China to Limit Web Access During Olympic Games

BEIJING — The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.


full story from NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/sports/olympics/31china.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

China censoring Internet access at Olympics

BEIJING, China (AP) -- Olympic organizers are backtracking on another promise about coverage of the Beijing Games, keeping in place blocks on Internet sites in the Main Press Center and venues where reporters will work.
At the Olympic Green in Beijing, a foreign journalist uses Internet services provided in the Main Press Center.The blocked sites will make it difficult for journalists to retrieve information, particularly on political and human rights stories the government dislikes.

full story:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/30/olympics.internet.ap/index.html

Remember How The Net Neutrality Fight Began

No matter how hard global incumbent lobbyists and public relations officials may distort it (and do they ever), their goal remains clear: ISP executives in uncompetitive markets, flush with envy over content operator ad income, want to get their hands on this revenue to please investors -- despite already being paid for bandwidth.

full article:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Remember-How-The-Net-Neutrality-Fight-Began-93310

Help! the Internet is Dying

Advocates of network neutrality claim that the telecommunications companies have entered a deal that means that the Internet will, by 2012, function the same way as cable television packages, meaning that we will only be able to access a small number of websites by paying a standard fee, and we will have to pay extra in order to access a wider selection of websites, with an even higher subscription fee for the elite who can afford to access the whole of the Internet.
Full article here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/
article/819903/help_the_internet_is_dying.html?page=2&cat=9

Behind China's Great Firewall

In light of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, more scrutiny is being placed on China's Web-filtering practices. PC Magazine takes a closer look.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2317415,00.asp

2012: The Year The Internet Ends--URGENT READ

http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality

Very important article on how the internet will be controlled
for advertisement only. Share this information, please.

Woeser’s Middleway Blog Hacked Again

Beijing-based Tibetan writer/blogger Woeser has been writing the “Tibet Update” series on her Middleway blog, hosted outside of China. About 3 am Beijing time on May 27, 2008, her blog was hacked by a group calling themselves “Chinese Hongke Alliance.”

(A profile of Woeser, written by Washington Post’s Beijing correspondent Jill Drew is here.)

Charter Will Monitor Customers’ Web Surfing to Target Ads

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable system in the United States, has started telling its high-speed Internet customers that it is going to keep track of every site they visit on the Web.
The cable company will sell the data to a firm called NebuAd, which in turn will use it to show ads to Web-surfing Charter customers that are meant to be related to their interests. (Visit a knitting site yesterday and see yarn ads today.)
Charter started sending letters out to several hundred thousand customers in four markets: Fort Worth, Tex.; San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Oxford, Mass.; and Newtown

Complete article
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/charter-will-monitor-customers-web-surfing-to-target-ads/index.html?ref=technology

Australian Government Internet Censorship Intent

Australian government is moving towards censoring the Internet through controlling the ISPs.
Full article below.

http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/
internet_censorship_under_fire_537224

