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China blocks access to YouTube

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On March 25, 2009, 2:58 PM EST

China appears to have once again blocked access to YouTube. Google, which owns the popular video sharing site, said it began noticing a decline in traffic from the country on Monday and was totally blocked by Tuesday. The Chinese government has not directly addressed this issue but many are speculating the ban is an attempt to prevent citizen access to recent videos depicting alleged brutality by Chinese police in Tibet.

It's not the first time users in China have been unable to access the site, though, as similar Tibetan protest videos last year led the country to block domestic access to the site. Civil rights groups have long been pressuring the country to relax its controls on web content, but they seem to maintain that the Internet needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent “the spread of harmful information.”

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User Comments (6)

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phantasm66
on March 25, 2009
3:43 PM
Maybe China should just ban thinking and be done with it.

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supersmashbrada
on March 25, 2009
4:03 PM
Well if they did that, my T shirts might have 3 sleeves instead of 2.

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DarkCobra
on March 25, 2009
6:26 PM
@phatasm66Well said! But got news for ya . . . China banned free thinking a long time ago. Sad huh?

Reply

tengeta
on March 26, 2009
12:57 AM
Hey, were next.Don't get too cocky there =).

Reply

JDoors
on March 26, 2009
1:02 PM
"[The Chinese government] ... seem(s) to maintain that the Internet needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent “the spread of harmful information.” "Harmful to whom? Will they ever wake up and discover that what THEY'RE doing is harmful?I sympathize with the Chinese government somewhat, after all, look what happens when Chinese citizens HAVE access to information: Protests and riots. I don't agree that keeping them ignorant is better than fixing the problems in the first place, but at least I can see how THEY'VE come to that conclusion.

Reply

mattfrompa
on April 5, 2009
8:51 PM
It's as hilarious as it is terrible that an entire country would block access to a website

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