China drops Dropbox

http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=19835

by kaptain • 16 years ago

246 103 16 years ago

forums.dropbox.com

kaptain6• 16 years ago

I live in China as an expat (from the US). It's not really clear to me what the political/social motivations are for blocking Dropbox. Maybe Dropbox is going to merge with Facetwit; that's blocked here too but dropping Dropbox is something new.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

At a guess; dropbox lets you share public files; both privately syncing them with others or presenting them publicly.

All of which is non-indexed and not easily tracked.

Im guessing it's become a distribution method for information they are not keen on (or they feel it will be).

In a sense it was only a matter of time :(

joshhart• 16 years ago

Do they block P2P as well? I was under the impression piracy through bittorrent was pretty rampant.

zellux• 16 years ago

I guess it is blocked because Dropbox was used to share software like GAppProxy/MyEntunnel/Puff, which can be used to surf across the GFW.

yesbabyyes• 16 years ago

Their forums seem to be down, with some kind of Wordpress (hosted, even) error message.

Strange.

reitzensteinm• 16 years ago

It's almost a rite of passage for a successful startup now.

varjag• 16 years ago

Big in Japan, Banned in China.

Jun8• 16 years ago

When I read the comment about how "it was an honor" to be banned by the GFWoC, this poem cam to mind. "When the regime ordered Books with dangerous knowledge To be burned in public and everywhere Oxen were forced to pull, carts with books to the bonfires, one of the persecuted poets discovered one of the best studying the list of the burned disconcerted, that his books were forgotten. He rushed to his desk, flying on wings of rage and wrote a letter to the the authorities. Burn me! he wrote with a quick stroke Burn me! don't do this to me! Do not spare me! Have I not always reported the truth in my books? Yet now you treat me as were I a liar! I command you: Burn me! "

OTOH, this means that Dropbox has obviously gotten big enough to be a threat to the authorities.

seattle• 16 years ago

Chinese government ban sites for the information on it what might threat the stability of the country, it has nothing to do with a company big enough or not. Tons of innocent sites are banned because they are hosted on the same IP address that also hosted some anti-China sites. This event means nothing to Dropbox, it only means someone was using Dropbox to pass through information that is not considered legal in China.

liuliu• 16 years ago

Think it in this way: in this age, good IT companies make profit/benefit from promoting free-flow of information (e.g. Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia). The Chinese gov is trying to ban the unconstrained flow of information (the whole idea of free-flow of information is considered harmful to the current regime). Thus, the website is banned by Chinese gov must be particularly good at promoting the flow of information, which makes them good candidates of successful IT companies.

lutorm• 16 years ago

I'm curious though, since Dropbox isn't really a way of communicating. I guess someone could have published the url to something in their "public" folder.

bmelton• 16 years ago

So poignant a comment, I wish that I could do more than upvote.

Regards.

aswanson• 16 years ago

It would be a great open source contribution to build similar sharing capabilities into Linux and bsd and watch prc ban operating systems.

kaptain6• 16 years ago

Most Chinese use some version of Windows. The PRC built their own variant of Linux; it looks like their building off of the 2.6 kernel but (surprise, surprise) I can't find the source anywhere on their website.

http://www.kylin-os.com/products/os/features.html#googtrans/...

If you use Chrome, it has an auto-translate feature that works pretty well.

mahmud• 16 years ago

Red Flat, and it has been around for 11 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

zaidf3• 16 years ago

Chinese gov is ridiculous. My girlfriend made a one word posting on the Chinese clone of facebook that read "freedom". The post disappeared in minutes and she received a private message warning her that her account may be deleted if she continues making such posts.

One upside is that Chinese people seem to be a little more tech savvy. ie. many of them are forced to learn about proxy servers so they can go around the blocking.

Edit: By Chinese facebook, I meant the Chinese CLONE of facebook. Facebook itself is totally blocked in China.

thechangelog• 16 years ago

Not trying to doubt you, but was it really just a one word post that elicited that reaction? Did the message come from Facebook or someone else? Is this a common occurrence?

That level of censorship boggles the mind...

afterburner• 16 years ago

Keyword alert?

papersmith• 16 years ago

I'm trying to wrap my head around how the whole thing works. On one hand, mundane stuffs are monitored, on the other hand, you have stuffs like these freely discussed:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...

According to wikipedia, this is on the 12th most popular site in China.