Great Link for News of Tibet

http://en.epochtimes.com/index10.html

Article on Li Yuan from Epoch Times

'A Hero Who Stood Up for Principles of Freedom'
By Mary Silver
Epoch Times Atlanta Staff
Feb 22, 2006
At the Feb. 15 Congressional joint hearing of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations, Representative Dana Rohrabacher called Li Yuan, the Princeton-educated physicist recently assaulted in his suburban Atlanta home "a hero who stood up for principles of freedom." Picture show Li's injuries after the assault.
At the Feb. 15 Congressional joint hearing of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations, Representative Dana Rohrabacher called Li Yuan , the Princeton-educated physicist recently assaulted in his suburban Atlanta home "a hero who stood up for principles of freedom." He has been devoting himself to breaking through what is called the Great Firewall of China, and is Chief Technical Officer for The Epoch Times . What experiences shaped Dr. Li?
Yuan "Peter" Li was born in Shaanxi Province, a rural part of western China. His father was a teacher and his mother grew oats and corn. From childhood through college, he helped his mother plant, care for and harvest the grains. He has two younger brothers.
"I remember from the youngest age that I was in a persecuted family," he says. His paternal grandfather was a Buddhist religious leader. "He was caught in the crackdown on counter-revolutionaries in the 1950s. The CCP put him in prison and shot and killed him in front of a group of people."
His mother's father was a student in the 1940's at what is now called Teacher's University. He was about to go to Japan for graduate study. "The CCP caught all his family and divided their wealth, money and land. They jailed him and scattered the family," said Dr. Li. "My grandmother was tied up with her feet and hands in the air. They were afraid if my grandfather got out of jail he would take revenge. They killed him (in jail) and reported it as a suicide."
When he was young, his parents did not want him to go outside and play with other children. They were afraid he would be beaten because of his family history. So he stayed inside and studied. His father had some old books on electronics, which he especially liked. He concentrated and read those books.
He excelled as a teenage student and was strongly interested in science and technology. He credits his father with motivating him to study. "My father said, "If you want to improve your status you have no hope but to study. To get ahead in China we have no chance except to study." The paths to advancement in China require either Party membership or becoming a government official, but those paths could never be open to anyone from a family like his, said Dr. Li. Having a distinguished religious leader as a grandfather and another grandfather from a wealthy family was a political problem, a barrier.
At Tsinghua University, he had an abundance of energy and took extra courses, especially in math, physics, and what was then called "radio-electronics," now called micro-electronics. Every semester he had the top grade in physics. Some of his teachers liked him very much, and recommended him for the China-United States Physics Examination and Application, or CUPEA.
CUPEA was started by scholars in the late 1970's as a way to find gifted Chinese students and send them to the United States for graduate work. At that time, there was no TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or GRE (Graduate Record Examination) available in the mainland, so a physics exam was designed for the program. It was extremely competitive and given in English over two days. The elite few who did very well on the test went to American universities with all expenses paid by the host schools. When the program ended in 1989, only 17 CUPEA students had gone to Princeton, among them Dr. Li.
While he was at Princeton, he went to China to wed a former Tsinghua University classmate. She had to stay behind for one year. The delay was "just paperwork," Dr. Li explained. At that time, college students were required to work in China for one year after graduation. Their two children were born in New Jersey.
Dr. Li has reportedly filed more than twenty patent applications while working as a scientist for Bell Labs. When asked to talk about his technical achievements, Dr. Li said, surprisingly, "I don't remember." He said some patents take years to be granted, and he hasn't followed their progress. Acquaintances often speak of his humility. His manner is self-effacing and gentle. Once when an acquaintance thanked him for helping her and for being kind, he said, "Kindness and helping each other is what it's all about."
Three years ago he brought his considerable gifts to The Epoch Times full time. He was one of the founding members of the paper, helping to start it five years ago. He works for freedom of information for people in China, overseas Chinese, and for everyone. The Epoch Times mission statement that "In our approach and in our content, we uphold universal human values, rights, and freedoms" gains a new resonance from Li Yuan's story.

Key Words:

Tibet, Internet, Censorship, Olympics, Riots

Chinese Filter On Line Reports of Violence

The Chinese government is cracking down on all negative communication to the outside world as the start of the Olympics draws near. Computer hackers are risking prison, bodily harm and death to get information out to the world about the treatment of Tibet and other Chinese citizens. Since the Olympics is exposing the Chinese treatment of its people to closer scrutiny, the Chinese government is desperate to hide any negative news to the world.

Chinese Impersonating Tibetans In Riots

The Tibetan government-in-exile accused China's government on Friday of staging fake protests that turned violent in Tibet in order to justify its recent crackdown. Chinese police are dressing themselves in monks' clothing and impersonating them in order to incite peaceful protesters to riot.
The majority of the people involved in the Tibetan riot on March 14 were not familiar to the locals, according to Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the exiled Tibetan government. True reports of the riots continue to be censored by both the Chinese media and the Internet companies.

Computer "Hacktivist" Beaten and Robbed

Peter Li, a Princeton educated anti-censorship computer expert was attacked and badly beaten in his home in Atlanta , Ga. He reported that a gang of Chinese speaking thugs broke into his home and removed his computers, leaving other expensive electronic equipment. They then bound him with duct tape and beat him.

Barilan Internet Slideshow Link

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/06/19Rowe/1.aspx