[ubuntu-uk] Are you blocked in China?

[Paul Tansom]

** Alan Pope <alan at popey.com> [2007-06-24 00:59]:
> On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 00:28 +0100, Chris Rowson wrote:
> > I know a lot of the members of this list have blogs, and so I thought
> > you might be interested in this tool.
> > 
> > http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/test/
> > 
> > This shows you whether or not your website is blocked by the 'great
> > firewall of China' (As I'm sure you're aware, the Chinese government
> > blocks its citizens access to certain websites)
> > 
> > I was surprised to find that my site at www.justuber.com/blog was blocked!
> > 
> 
> It says "Your URL is blocked" and then "The version, 1.0 may report
> sites as being 'blocked' while there are only technical reasons for
> their unavailability. Read the about page for more info."
** end quote [Alan Pope]

Yes, I'd have to say that the test must be somewhat hit and miss. I
tried microsoft.com, bbc.co.uk and ubuntu.com and only ubuntu.com wasn't
blocked. The record of earlier tests indicated that both microsoft.com
and bbc.co.uk were a bit up and down on the block with Microsoft being
more blocked than not and BBC being more not than blocked.

I've also tested 10 sites that I have/had involvement with and every
single one was blocked, even one that was recently registered and lacked
more than a holding page at the moment, and one that (apart from linking
to some of the others) simply had a cute picture of a dolphin on
(registerd back in 2000, spent a while as coming soon and now in 2007 is
coming eventually - perhaps coming if I'm lucky is more accurate!).

Perhaps they work on an "if in doubt block" basis and approve sites
rather than blocking ones they don't like.

-- 
Paul Tansom