One of my friend has his dedicated server IPs blocked by China ISP for having some chinese forums. He removed the offending forums. But anyway to email the China ISPs to remove the ban? Anyone has such experiences?

Not sure if I'm understanding correctly, your friend's web server IP was blacklisted by Chinese ISPs just because of it's content? Nope, that's never happened to us, you'll have to e-mail the ISPs to get that resolved.

You can trust I tried, but normal China ISPs doesnt seem to reply at all.

Who cares about China ?

It is government controlled over there. I don't think the IP will get of the blacklist.

If your web contains some adult content, it will be watched by gateway and maybe blocked, as I know, a lot of people in China post there, said some adult forum is blocked.

Lets just say this much:

If you run a site with questionable content that will be viewed by Chinese people, buy a large cache of IPs and set your DNS TTL entries very low.

It is a constant battle to keep those sites online. Its fun though. :)

>If you run a site with questionable content that will be viewed
>by Chinese people, buy a large cache of IPs and set your DNS
>TTL entries very low.

Most datacenters wouldn`t find it very funny if you used their IPs to avoid blocks...

Originally posted by IncognitoNet
Not sure if I'm understanding correctly, your friend's web server IP was blacklisted by Chinese ISPs just because of it's content? Nope, that's never happened to us, you'll have to e-mail the ISPs to get that resolved.

Not just because of its content - ESPECIALLY because of its content. If the Chinese government believes that your Web site is subversive, you will be blocked. Such is the case in dictatorships and communist regimes. They take blocking Web sites over there very seriously and whatever ministry is responsible for it keeps a close eye and a tight grip on what the people see and hear.

Isn't it kind of impossible to censor the internet ? I mean they have to block virtually any hosting company outside China because as soon as you have access to a PC outside China you can set up your own proxy server very easily...

Originally posted by thomas.smith
Isn't it kind of impossible to censor the internet ? I mean they have to block virtually any hosting company outside China because as soon as you have access to a PC outside China you can set up your own proxy server very easily...

Ultimately...will they lose the fight? Probably. They try to control radio too, I believe. I seem to remember reading about underground radio stations outside of China that broadcast to Chinese citizens...though it could have been some other dictatorship, I don't know. In any case, it's a lot of work for them. The real goal, I think, is to try to find out who is acting in an unacceptable manner, and imprison those people to make an example out of them. I'm sure the Chinese government knows that it cannot get everyone or every Web site. It will, however, still try to block those it can, and arrest those it can.

To answer your actual question...yes, it's impossible to completely censor the Internet, but if you scare enough "regular" people into avoiding subversive Web sites, or stop them from seeing them altogether, you then only have to deal with the people who are viewing them because they are serious about opposing the government. From the government's point of view, those people are already against them anyway. They are not being convinced by these sites. It's the regular people (and I hate that term "regular" because it's condescending, but for lack of a better word...) who you have to keep away from things that speak ill of the government. North Korea simply bans everything, including cell phones, I believe.

For all the trouble, who would want to be a dictator? It's just not easy anymore. :)

Problem is we do care about China, which is an emerging dragon. Especially my client who is a chinese national.

Just checking anyone know any email that I can email to to get the IP unbanned, as that guy has remove the politically sensitive forums from his server.

Originally posted by thomas.smith
Who cares about China ?

ok . . .

So the Chinese are all about Freedom of speech then :)

It is a wonder they have not got there own "Intranet".

Originally posted by andrewjab
ok . . .

So the Chinese are all about Freedom of speech then :)

It is a wonder they have not got there own "Intranet".

Make no mistake about their government. They see the power of the Internet as a learning and research tool. They also see it as a threat in terms of subversive speech. So they block what they feel does not conform to the party standards and allow what they would consider to be valuable information. I'm sure if you put up a nice Web site praising the party leadership, they'd allow all the citizenry access to it. :)

Smart! Dennis! This is a great idea. Will ask my client to try it out.