September 9, 2002 8:43 PM PDT
Blocked Web surfers in China get detour
- Related Stories
-
China blocks search engine AltaVista
September 9, 2002 -
Google inaccessible in China
September 2, 2002 -
Yahoo yields to Chinese Web laws
August 13, 2002
Hijacked attempts to log on to the immensely popular Web tool, already blocked for more than a week, and subsequent blocked access to AltaVista triggered a flurry of criticism in Chinese chat rooms and biting disclaimers from beneficiary sites.
Some analysts called the move unprecedented and wondered what the next step in Beijing's Internet crackdown might be.
"This is a serious escalation," said Michael Robinson, chief technical officer of Beijing-based Clarity Data Systems.
"They're not acting as administrators. They're acting as hackers," he said. "They're impersonating authority that they don't in fact actually have."
The routings--to at least half a dozen different search sites, many virtual no-names and few of them major market players--began over the weekend, analysts said.
The move appeared to be ordered by public security authorities and implemented locally via Internet servers run by the country's fixed-line phone giant China Telecom, they said.
They said users of the smaller China Netcom's services were unaffected in Beijing and Shanghai. Those users' attempts to access Google were met with the same blocked page as before.
Some people in Beijing and Shanghai were redirected to Peking University's no-frills search site Tianwang, the little known cj888.com and the American-invested Baidu.com, among others. People in Guangzhou were rerouted to the local portal 21cn.com.
"It's like going to buy Coca-Cola and they say 'Well, you can't have Coke, but here's grapefruit juice,'" said a Beijing-based analyst.
Information Industry and Internet representatives had no comment on the move. Sites gaining exposure from it denied any role in the re-routings. "It is definitely not done by us," said a Baidu executives. "We have no idea where it comes from."
The Tianwang home page carried a stronger disclaimer. "This is not what the Tianwang search would hope to see," it said.
China's media censors have matched broad proclamations with targeted action in the run-up to the party congress, which is expected to see sweeping leadership changes and important new policy directives.
Analysts said Beijing might be trying to placate its Internet users amid condemnations from rights groups abroad and users at home over the blocks on Google and a second search engine, AltaVista.
"Rather than the absolute block that they had, it's trying to be helpful," said Duncan Clark, head of Beijing-based tech consultancy BDA China. "But actually it could be worse."
The routings backfired with customers.
"So damned shameless," said one Web chat room member.
Clark warned of legal risks. "Ultimately it's messing with the fundamentals of URLs," he said, referring to Web address codes. "I guess some URLs are created more equally than others."
Analysts said the government could be preparing for a prolonged blackout on Google through the November congress, which holds a cache of content from Web sites already blocked in China.
Commercial interests were but a fringe benefit, they said.
"The local telecom officials are implementing it, and those guys do have local interests in content sites," Clark said. "But they would only profit in terms of traffic."
Clark said the move would drive more Web users to look for proxy sites in China, which has already blocked proxies anonymizer.com and safeweb.com.
But the government might catch on, he said.
"To make this rerouting thing more effective, it would also need to block proxies."
Story Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
- this is cool
- Reply to this comment
- it will really help me
- Reply to this comment
