China blocks AltaVista search engine

[bdhoff]

China blocks AltaVista search engine

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Chinese Internet police have apparently blocked a second search engine, AltaVista, in an effort to eliminate pornography and "unhealthy material" from reaching Chinese citizens online.

[Alex]

OMFG, BRB, Im gonna go look for atsivatlA

[Spinnaker]

Man, China puts so many restrictions on its citizens. First the one-child policy, now blocking search engines. Man they should ease up a bit.

[Alex]

Hey, When a country roughly 1.5 times the size of the US has 1 billion people in it I can understand the 1 child policy, But why block content from citizens?

[MicroBurn]

I can see it now.

"China bans all internet access"
Good lord China loosen up on the internet thing.

[linuxelite]

You guys have got to understand, the government is regularly abusing/violating civil liberties. The government there has a lot more power than any other government has over its citizens. Lets say one guy became prime minister or president of all china, and he thought that a certain site would make people mad at the government, he could order all the ISPs(they are all government ISPs, the government is the only provider of internet access) to block access, and people couldn't really do very much about it. Whereas pretty much anywhere else, there would be outrage. I dunno why they feel like they have to clean up the internet for all their citizens instead of letting them make their own choices, I mean blocking porn? Thats some people forcing their ideals on everybody. Its pretty disgusting, the net is for everything, not to be monitored or restricted. By the way, altavista has been blocked for longer than just Sept. 1, on one of the message boards I goto, one guy was looking for a web based, cgi proxy script to get to blocked sites. But at least there are things like Camerashy and that google mirror.

EDIT: Besides, they don't want subversive elements to influence the people of China. After all, how can you stand up against an entire country? Well, if somebody were to influence those people and to have them rise up against their own government, the government could do very little. So I understand why they block sites they find offensive or subversive, I just don't agree with it.

[vanman]

I have to say when it comes to porn,pedofiles,childabuse,etc....there is absolutely no excuse,but their goverment should have legislation in place to filter or catch these people red handed.Blocking a search engine like alta vista which i find to be rather good,i think is robbing their citizens of valuable knowledge searching.

regards
v/man

[linuxelite]

Ah, but now, now you're imposing you're ideals on others. Maybe you think porn shouldn't be on the net but somebody else might think it does. And for others, it might be their only source of income. The internet isn't meant to be restricted or filtered, period.