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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-the-ones-you-did-NOT-catch? dept.

Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China's "Great Firewall," which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets, a media report said Monday.

The software developer, who is from the coastal province of Jiangsu, near Shanghai, was arrested in late August and held for three days for building a small business to sell virtual private networks, the Global Times newspaper reported, citing the official Xinhua news agency. VPNs create encrypted links between computers and allow Chinese web users to see blocked sites by hiding the address from government filters.

Subscribers paid 10 yuan, or about $1.50, for one month of the developer's service. Authorities also seized the developer's earnings, which totaled 1,080 yuan, or about $165.

Some internet businessmen have faced far harsher punishments: Earlier this year, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who sold VPN services in Dongguan, near Hong Kong, was sentenced to nine months in prison.

How far away from having this happen in the West are we, really?


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:01AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:01AM (#570440) Journal

    You are missing the point of what I ever meant by *censorship*. Censorship is also weeding out the crap from the real. Any filtering is CENSORSHIP, be that self-censorship or otherwise. People like Germany censor NAZI messages - is it so bad?

    That is wrong. Words have meaning. From a dictionary [oxforddictionaries.com]:

    The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

    In particular, it doesn't mean editing, it doesn't mean people filtering out crap from real, or peer review, etc.

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