E-Media Tidbits

greatfirewallofchina.org According to "Great Firewall of China," Poynter Online is coming through just fine in the People's Republic.

Did you ever wonder whether your site can be enjoyed from China? In the People's Republic, censorship decisions can change day by day. The Great Firewall of China is a new site that helps you determine whether a site is blocked by Chinese government online censorship.

Enter any site's URL to see in real time whether it is censored in China. The site's Dutch organizers -- a documentary maker with a Chinese background, and a media artist who organized some financial support from a few cultural funds -- route your URL request through to the server in China, and share the results back to you. So not only will you learn whether your site is available; you'll also get to see it as the Chinese do. (Editor's note: The "view the site in China" feature was not working when I tested it just now.)

Wired reports that all 1.8 million LiveJournal sites are still blocked, and that Wikipedia remains unavailable.

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Tidbits contributor Fons Tuinstra, who is based in China, adds these caveats for using the site: "For Chinese online veterans, the firewall is not a problem, since there are dozens of easy-to-use tools to get around it. What I'm missing at a site like this is an overview of those tools, so newcomers can access them more easily.

"Another problem with this site is that it creates the illusion of a centralized organized censorship. In fact, much Chinese censorship is locally organized. When the rumor of a new IP-block goes around, people here start checking how the situation is in different regions of China. That pattern is not as straightforward as this site suggests."