Google.CN

The big story this week has been Google's decision to offer a censored Google.cn(China) search. 

If you have been following this story and would like to learn more, please check out the resources below. Over the past few years Berkman faculty, fellows, and affiliates have conducted research on the technical, legal, and political underpinnings of online censorship and filtering.

*Yesterday Nart Villeneuve (Director of Technical Research at Citizen Lab) blogged "Google.cn Filtering: How It Works."   From the post:  "This fine grain control allows google.cn to keep websites such as 'epochtimes.com.ua' in its index while eliminating epochtimes.com. There is similar fine grain control targeting Chinese language content. While there are results for 'site:faluninfo.net' there are no results for 'site:chinese.faluninfo.net'.

Nart also recently published "The Filtering Matrix: Integrated Mechanisms of Information Control and the Demarcation of Borders in Cyberspace." 

*On April 2005 the OpenNet Initiative released its report "Internet Filtering in China 2004-2005."    From the report: Compared to similar efforts in other states, China’s filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages. Click here to read the full report. 

Several ONI principals presented the report before the US China Economic Commission. Click here to read John Palfrey's written testimony before the Commission.

*Want to know what the big internet filtering picture looked like a few years back? Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman conducted the first internet filtering studies, all of which are available here.

*Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau Chief in Beijing and Tokyo, has blogged extensively on this topic. Click here to read her news roundup of Google-related pieces from January 26.  "If Google wants to show that it is truly serious about doing the right thing in China it should...." Click here to read the rest.

*Ethan Zuckerman, Berkman fellow, blogged his own test results of the new Google.cn.   "Basically, it looks like two things are going on here: certain sites are simply so controversial, Google.cn won’t offer links to them. inurl: searches reveal that pages exist, but results won’t let you see them, and site: searches give you the same result as if you searched for a nonexistent domain. (There’s a slight difference - search for a non-existent domain and you don’t get the message that certain results may be removed…)  Use a particularly controversial keyword (falun gong, taishi - though not tibet or democracy) and you’re forced into a search only of pages hosted in China… generally pages approved by the government. (Search for “falun gong” on Google.cn for an example of the sorts of “impartial” content this turns up…)" Click here to read the full post.

If you are a member of the press and would like to speak with us about this issue, please call Amanda at (617) 495-5236.