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China Blocks Apple's iTunes

China Blocks iTunesThe Olympics are over, which means all the discussion and controversy over China's filtering of the Internet are over too, right? Well, not quite. It's been discovered that China and its "great firewall" have decided to block access to the entirety of Apple's iTunes, likely over an album dedicated to freeing Tibet.

The album is a benefit for the Art of Peace Foundation, a non-profit founded by the Dalai Lama that contrasts against the classic Chinese text 'The Art of War.' It contains tracks by Dave Matthews, Regina Spektor, Suzanne Vega, Sting, and Alanis Morissette, and it's apparently become quite a favorite of many Olympians during the games. Executive director of the Art of Peace Foundation, Michael Wohl, said, "We issued a release saying that over 40 (Olympic) athletes downloaded the album in an act of solidarity, and that's what triggered it. Then everything got blocked."

Bummer for Chinese iPod owners, but given that Apple doesn't even officially support the country, we're guessing execs at Cupertino aren't too jilted. [Source: ZDNet Government]

China Blocking All RSS Feeds

China Blocking All RSS Feeds
Ok, this has simply gone too far. It's one thing to block access to certain sites or even kill new Internet cafes, but to prevent an entire nation of people from using a technology as wonderful as RSS is just plain cruel.

Today, the Chinese government enacted a blanket ban on RSS feeds. We can only assume that this is because RSS feeds are quicker and easier to update. They can also be updated more often, making them much harder to censor than regular web site content.

The iron fist of oppression can only win for so long, however. Resourceful users have several workarounds at their disposal like a Firefox (a popular web browser) extension Gladder and the anonymous web browsing tool Tor.

All we know is that if someone took away our RSS, we'd be mighty pissed off.

From TechCrunch

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