How Chinese net-censorship works -- Reporters Without Borders report

Reporters Without Borders have just released "Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship," an in-depth report on the internal functioning of Chinese Internet censorship. Included in the report is a selection of messages from the official censor to Chinese media outlets, such as:

Dear colleagues, regarding the death of a radio presenter while she was at the deputy mayor's home, do not disseminate any reports, do not send any new articles, withdraw those that have already been posted on the site, and ensure that forums, blogs and messages no longer refer to this case. Please reply. (30 May 2006)
Dear colleagues, the Internet has of late been full of articles and messages about the death of a Shenzhen engineer, Hu Xinyu, as a result of overwork. All sites must stop posting articles on this subject, those that have already been posted about it must be removed from the site and, finally, forums and blogs must withdraw all articles and messages about this case. (17 June 2006)
Regarding the issue of unequal income distribution, please use articles from the Central Committee's main information mouthpieces and nothing else. Please do not spread rumours about this matter or conduct online polls. Please reinforce monitoring of comments, discussion forums and blogs and immediately block any violent or obscene message. (28 June 2006)

Philipp Lenssen points out that this report might do more good as a CC-licensed HTML page, rather than an all-rights-reserved PDF, but even so, it's a must-read. Link (Thanks, Philipp!)

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The Snowden Principle

David B.

The Chinese government is truly the only MAJOR evil empire left.

This is an open plea to all the hackers of any ilk that might check out Boing Boing. Get these assholes. Open the internet search engines. Hack the major news sites. Corrupt the local node tables and re-route URL resolution to off-shore Chinese language news sources.

I know nothing of what equipment or OS’s are involved in China’s internet isolation and electronic information suppression (except for the disgusting capitulation by companies like Google and Yahoo!), but I’m hoping you do.

Honestly, you’re their only hope.

David B.
RadioGuy

@phenom

Assuming a ban were enforceable, wouldn’t that be a little hypocritical?

Also, please stop spamming the comments.
stephan lawson

I’m in China now. The link is blocked. Figures….