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Finally, Something Compelling Enough for Chinese Citizens to Scale 'Great Firewall'

By Bruce Carton

China is well-known for its "Great Firewall of China" that since 2003 has prevented its citizens from accessing what it deems to be undesirable sites on the Internet. The Chinese people have tolerated this Great Firewall for seven years now, but a new temptation on the Internet seems to have been the "last straw" driving tens of thousands of people to find a way to get around this blockade. What has driven the Chinese people to finally circumvent the powers that be? AOL News reports that it is "not democracy, human rights or Taiwan independence websites," but rather the desire to access the Twitter site of Japanese porn star Aoi Sola. Aoi launched a Twitter site at the end of March 2010, but her fans could not follow her because Twitter is blocked in China. Necessity being the mother of invention, Aoi's fans promptly found software that allows users in China to get around the Great Firewall. David Wolf, a Beijing-based tech industry expert, told AOL News that Aoi's fans proved that "[i]n China you can get anything you want on the Internet, you just have to want to bad enough." Indeed, an email address has now been set up...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).