Post On The Internet And China

If Yahoo! and the others packed their bags and left this country, freedom of expression would take a step backwards. By their investments in the Chinese Internet, foreign Internet companies have dramatically advanced freedom of expression for a quarter of the people on the planet.

Interesting.

The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry and the State-Council, issued last Sunday new regulations on the Internet. At first glance it looked like a marginal update of restrictions that are already in place since the year 2000 and limits the scope of news sites to a large degree to repackaging news that has already been published by the printed state-owned media. But details emerging on Monday, beyond the original Xinhua dispatch indicates that the new regulations are not only a marginal revamp, but include new restrictions that indicate where China's leadership sees new threats.

Fons changes his analysis when new information emerges regarding Xinhua's opaque announcement about Internet regulation here in China. But this was not as big a surprise for people who read CNBlog:

今天（09.12）下午13点半左右，一位自称“北京市通信管理局”的阿姨打我手机，问姓名，域名，服务器所在，是否备案，然后和蔼客气的通知我的主页有关于“李_大_同_事”的内容需要清理删除。。。

Can the sound of a well-oiled machine be disturbing...?