China is cracking down on blogs.

China will close down all domestic websites and web logs that do not register with the government and begin monitoring this month for anyone who does not comply, according to a media freedom organization. Registered sites could post only non-political content or follow the government line, the French organization Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Monday [6 June].

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The overseas content is quite easy for the Chinese to filter out by simply denying access to blogs such as Livejournal and Blogger,” said Suresh Ramasubramanian, anti-Spam manager with the Hong Kong ISP Outblaze.

~Monsters and Critics, June 7, 2005

If we end up moving to China in the future, maybe that will be the impetus for me to move off LiveJournal and set up my own domain.

Pointer from my sister (who is still free from blog tyranny).

ETA: Horrors! I laid awake last night thinking about this and realized that if LiveJournal and Blogger are blocked, not only would I not be able to post easily on my own LJ, I might not be able to read many of my favorite blogs! And even if I could still use Bloglines (and that’s a big IF), I probably wouldn’t be able to leave comments.

Rebecca MacKinnon interviewed Isaac Mao, a Chinese blogger, about the recent changes. He has started a project for anyone with their own server space to adopt a Chinese blog.

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