I think the censors operate on very crude keyword filters. As long as you avoid the few obvious keywords, it's not that easy to get caught. The domestic web sites get around the censor by agreeing to open backdoors for the filters, yet at the same time turn a blind eye to the real disruptive stuffs that got around it.

zaidf3• 16 years ago

Yeah, it was one word. In fact, three Chinese letters(that's all you need to say freedom in Chinese, apparently).

kmavm• 16 years ago

I'd like to point out that it wasn't Facebook, but "the Chinese Facebook." Facebook is behind the great firewall; there's a local clone.

waterhouse• 16 years ago

I suspect the location of the post makes a difference. If, for example, it was posted on the wall of an anti-censorship group that is decidedly opposed to the actions of the Chinese government, then posting "freedom" there could quite easily be seen as expressing support for the group and therefore "disharmony". Probably it wasn't quite as clear-cut as that (such an overtly anti-censorship group would probably be inaccessible on the Chinese Facebook anyway), but the context probably had something to do with it; I'd be curious to hear what it was.

But it's a pretty bad sign when, seeing someone use the word "freedom", your immediate reaction is suspicion, trying to decide whether or not it shows that the speaker is an enemy. And that's how it must be for the Chinese internet police who make decisions like this one.

kurumo• 16 years ago

I guess Chinese Newspeak doesn't have "freedom" in it. And I thought 1984 was bad :(

derwiki• 16 years ago

I've been re-reading 1984 and almost posted a comparison until I read your comment.

rauljara• 16 years ago

Let's not go crazy here. China is bad. But just like comparing people you disagree with to Hitler is silly, so is saying a government is worse than the ones in 1984. The only government on Earth that even comes close is North Korea's. That is not to excuse any of the awful, repressive regimes out there, just to say that no, they are not worse than a fictional regime specifically created to be the scariest thing Orwell could imagine.

barmstrong• 16 years ago

What services do people use to proxy around it? Just curious.

jarin2• 16 years ago

Nice try, you Commie bastard.

b-man• 16 years ago

Tor[1].

[1] http://www.torproject.org/overview.html.en

baby3• 16 years ago

besides using VPN (we were using anchorshield back then but now it's blocked) I was using gladder. A firefox plugin which allows you to use a proxy only in a tab. Great plugin. Helped me a lot.

joshwa• 16 years ago

One common misconception is that all censorship is done automatically based on keywords. While it's true that internet searches in particular, and visits to banned websites are greeted with a connection reset, the censorship of message boards is done by hordes of low-paid individual workers (the "50-cent party" [1]) that are local to each district. Your girlfriend's post (which was a one-word post, and an inflammatory one at that) was probably spotted by whichever worker(s) were responsible for monitoring that message board.

When such a post is removed, it's typically referred to by netizens as being "harmonized", a play on Hu Jintao's "Harmonious Society" slogan [2].

You should check out the archives of a site like chinasmack or chinahush[3], who have translated summaries of popular chinese message board topics and gives a good feel of the day-to-day life of a chinese netizen.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society

[3] http://chinasmack.com http://chinahush.com

nicolas_t• 16 years ago

I'm in the middle of setting up a website in China. The way things go is that you have to get the icp license. To get it, you have to agree that you will censor any user generated content that should be harmonized (guidelines are not very precise, but the chinese government regularly provide a list of topics that are not allowed for the season). We actually outsource our censoring to a chinese company for 500RMB/month as it'd be a hassle to hire someone only for this.

On the other hand, our website is bilingual, and we don't really need to monitor the english part since the government doesn't care...

johnswamps• 16 years ago

Is there confirmation besides this one post?

kaptain6• 16 years ago

http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/11/another_one_bites_the_dust...

Or if you're more into empiricism, install this http://chinachannel.hk/ onto Firefox (warning: isn't > 3.5 compatible).

Or you could come over to my apartment here in China and use my internet connection for a bit and commiserate with me.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Does dropbox have many Chinese customers ? Has it been identified as a 'circumvention device'?

jhancock5• 16 years ago

I'm surprised people have been using dropbox from China. Most SaaS run from the U.S. are too slow and long connections are very likely to get dropped. I suppose the dropbox client must be highly fault tolerant.

As to it being identified as a 'circumvention device', there are many reasons why it could have been blocked...some automated methods and some that require a person. It could be as simple as someone published a file with certain keywords in it and that file link got posted in a few places...then bam...automatic block. We don't know the rules to the system. And there are actually several systems, run by different government departments...with support from many more non-government employees of web sites.

twapi• 16 years ago

just one thought on this situation: why don't Chinese netizens protest loudly against such policies??

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

> "why don't Chinese netizens protest loudly against such policies??"

Here in the West we take the right to protest quite for granted, as this post demonstrates :)

Not ragging on you at all, really, but who exactly would the Chinese protest to? How would they do so? And what would prevent them from being jailed or worse for their efforts?

nandemo2• 16 years ago

What is puzzling to me is that although there are literally millions of Chinese people living abroad, apparently there's hardly any human-rights activism done by Chinese expats. I'd love to hear of counterexamples.

jhancock5• 16 years ago

Many Chinese forums are abuzz with complaints about the censorship. Many of these postings get removed or partially censored, but there are millions of people online complaining. This is certainly protest and anyone on the web in China can see it.

