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Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

This is pure insanity: "Quartz contacted the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology from Hong Kong asking for further clarification on how the rules would work, but the ministry said it could only reply to faxed questions that came from a reporter with a mainland press card."

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Classic bureaucracy evasive manuever.

I see it here in the US as well. "We only accept queries by email and will reply within three to five days" or "It will cost $1 per page to print" etc.

The government censor in New Zealand wants web sites to submit their material, item by item, to the censor's office for approval.

Australia and the UK already have firewalls that filter all Internet traffic which "my bad, so sorry" seem to keep "accidentally" including all sorts of sites their backing legislation doesn't justify (at least as far as anyone can tell - the Australian government list is confidential). The UK is trying to roll out laws requiring all citizens to register with the government to view R18 material.

China is just playing catch-up at this point.

Their 'great firewall' is incredibly sophisticated and has lead to domestic companies like Baidu filling in gaps left by foreign companies.

Weirdly, I think its helped China become a bigger power.

It's called protectionism and had been the cornerstone of economic power growth for centuries

China is definitely the leader on the matter. Not a follower.

Really? Perhaps you could enlighten those of us that live there and have not noticed this. There is a widely used block on CP sites: https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-DCEFS - but that's a very different thing.

Here's an example from Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-asics-a...

Not deliberate censorship (excluding the 1200 they did intend to censor, of course). I've had many dealings with ASIC throughout my career and can assure you that most of their 'bad actions' can be ascribed to incompetence rather than malice.

Not that it's much of a comfort; the outcomes of giving power to evil are roughly the same as giving power to stupid.

I'm in the UK. Can you give me a URL that is blocked by the national firewall?

All the BBC national content is blocked, you cannot see it from outside the UK, unless you proxy through the UK IP address.

All the pirate sites like kickass are blocked in UK

http://kattorrents.us/, http://kickasstorrents.eu/ works for me, I'm on Plusnet. They're just ones I found by Googling for them, is there a specific URL that doesn't work?

https://pirateproxy.pw/ also works.

Not all of them, and simply using an HTTPS connection is enough to get around much of the blocking.

They are cutting off the foreign news outlets. If you aren't a mainland Chinese journalist with a press card of that nature they no longer have any interest in your opinion.

Why bother replying to people you don't care about?

Could international press community do something like embargo all mainland reporters?

I'm afraid this will suit Chinese authorities just fine. This is not how you want to play this game.

That only strengthens the totalitarian government's position by further blocking any outside ideas. They don't care whether the press makes money, they want control.

"isolating closed regimes is like 'threatening a drowning man with a lifeboat'" - Ian Bremmer, the J Curve: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1071855.html

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