can't really do any journalism; instead, they'll end up s

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And besides, there are always crackpots who'll do some investigative journalism.

Is this a "velvet flamebait"?

It wouldn't make much difference

I doubt chinese government's efford. For a normal person will almost never visit sites other than in Chinese. Those who does however will always find a work around.

block all incoming URLs that begin with 'blog'...

By far the best evidence of a civilised country. Ever.

Re:block all incoming URLs that begin with 'blog'.

One of my adblock filters in the past had been *blog* simply because it removes all the cruft from blog sites,leaving only html(ads are already blocked) which i can access directly.
I don't use it currently and moved to more specific filters.

this should go to YRO

... not {politics for nerds}.

btw I've been under the shadow of the Great Firewall since China has internet. This is just normal case. Something is not being smart enough in the GFW API the Communist Party bought from you Americans. Perhaps somebody's LA

Workarounds are illegal in China...

While its interesting to find a workaround to the great firewall of China, one has to remember that it is illegal for a Chinese citizen to violate the Firewall. Furthermore, if you, as a foreigner are visiting China, it is just as illegal for you to bypas

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Illlllegal? As far as I know there's no law banning me from SSHing some remote host not explicitly blacklisted by the Chinese Gov't (i'm Chinese). And we don't even know who we are against. We don't know who operate and are responsible for the GFW. No*body

Re:Workarounds are illegal in China...

Illlllegal?

Sans-serif must die.

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We don't know who operate and are responsible for the GFW.

There's a lot of info at Wikipedia: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China [wikipedia.org]. Yeah, it's Wikipedia. Maybe it's a CIA misinformation page. Then again, a lot of it may be true. You live in China, you can verify it better than I.

The GFW works just like the Babylonian Lottery of Jorge L. Borges (at least for me).

I had never

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Thank you for the info but...
unfortunately we are not able to read Wikipedia now in China without the 'workarounds'. It has been blocked by the Firewall. Btw, we hear rumors that the Chinese government is running proxy servers outside China in order to f

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The problem for China is that if they become effective at imposing these draconion rules, then using the internet in any fashion will become such a risk that no one will do it. They will cripple their economic growth. The Sarbanes-Oxley [wikipedia.org] can be used as a

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Have you actually been to China?
I've lived there for a few years and I have to say that this is nonsense. The concept of a "great firewall" is pretty misleading to start with, but I digress.

It doesn't need to be illegal to bypass the firewall, and students

Why does China do this?

I thought Socialism was about the ideal of giving power to the people rather than an elite oligarchy. What the hell happened? Censorship usually comes from an insecure and weak oligarchy desperate to maintain privilege.

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Because all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

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many years ago Deng Xiaoping (the Chinese president then) said something like "(the govenment should let) a few people 'get richer first' " when he refers to the interpretation of socialism (the official one). I don't know how to translate that well in Eng

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Maybe because Socialism is the idea of giving power to the people rather than an elite oligarchy, to gain popular support among people for an elite oligarchy, so that power can be gained by that elite oligarchy. Censorship is then used to dumb down the pop

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The problem with communism in every country that tried it, was that it concentrated power, which allowed it to be siezed by tyrants or oligarchies.

Any system that allows power to concentrate will end up an oligarchy.

Why the trouble?

Why all the trouble blocking rss-this or blog-that? Deploy the backhoes and goatse your infrastructure!

There is no future for China if they keep this up

China is heading toward becoming a living example of a Reductio ad Absurdum. [wikipedia.org] The internet is now the critical infrastructure over which information flows. To use Marxist terms, it is becoming critical to defining the Mode of Production [wikipedia.org] for a society. It is becoming powerful for social relations, organization and management, and education among other elements. Their own philosophy tells them why thier own actions will cripple thier development.

China will have to choose between having the internet and being a world power using the tools of the 21st century, or becoming isolated from the rest of the world on all levels. The internet is becoming the primary infrastructure for a new future. The idea of becoming or staying economicaly and politically viable without it is naive and foolish. It would be like trying to become a economic and military power in the 20th century without an industrial base to build anything.

Re:There is no future for China if they keep this

More proof that building closer economic ties to China will bring freedom and democracy there.

There is a huge future for China ....

...if they keep this up. They'll just step up trade with bogus regimes like burma and the sudan and saudi arabia and such places where they can get natural resources and the leaders share a similar "overlord" political philosophy, including using the intar

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Good post. You're getting into some of the more interesting aspects of the whole problem.

Their own population can only be customers if their population has expendable wealth. You could have a googleplex of destitute dirt farmers and not sell one iPod.

Giving this away?

I'm sure we're doing the Chinese a great service by discussing the various ways they might circumvent the great firewall. Not that anybody would go report harmful information to the Ministry of Internet

The ministry has also established a system of online

Use Google or Yahoo to display RSS

Now a days there are plenty of sites that allow you to add your own RSS feeds on the site. Find one that's not blocked and setup the RSS feeds on it.

Ever wonder...

...if there are people in other countries talking about the "great US firewall" that we aren't even aware of?

Re:Ever wonder...

No, I don't. Creating such a thing would require a large effort involving the collusion of thousands of people. Given that broad set of implementors, and the US traditions of freedom of the press, something like you describe would be impossible to keep secret. I don't doubt that there are probably several neo-fascist law makers in the US that would advocate for this. However, given what I have laid out, they would have to do it in the open rather than in secret.

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But you have to admit it would be much easier if you put all the at&telcos under the same roof. :)

I imagine all we hear outside about China and the "firewall" is similar to what "an outsider" might hear about file sharing networks. People are getting s

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Really? And they also censor newspapers, magazines, etc? How do they pull that off? Which government agency handles that?

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Chinese people who use the internet often know about the firewall. Well, at least they know how to bypass it to watch porn.

Slashdot isn't blocked

I was in China for the last couple of weeks and was actually rather surprised that I was able to access Slashdot there. With all the stories here about the Great Firewall and Chinese censorship, along with ways to circumvent them, I figured Slashdot would

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I'm in China and can get Slashdot's RSS feeds via Google Reader. Now I know why Slashdot always fails to connect if I attempt to go to the original article by clicking on the feed header! If I use the "read the original article" link, which is a direct htt

rss feed websites

They could always set up websites that work like http://www.siliconnews.net/ [siliconnews.net] they integrate many rss feeds into one web page. I also believe http://naviwire.com/ [naviwire.com] is launching soon providing the same service but over a broad spectrum of topics other than te

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Uh, don't you get it? It is relevant to the US. You've just witnessed the Fairness Doctrine in play. You can split hairs but thats whats in the current US government politic right now. It's highly relevant.

wow

I can't help thinking that those girls must be getting underpaid.

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RIAA sees China's success, gets Congress to block Shoutcast. China does it to block commentary on their regime curtailing freedom. Our regime doesn't give a crap about the freedom-curtailing commentary as long as no digital performance of Britney's lates

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In other news American company build large wireless network that stretch to Beijing. Communists try blocking air signals with toxic smoke.... oh wait....

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(can we) just nuke them already

No. Our economy would collapse.

Balance (in million USD)
2007 (July)
Export to CHINA: 35,325.6 Import to USA: 176,630.9
LOSS TO USA:-141,305.3

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LOSS TO USA:-141,305.3

Wouldn't the loss to the USA be +141,305.3?

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If America lost $-141,305.3, then technically they would gain $141,305.3.