Is Youtube the latest victim of Chinese Censorship?

18 Oct

Well, on a tip from Chris and Alex, it looks as though youtube might have just been “harmonized.”

I get a “page not found” when trying to access youtube.com right now, and a quick ping of the site through command prompt goes unanswered. Request timed out. 100% packets lost. Sad…

On the other hand, Chinese youtube clones like youku.com, 6rooms, and tudou.com are still working perfectly. You can see below, a ping of youku.com is successful.

Just to show how f*cked up the Chinese net-nanny is, I pinged pornotube.com for shits and giggles, and it works like a charm. Apparently some of the powers that be are not quite ready to part with that one.

Hopefully this doesn’t last long. But given the net nanny’s previous exploits, who knows what we can expect…

UPDATE: Apparently this blockade comes one day after youtube opened a site for Taiwan on Thursday. They also opened in Hong Kong on Wednesday, but I’m sure that wasn’t as big a worry for the censors.

From the Associated Press:

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Google Inc.’s YouTube said Thursday it has launched a version of the video-sharing site in Taiwan in its latest push to expand in foreign markets.

The site features locally produced content, including that from YouTube’s four Taiwan media partners, China Television Co., Sanlih E-Television Co., Lion Travel Service Co. and Taiwan Broadcasting System, YouTube said in a statement.

The interface of the site, http://www.youtube.com.tw, is in Chinese.

Popularity: 5% [?]

4 Responses

Jeremy

October 18th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
1

Yeah, youtube is at least partially harmonized - it is definitely not loading in-site. Pain in the ass, really.

All of these restrictions are adding up to be a bit too much, what can we do???
hdp

October 19th, 2007 at 11:58 am
2

Ummmm, Tudou is older than YouTube, so how is it a clone?
patz

October 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
3

Can we do a petition?
admin

October 19th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
4

@hdp
good point. and very true.

I’d be curious to see, however, if tudou adjusted their layout to be more youtube-like once youtube hit the big-time. If they did, I’d still call them a clone.

But for now, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

@patz
If you’re on facebook, you can join the Anti-Great Firewall Group. Not quite a petition, but I’m sure if you wanted to start a petition, that would be a good place to do it.