While doing research on censorship issues on the Web, I ran across the site GreatFirewallOfChina.org. It’s a simple application that lets people test whether certain sites are available in China.

I did a few quick checks of some of my sites and discovered that, for whatever reason, this site is blocked.

I have only mentioned China a few times on this site, though none of those mentions were particularly favorable, it hardly seems to be worthy of a ban. Not that censorship has ever made sense.

This would explain why I hadn’t noticed any traffic from China for some time. However, it is also disturbing as many of these issues are equally valid in China, especially as it seeks to become an Internet power. It also deprives the debate of an interesting and necessary viewpoint.

Hopefully this is just a false positive, something the site warned can happen, but considering I’ve tried the test three different times and other sites worked fine, it seems unlikely.

Tags: China, Censorship, Plagiarism, Content Theft, Copyright, Copyright Infringement, Copyright Law

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