tibet

CNN.com survives random outages

Although CNN escaped a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack planned for Saturday, the site has experienced either random outages or inflated response times over the last 72 hours, according to one Internet research company.

Netcraft reported Tuesday that during a three-hour period on Sunday morning, the CNN.com site was unavailable from its listening post in Pennsylvania. And on Monday, the site experienced inflated response times. CNN.com did suffer a minor DDoS last Thursday, but recovered by limiting access from certain geographic areas, mainly Asia.

Also on Tuesday, The Dark Visitor, a site that tracks Chinese hackers, said a downloadable … Read more

Tying Hillary to Chinese censorship through Bill's speech for Alibaba: a stretch?

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's foundation received an undisclosed sum in exchange for his keynote address at an event held by Alibaba, the Chinese internet company that controls China Yahoo* and has been accused of aiding China's crackdown in Tibet.

Some activists are trying to tie this money to Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying it conflicts with her statements on China. In addition to claiming she "stood up to" China's government in a speech while Bill was president, she has said President George W. Bush should not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic … Read more

Olympic torch protesters, rallied by Net, challenge China

SAN FRANCISCO--Wearing T-shirts reading "Free Tibet," hundreds of protesters raised their fists here Tuesday to protest the Beijing Olympic torch relay's arrival to the city. Most were from the Bay Area, but some came all the way from New York and Canada to mark their opposition to the Chinese government's plans to carry the torch through Tibet and to the summit of Mount Everest.

SF Team Tibet, a coalition of Tibetans and human-rights supporters that organized the event, is calling on corporate Olympic sponsors Samsung, Lenovo, and Coca-Cola to withdraw their support of the torch relay. … Read more

Olympic officials warn China on Net access

Inspectors for the International Olympic Committee are reminding China of its obligation to provide open Internet access to journalists attending this summer's games, according to a BBC news report.

China, which will host the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, has a reputation of restricting Internet access to various Web sites, such as YouTube, which recently has served up video clips of unrest in Tibet, and to foreign news sites.

But under its contract with the International Olympic Committee, China is required to provide journalists with Internet access, according to the BBC report. The IOC expressed concern over China'… Read more

Yahoo and MSN briefly help find Tibetan dissidents

Yahoo China and MSN China both briefly posted a "most wanted" list with photos of people Chinese authorities are trying to track down surrounding the recent events in Tibet, a French TV website reports.

Rebecca MacKinnon reports that the lists were down when she checked, and offers a guess as to what happened:

I wouldn't be surprised if the local editors just automatically ran it because everybody else in China was running it, then got over-ridden by management in the U.S. who realized how badly this would play outside of China... Such is the disconnect between … Read more

Before Tibet's unrest, Tudou and YouTube saw scrutiny in China

A Chinese agency promised to shut or punish video sharing websites for hosting prohibited material, but this was going on before the incidents in Tibet made a different agency's occasional blocking of YouTube famous.

An AP reporter says the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) announced Friday that the leading Chinese video site, Tudou, would be penalized. The report notes that no mention was made of Tibet, but doesn't make clear the most important part: that this all started before the demonstrations in Tibet did. I am sure SARFT takes politically sensitive films into account in … Read more

YouTube ban only erodes China's image

Protests break out in some nation around the globe and one of the first things a media-shy government does--just after sending in riot police--is pull the plug on YouTube.

The latest example is China's handling of protests in Tibet. The Chinese government has blocked access to YouTube in that country after scores of clips showing violence between police and protesters were posted to the site, according to hundreds of reports found on Google News.

Scores of other media outlets have been blocked or partially blacked out in China, including broadcasts of CNN, the BBC World, and Google News. But … Read more

China blocking YouTube to suppress Tibet rioting?

People all over China are reporting that YouTube access has been blocked, possibly in connection with a Chinese government crackdown on Tibet, according to a colleague of mine at CNET Asia.

"I can't access the site here, either, and a quick ping through my network utility does show 100 percent packet loss, indicating that a block is likely in effect," Rick Martin, who reports from China, writes on his blog. As evidence, he includes this screenshot taken from his computer:

"There were some videos uploaded to YouTube already about the demonstrations, but this block will definitely … Read more