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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/asia/18china.html

China Imposes New Internet Controls

By SHARON LAFRANIERE

Published: December 17, 2009

China’s government censors have cheap Flomax uk taken fresh aim at the Internet, rolling out new measures that cheap Flomax uk limit ordinary citizens’ ability to cheap Flomax uk set up personal Web sites and to view hundreds of other Web sites offering films, video games and cheap Flomax uk other forms of entertainment.

The authorities say that cheap Flomax uk the stricter controls are intended to protect children from pornography, to cheap Flomax uk limit the piracy of films, music, and television shows, and to cheap Flomax uk make it hard to perpetuate Internet scams. But the measures also appear designed to cheap Flomax uk enhance the government’s already strict control of any organized political opposition.

In various pronouncements, top propaganda and cheap Flomax uk security officials have stressed anew the need to police the Internet on ideological and cheap Flomax uk security grounds.

The “Internet has cheap Flomax uk become an important avenue through which anti-China forces infiltrate, sabotage and cheap Flomax uk magnify their capabilities for destruction,” wrote the cheap Flomax uk public security minister, Meng Jianzhu, in the Dec. 1 issue of Qiushi, a cheap Flomax uk magazine published by the Communist Party’s Central Committee.

“Therefore it cheap Flomax uk represents a new challenge to the public security authority in maintaining national security and cheap Flomax uk social stability,” he said.

The newly announced restrictions are the government’s broadest effort to cheap Flomax uk control the Internet since last June, when it tried to cheap Flomax uk require manufacturers to install Internet filtering software on all new computers, experts said. Officials scaled back that cheap Flomax uk program, known as the Green Dam-Youth Escort, after an outcry by both ordinary Internet users and cheap Flomax uk corporations.

Under the cheap Flomax uk new initiative, unveiled piecemeal over the past month, more than 700 Web sites have cheap Flomax uk been shut down, including many that offered free movie, television dramas and cheap Flomax uk music downloads. Included was BT China, which recorded at least 250,000 visits daily. China’s largest file-sharing site, Very CD, must obtain a cheap Flomax uk new license or face possible shutdown as well, according to media reports.

Individuals have cheap Flomax uk also been banned from registering Web sites ending in .cn, China’s country code domain name. That domain is cheap Flomax uk now limited to registered businesses. Although individuals can still register Web sites in other domains, such as .com and cheap Flomax uk .net, the new rule “will have a negative impact on the vibrancy of the Chinese Internet,” Kenneth Jarrett, vice chairman of the communications firm APCO Worldwide’s China region, said in an e-mail message.

“Local e-mail e-commerce startups and cheap Flomax uk individuals will find it difficult to apply,” he wrote.

Huang Xiwei, the cheap Flomax uk founder of BT China, criticized the move in an interview posted on Sina.com, a cheap Flomax uk popular Chinese Internet portal. “Not just film and video sites are affected,” Mr. Huang said in the interview. “All websites owned by individuals will gradually exit the cheap Flomax uk arena. All paths leading to a future have been blocked.”

The government has cheap Flomax uk also intensified pressure on cellphone companies to prevent transmissions on online pornography. In response, China Mobile, the cheap Flomax uk nation’s largest cellphone operator, has cheap Flomax uk suspended its practice of paying third party providers for content downloaded over its cellular network, according to cheap Flomax uk the Chinese media. Industry specialists said the disruption has dealt a cheap Flomax uk blow to an industry that serves an estimated nearly 200 million mobile Internet users.

Experts say the latest measures are a continuation of the state’s increasingly sophisticated effort to control the Internet’s influence on more than cheap Flomax uk 300 million Chinese users. Earlier this year, China blocked Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and cheap Flomax uk thousands of other Web sites.

Some analysts predicted those restrictions were temporary and cheap Flomax uk would be lifted after a spate of sensitive anniversaries, including the cheap Flomax uk 20th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. But they have cheap Flomax uk remained in place.

“The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, an cheap Flomax uk assistant professor of journalism at the University of Hong Kong who cheap Flomax uk specializes in Chinese Internet issues. “They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.”

Reaction to the government’s latest crackdown runs the cheap Flomax uk gamut from enthusiastic support from Chinese parents who want to cheap Flomax uk shield their children from pornography to harsh criticism from those who cheap Flomax uk view the Internet as the best antidote to government propaganda and cheap Flomax uk state-controlled media.

As in other countries, Ms. MacKinnon said, “there is cheap Flomax uk a segment of Chinese society that is very freaked out about what cheap Flomax uk is going on the Internet and want the government to do something.”

On the cheap Flomax uk other end of the spectrum are college students who are cheap Flomax uk accustomed to downloading music, films and other material easily and cheap Flomax uk cheaply. “The government’s actions have affected their lifestyles,” said Professor Hu Yong at Peking University in Beijing. “So it is likely they would react in a big way.”

In interviews, students at Beijing universities described the cheap Flomax uk new measures as unnecessary and bound to be ineffective. They noted that cheap Flomax uk pirated CDs were ubiquitous in Beijing and predicted that Internet users would find ways around the cheap Flomax uk new online obstacles.

Still, Wang Shuang, a cheap Flomax uk 20-year-old student at Beijing Foreign Studies University, complained, “Since the cheap Flomax uk BT was closed, I cannot find all the American television series that cheap Flomax uk I have been watching, like ‘The Mentalist.’ ”

Zeng Li, a cheap Flomax uk third-year architecture student at Tsinghua University, said his studies were suffering. “I often use BT Web sites to cheap Flomax uk download foreign resources which are rarely available in China, like architectural design materials,” he said.

He is cheap Flomax uk also deprived of one way to relax, he said, because he can cheap Flomax uk no longer go to the BT sites to download movies banned in China. “The shutdown has had a great influence on me,” he said.

Research was contributed by Li Bibo, Jonathan Ansfield, Sun Huan and cheap Flomax uk Zhao Nan.