Although I'm not sure who would bother to do so...you can go to a government office and file a complaint without fear of being whisked off to a secret prison. Its if you're becoming a successful organizer of activists that you may end up in trouble.

slug• 16 years ago

once upon a time, they did: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

DilipJ• 16 years ago

I always hoped that poor fellow ended up ok after that. My gut tells me that no one ever heard from him again. I don't think any other photograph defines courage as much as that one.

As for the business restrictions, what can you do? I do admire companies like Google that can take a moral stand against Beijing's censorship.

mturmon• 16 years ago

For me, it's probably the iconic picture of 20th century political action.

CapitalistCartr• 16 years ago

You must be young. A few years ago, a bunch of students did. In a central square in Beijing called Tienanmen square. The government ran them over with tanks. China is not the West.

eonwe• 16 years ago

Yet looking back to what happened during Vietnam demonstrations, it seems to me that it is quite clear that the same would also happen in the west.

radicaldreamer• 16 years ago

It's sad how the Chinese government don't seem to realize that they're impeding their own people's progress and global competitiveness, especially for business that requires innovation and speed, with such moves.

jhancock5• 16 years ago

In many cases, blocking foreign sites is an opportunity for a Chinese home-grown competitor. Blocking sites that only foreigners use isn't impeding business much.

If you want to target China as a market, you have to have a company there and pay into the system to play. You don't get to run your U.S. or EU web site and have users/revenue grow in China without taking a chance that you will get blocked. Them's are the rules...without regard to censorship...China takes care of China.

est• 16 years ago

Chinese government don't give a fuck to innovation. They just want profit. If innovation harms the stabilization, they just drop it.

jhancock5• 16 years ago

Can you name any large government that consistently promotes innovation/change over stability/status quo? Not making excuses...but isn't this the nature of the beast?

CoachRufus87• 16 years ago

is this kind of activity by the Chinese government really sustainable or will the ever-increasing flow of information win-out? personally, i think it's only a matter of time.

jhancock5• 16 years ago

its a holding action...not sustainable...hopefully, they'll pull out of this heavy-handed tailspin they've been in the past year...but...this behavior is mostly driven by fear of problems with the wide economic divides and its going to be a long time before things get better on that front...so no telling where this all leads.

evandavid• 16 years ago

Several months ago I came across an issue where it became obvious that a file in my Dropbox public folder was being blocked by the GFWoC (public files are accessed via the dl.dropbox.com domain). I ran some tests using online services that attempt to access your web resources from within the firewall perimeter, and sure enough my links were blocked. I am surprised that the rest of the story is only now developing.

phatbyte• 16 years ago

I don't even know why they call it internet. They better start calling it super-huge-intranet or something...

vorg3• 16 years ago

The "countrinet"

dmn001• 16 years ago

There is no evidence they are intentionally blocking the startup. If it was it could be for safety/trust issues as your files are uploaded to a third party, and viruses can be spread easily as files are synced in realtime.

dhouston• 16 years ago

we're bummed about this. it's probably a fruitless exercise, but does anyone have any insight into how to get unblocked?

drusenko• 16 years ago

yeah, email chris or me -- we've done it before.

nash• 16 years ago

Depends on why it was blocked.

Generally speaking if it's because of a local competitor (eg youku or renren (vs youtube or facebook)) I would not hold my breath.

baby3• 16 years ago

If think you're looking at the problem the other way around.

rarrrrrr• 16 years ago

You have the advantage of shipping a desktop client, which affords you a variety of interesting methods beyond what purely web based apps and browsers can do.

The desktop client could even serve as a local proxy server for web/forum access.

kaptain6• 16 years ago

If you've got a solution and need a tester, I'd be happy to test. I'm running MacOSX this side of the GFW.

c1sc04• 16 years ago

You can count on me too, running OSX on the bad side of the firewall

maxklein3• 16 years ago

I just setup a VPN for a guy in china, and dropbox works fine then. Setup servers with different ip addresses?

maxklein3• 16 years ago

Actually, it does not work, it's incredibly slow - 2kb/sec

siculars• 16 years ago

how bout drop.io? are they blocked as well?

ck2• 16 years ago

OT but yay for dropbox using bbPress. Let me know if you ever need help with it.

kaptain6• 16 years ago

If all non-Chinese servers rejected any requests from China, would this be counter-productive? Basically if everyone else banded together and said "You can have all of it or none of it, but you can't pick and choose." would this force open China's hand or would it just make things miserable for people that actually care. The number of people that actually care is a very very small percentage; most of my Chinese friends don't care about accessing material from outside China. They're interested in games, chatting, and watching movies.

patio11• 16 years ago

That does not sound like a winning strategy to drive a wedge between the Chinese regime and stridently nationalist Chinese consumers.

netcan• 16 years ago

It is actually pretty hard to single out China like that. many countries (including for example, Australia) have great firewalls. They can honestly point around and say half the world censors, why you picking on us?

