Click here to stick a pin to torture the Net Nanny Voodoo DollHow can they dare to block FLICKR ?
I have been quiet all the time.
I am a guest here in China.
I am not criticizing much.
Blogger blocked or unblocked did not matter much to me. I always had access to my blog to be creative. And not having millions of Chinese readers did not matter to me.
Blocking Wikipedia did not bother me too much either. I can get info somewhere else.
But now I am affected, badly affected. I AM BLIND IN CHINA !
Flickr is blocked since June 7. I cannot upload or work with my pictures at flickr where I paid 25USD to have an extended account that is useless since ONE WEEK already. I feel blind ! I cannot see the lovely pictures form one of my favorite blogs, Decor8 as the pictures are posted directly from flickr.
For the first time, since two years in China, I feel my personal freedom restricted.
Cannot they just block these pictures from the Chinese users that uploaded unwanted pictures? Why everybody had to be affected? And on the other hand, if Chinese people want to protest against a Chemical Plant they should do it on their own sites. They are affecting millions of people that are not interested in some demonstrations in China. Why don't they email their pictures around to news stations outside the country? Why do they have to abuse Flickr with their political issues ?!
Am I an egoist?
Well, no, I feel punished for something I have not done!
This is not fair. Okay. That word might be not known in Chinese government.
Did I say too much?
I punched three needles in that little Voodoo doll that symbolizes the Chinese 'Net Nanny' that blocks diverse websites that the China government does not like.
More links at Danwei
6 comments:
Censorship is a terrible thing. Hope you get back to your photos soon.
Hi Suzie:
In case you don’t have it yet, install the access flickr add-on (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4286) on your firefox browser and voilá :)
Take care and talk soon.
Ian
I know that the photos are still there. I only canot see them. And I know about the bybass, thank you Ian (how do you know about that?) But my IT expert is on a business trip at the moment. Anyway, I will follow your link and try.
Princess, when I saw 2 comments, I guessed you have visited and I guessed your first five words right. Funny, I seem to know you a bit ;-)
If it helps (I hope it does), you should know that many of us have posted protests in our Flickr accounts. In fact, there is a large group of anti-censorship images on Flickr now.
If you can see it, it is here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=censorship&m=text
I am going to Germany next week and will be able to see over there.
I send flickr a mail and asking my money back. Although it will not work, at least they might think that they will get into trouble.
But they cannot do anything about that block in China. It is the Chinese government that just don't allow access to their servers.
I think flickr should not be misused for political issues. But I have no idea how they can control that as this would lead to a flickr initiated censorship... (same as in Germany, I think)
So the only thing that I can do at the moment is to be angry with the Chinese censorship.
(I have not properly installed the bypass... lazy Suzie...)
I see that someone has mentioned the bypass. What I use is Tor. Go to http://tor.eff.org/ Install Tor and the torbutton Firefix add-ons. It is easy and incredibly effective, although it might slow your connection slightly. I'm in Shandong Province and have been using it for almost 2 years!
Cheers
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