The blocked "blog" (http://dweb.blogspot.com) is run by Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT Inc.), a U.S.-based company that according to its Web site provides low-cost solutions for customized Internet service needs in "challenging environments. (A blog is a Web site that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual.)
DIT runs DynaWeb, a proxy service that enables Internet users in China to gain access to restricted Web sites from within the country. According to a spokesman for DynaWeb, 95 percent of their users are from China, and about 10,000 people in China use their services daily.
The DynaWeb blog contains Internet Protocol (I.P.) addresses of proxy servers that people in China can use to circumvent government Internet filters. (An I.P. address is a series of numbers, such as 169.132.18.1, that uniquely identify all computers on the Internet.)
DynaWeb repeatedly blocked
Soon after the DynaWeb blog was first announced in late December 2002, China's firewall, which filters Internet content entering the country and blocks content that the government deems objectionable, began blocking the site.
On January 8, Greg Walton, a researcher who focuses on the impact of technology and globalization on human rights and democracy, reported that the China's firewall was preventing Chinese users from accessing all blogs hosted by BlogSpot, including the DynaWeb blog. DynaWeb later reported that Chinese users who went to dweb.blogspot.com were automatically redirected to a nonworking I.P. address. The address formerly belonged to http://falundafa.ca, the site of a Canadian-registered organization that promotes Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that the Chinese government has labeled a threat to national security. Since the Canadian Falun Gong site is blocked in China, DynaWeb speculated that the redirecting was being done to discredit Falun Gong by making unsuspecting users think that Falun Gong had hijacked the sites being redirected.
Hours after Reuters and other newswire services reported on January 15 that the DynaWeb blog was inaccessible, Chinese users reported that they could access blogs on BlogSpot.com's site but that the DynaWeb blog was still blocked. By January 18, the DynaWeb blog was moved to a different location on the Internet, where it remained accessible in China until January 27 or 28.
The DynaWeb blog is not the only site that has been redirected by the firewall. Last October, DynaWeb reported that users in China who tried to access several Web sites, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the dissident e-mail magazine Dacankao (VIP Reference), were being automatically redirected to falundafa.ca. DynaWeb detailed its findings in a report available on its Web site at http://www.dit-inc.us/hj-09-02.html.
A DynaWeb spokesman told the Digital Freedom Network that DynaWeb has taken several steps to ensure that people in China can use their services. Users can obtain the Internet addresses of their proxy servers by e-mail, which is not affected by the block of DynaWeb's blog. DynaWeb is also working on switching their blog's I.P. address again, although Xia noted that the process increases the cost of maintaining the system.
Struggle over content
China is one of the world's biggest censors of online content. Firewalls monitor Internet traffic entering the country for material the government deems pornographic, subversive, or otherwise harmful to the state. While these laws directly affect dissidents and other controversial individuals in China, they also affect the majority of users, who are only getting online to chat with their friends, send e-mail, or read news. The DynaWeb blog appears to be the latest target in the government's continuing effort to regulate the Internet.
http://www.dfn.org/news/china/blogblock.htm
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