Super74• 16 years ago

I will throw my 2-cents in. My wife posted the name CCP on the Chinese version of Twitter and received an immediate message. Scared her enough to quit for good. For those who can read mandarin: http://twitpic.com/19h81p

We need to push our representatives to call foul on WTO violations. These are unfair business practices as web-based companies need to be protected too.

It's all about "block and copy" so the west is losing precious resources and hard-earned IP.

Gormo• 16 years ago

And China is creating inefficient monopolies, trapping capital and resources within their walled garden, and limiting exposure to outside innovation.

The Chinese government is hurting China a lot more than it's hurting the west.

maxklein3• 16 years ago

I hope dropbox will refund the payment to all the users who are now unable to use their service.

furyg3• 16 years ago

It would be a very nice thing to do, especially for people who made a yearly subscription payment less than 6 months ago.

That being said, if I were a dropbox subscriber and my ISP (or government... ::shudder::) blocked dropbox, I would know exactly where to place the blame. Thus, I wouldn't expect dropbox to give me a refund.

ev0• 16 years ago

As a paying user in China (just paid for my 1-year plan), I'll just continue to use Dropbox over my VPN. Such insane censorship will fall. Freedom will prevail. But I wish the Chinese government gets sued to hell over WTO violations.

c1sc04• 16 years ago

I'm in China now, & this kind of shit has bothered me for a long time. Eventually I will probably end up over here (family). Sure, I have a VPN set up, but that just makes things slower. How on earth am I supposed to run a business without Google, Facebook, Twitter & Dropbox.

kaptain6• 16 years ago

• This is most likely related to viewing Dropbox as a source of information sharing that cannot be controlled. It is a testament to Dropbox's influence, that the government would see DB as a threat. Until DB can promise the government a sufficient amount of control over the content shared, they won't be allowed to be accessed here. (See Google)

• Up until this point, the whole Google fiasco has been settled quite well.

1. Google didn't want to remain in China and be forced to censor content. Check. 2. China didn't want to make an exception. Check. 3. Google still has a presence in China and doesn't have to filter its content. China hasn't lost face and been forced to make an exception. Check.

Even though it's not ideal and the service gets blocked sometimes, I sense that China and Google came to an agreement together that Google's move to Hong Kong would be the most appropriate thing to accomplish the two seemingly contradictory goals. You will note that if China didn't want Google at all, they would've blocked Google in HK from day one. That's not to say that Google will never be blocked, but at this point it's safe to say that the government does not see Google as a big enough threat to warrant being blocked.

• Could DB do something similar? Maybe. It seems that DB would have to reach out to the Chinese government and cooperate to some degree in a sign to show that there is a desire to be in China. Then, like Google, they could choose to pull out to HK, where hopefully there would continue to be this unspoken agreement to let foreign companies be. This might backfire in that the government might just pull the plug on all foreign companies in HK, feeling that the initial overtures were superficial and that there was just a desire to be given a certain level of access in China without having to abide by the other stipulations that other companies have. If DB chose to try and cooperate with the government, this would lead to some form of censorship (either by DB, the government, or by the users themselves) thus defeating some of the benefit of using DB. DB is fundamentally different from the service that Google offers, though, so following Google's path might not work.

• This whole thing makes me sad. Chinese culture is fundamentally different from Western culture. That doesn't justify certain things but you'll have to talk to people (real people…not just read chinaSMACK) to understand better some of the reasons for these policies. The point is, though, that the Chinese government is dealing with a different set of problems with a different set of values than other Western governments. Until there are some changes in the problems or in the values, we'll continue to see different permutations of these kinds of policies. I've also seen a pattern of non-risk taking behavior here. Policies like these discourage people take chances at producing great ideas. Most Chinese comp sci students want to get a good job at a stable company. From what I have seen, and I'm still learning a lot about tech here, the lack of the entrepreneurial spirit is related to a lack in the quality of programming. There isn't the same kind of cut-throat competition that I've seen in the States and this leads to less motivation for learning the best (or better) way to do things. There are obvious exceptions to this, but in general, the motivation for someone to set up their own business is very low. It's too risky.

FabriceTalbot• 16 years ago

Well, China just got even more amazing. I don't think the Chinese people were very affected by Google leaving. But DropBox is a very useful tool. I'm not sure it has any remarcable competititors that can relevantly fill the gap.

winter_blue• 16 years ago

Are the Chinese gov officials nuts?

China drops Dropbox

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