OK in Boston, but banned in Beijing

May 11, 2006 6:46 AM

Can I get China to stop blocking my domain?

We have a bunch of photos of my daughter on my family's Website, on our domain. We'd like for friends in China to see them, but our domain is apparently blocked. One guy speculated that it's because the word "doctor" is in the domain name. All the content on the domain is innocuous - no porn, no politics, no religion (no medicine, either).

Is there someone China we can ask to remove the block? We can write to them in Chinese, or phone them, if that would work.

posted by Kirth Gerson to law & government (5 comments total)

Can you register a different domain name and see if that works? Alternatively you could move the site, or double it, onto a more China-friendly host.

I think, but don't know for sure, that trying to somehow contact the Chinese censors would be a waste of your time.
posted by BackwardsCity at 6:53 AM on May 11, 2006

Is there someone China we can ask to remove the block?

Ha ha! No. I have a lot of recent experience with the Great Firewall of China. I work for the companion site of a TV show that has blocked content, and I was monitoring the availability of recent episode that was about China. There isn't a grievance policy and the CCP isn't going to unblock a site. People more astute than me have researched this for us and concluded that there's no grievance policy worth persuing.

Here's what you CAN do:

go here and try to reach your site through a few open mainland china proxies if you have any doubt that the inaccessibility is due to the main firewall.

If you can hit the site, wait a few days until the connectivity problem clears up for your friends. China has a lot of connection problems that aren't due to (or are residual from) the Great Firewall and access to parts of the web comes and goes.

If it is specifically blocked or the connectivity won't resolve, suggest that your friends use one of the proxies that most serious Chinese Internet users utilize to circumvent the Firewall. Or email the photos, or move them to another site or something. Move on to Plan B, because if Plan A is blocked, it's going to stay that way.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:02 AM on May 11, 2006

Yeah...if the Bush administration is unable to get China to stop keeping its currency artificially deflated, you, as an ordinary citizen, aren't going to be able to get them to do anything, either.
posted by oaf at 7:57 AM on May 11, 2006

Check this article from Business Week about the proxy companies Mayor Curley mentioned. It's a constant battle, with the censors catching up to the rebels every few days:

The simplicity of DIT's approach belies its effectiveness. The company distributes software, called FreeGate, which disguises the sites a person visits. In addition, DIT sends out mass e-mails to Chinese Web surfers for clients such as VOA, which is banned in China. The e-mails include a handful of temporary Web addresses that host off-limits content and springboards to other forbidden sites.

Keeping one step ahead of the censors is what this game is all about. China's cybercops are so efficient that these gateways typically stay open for only 72 hours...Yet despite being outmanned and outspent -- Xia has a tiny staff, an annual budget of about $1 million, and relies mainly on volunteers -- DIT's customers say it has been remarkably successful.
posted by mediareport at 8:06 AM on May 11, 2006

At least one of our friends in China was able to see the pictures using a proxy from hizzoner's link. Thanks, Mayor; you'll get my vote in the next election - several times.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:06 AM on May 19, 2006