Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

China Now Blocking RSS Feeds

Posted by Zonk on Fri Oct 05, 2007 12:41 PM
from the keeping-things-simple dept.
Government Censorship The Internet Politics
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Firehose:China blocking RSS feeds by Phurge (1112105)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

China Now Blocking RSS Feeds 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • Change RSS to LSS and we'll call it even.

  • 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, after all, is relatively easy to track.

    No, there is no ??? or profit step. The Chinese government already has better ways to gain money. </preemptive strike>

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

  • The ironic thing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Enlarged to Show Tex (911413) on Friday October 05 2007, @12:58PM (#20869905)
    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...

    • 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.

      I think that's just a little too ironic to be true. Can you give us a case study? I would have thought that deregulation would just open up a flood of negat

      • And besides, there are always crackpots who'll do some investigative journalism.
        Is this a "velvet flamebait"?
  • By far the best evidence of a civilised country. Ever.
  • 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 bypass the Chinese Firewall.. If the authorities find out, you will likely face severe penalties. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it to read Slashdot or Ars RSS feeds, while you are on vacation in China? Perhaps you should wait till you get back, so yo

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gzipped_tar (1151931)
      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*. The GFW is a more a cult, or humor, or both, than someting substantial for me, but it is _really_ there. The GFW works just like the Babylonian Lottery of Jorge L. Borges (at least for me). Errrr, am I offtoopic?

      • Re:Workarounds are illegal in China... (Score:4, Funny)

        by fbjon (692006) on Friday October 05 2007, @01:50PM (#20870759) Homepage Journal

        Illlllegal?
        Sans-serif must die.

      • 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 heard of that story [wikipedia.org] before. Quite an interesting perspective :) The Wikipedia article talks about some of that:

        "Internet censorship in the PRC has been called "a panopticon that encourages self-censorship through the perception that users are being wat

  • Why does China do this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cryfreedomlove (929828) on Friday October 05 2007, @01:14PM (#20870143)
    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.
  • 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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GnarlyDoug (1109205) on Friday October 05 2007, @01:17PM (#20870201)
    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.

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

    • Re:Ever wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cryfreedomlove (929828) on Friday October 05 2007, @03:05PM (#20871845)
      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.
    • Chinese people who use the internet often know about the firewall. Well, at least they know how to bypass it to watch porn.
  • 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 be blocked. Now I'm starting to wonder how widespread and effective their censorship efforts actually are. I did see a news report there about the plan to have little cartoon characters popping up on users' screens if they are found to be searching for
      • In other news American company build large wireless network that stretch to Beijing. Communists try blocking air signals with toxic smoke.... oh wait....

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.