RSSITunes access returns to China following block
By Ed Oswald | Published August 26, 2008, 12:48 PM
After having lost complete access to iTunes for nearly a week, for reasons that may have had to do with the music store featuring an album supporting Tibetan freedom, users in China report they can download music once again.
The first reports of connectivity issues surfaced on Monday, in timing that seemed to coincide with iTunes' release of a pro-Tibet album. While access to that particular album still appears to be restricted, the rest of the store returned this week.
Confirmation of both iTunes' block, and the subsequent lift, was given by Apple. However, the Cupertino company has declined to elaborate further about its nature or cause, leaving that to speculation.
Since there is no iTunes Music Store in China, residents must use the stores of other countries in order to download music. Thus, it is harder for the Government to exert control over the content within. Nonetheless, individual iTunes entries have unique URLs regardless of what country's portal is being used to access them; and apparently Chinese ISPs are now blocking access to these specific URLs, rather than to iTunes as a whole.
Art of Peace Foundation, the group behind Songs for Tibet, claimed its album was released to test the Chinese on their commitments to free speech. As part of its bid for the Olympic Games, China agreed to relax its controls on the Web. It briefly attempted to bypass these requirements early on by censoring some foreign news sites, however criticism forced it to reverse its stance. So far the Chinese government has refused to comment on the block.
A Chinese government Web site which talks about Internet issues did make mention of the pro-Tibet album on August 8. In an article on China.org.cn, the album's release "ignited strong indignation among Chinese netizens," the state-run Web site reads.
"Some say they will boycott all Apple products from now on, including the popular iPhone, which is not available in China since negotiations among Apple, China Mobile and China Unicom broke down," the article claims, without citing any actual sources.
I can't get it, why on earth would China care what others think? What are they trying to hide from their people?
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|That's easy...
Western culture.
The people of China have always been very proud of their culture and, IMHO rightly, want to keep the western influence *out* for as long as they possibly can.
Sure, they want our money, but we can keep our GTA, Skinamax, and moral authority. :)
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|IMO I think that change is inevitable.
If you keep repressing your citizens eventually they'll snap. It can't continue forever, and it shouldn't either.
The longer countries are kept apart from each other the more fascinated the residents become about each other.
It's the typical "it's banned so I want to do it" affair.
It'll happen.
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|Funny thing is, it's not just the government "repressing" it's citizens.
Dunno if you've been there or not, but a great many of them (mostly from what we would call our "baby boom" generation) feel the same way as the government about protecting their rituals, culture and way of life.
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|Can we also keep our numerous video reports of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989? ...
They're kind of hard to find through www.google.com.cn (if you're in China, that is)
Just wondering ...
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|You get it wrong, in regard of this particular event, it's not about hiding - any attempt to separate Xizang from China is against the law and will be prosecuted in China. Same as any attempt to separate Texas or Hawaii from USA.
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|Western culture is never banned or limited whatsoever - at least 10 Hollywood flicks will make to China's silver screens every year, and youtube is freely accessible except when someone or something pisses the government off. The sites that get banned permanently are mostly Tibetan Independence or Falungong related. My personal opinion is that they shouldn't ban these sites, on the contrary they should make them freely accessible to people so that people will learn exactly how stupid they are.
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|As long as the videos that prove links of CIA to many of the events during the 1989 student movement are preserved as well. Ahh color revolutions. Some people has got really good at it through practice.
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|I tend to agree as I am one of them. The western civilization has achieved a lot in the last 2 centuries, especially in term of technology, but people of the western world has grown so much arrogance in them, so much so that they can no longer see other people equally, or admit its own fault with honesty. Many of them think they know more about China's political, economical or social systems than I do, even though they just learned some distorted stuff about China through TV, while I lived most of my life there. People who hang around here are probably well educated, intelligent people, but whenever talking about China, it's like they just suddenly stopped thinking. I blame brainwashing by the western medias. You won't know you are brainwashed until you live in a totally different culture for long enough, not as a tourist or privileged few, but as an ordinary person.
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|"The people of China have always been very proud of their culture"
Is that why they destroyed so much of it during the Cultural Revolution?
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|Wow, finally, someone who seems to know something about China. What exactly got destroyed then, could you please educate us?
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|Boy, this will be fun ...
Sorry to disagree, but I believe he DOES get it RIGHT: it IS about hiding
Much as I disagree with a lot of American foreign policies, many freedoms enjoyed in the USA by its citizens are unheard of in (mainland) China.
Take YOUR example: "any attempt to separate Texas or Hawaii from USA". You *are* aware that there is a movement to separate Texas from the USA, aren't you? Details here: http://www.texasnational.../independence/index.php
Could you freely publish such a website in China about the independence of Tibet? ... Didn't think so ... :)
BTW, it's "Tibet" in English, not "Xizang". Or would you rather we call it "Bod" (=Tibet in Tibetan dialect)?
So, in short, it's not (only) about independence. It's also about hiding and supressing the records of historical events.
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|You say "tomato", I say "tomeito" :) You call it "events", I call it "massacre"
Whenever hundreds or even thousands of unarmed people are killed by soldiers in a single day, I have a tendency to apply the noun "massacre" to that, but maybe that's just me ...
But I guess that if the alleged CIA links could be proved all those deaths would be fully justified, right?
Please *do* post the websites and videos that prove the links between the CIA and the student movement in China in 1989. I don't deny they existed (in fact, it's likely they did exist to some extent), but from there to justifying the Chinese government repression there's a long way ...
In the meantime, let me publish the links to only some of the video accounts of the so called "events" at Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989:
http://www.youtube.com/r...ananmen+square+massacre
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