China’s Great Wall Blocks RSS Feeds En Masse?

First, let me point out that there is in fact a difference – a big difference - between censoring the Web and shutting it down completely (or at least a portion of it), as has been done in Myanmar, or Burma, as it is more familiarly known. Yet I think you’ll agree that both measures can be very impactful.

That said, this is pretty big news. I mean, the people working China’s “Great Firewall” have essentially blocked all RSS feeds. Nationwide. China. Land of 1.3 billion-plus people, with roughly as many people online as are connected in the US. With more mobile phone service consumers than are human beings in the US. Yeah, this is definitely big frickin' news.

The esteemed technology publication Ars Technica has covered the story in good detail, and says that while for some time Chinese citizens have been able to enjoy feeds like most other Web users around the world, the nation’s virtual authorities “have finally gotten wise to RSS as of late,” and over the last few months have systematically proceeded to block “all incoming URLs that begin with [the terms] ‘feeds,’ ‘rss,’ and ‘blog,’ thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites” inaccessible. Yes, so, even if China hasn’t technically put the kibosh on a particular site, so to speak, a citizen of the PRC who’s regularly getting his/her fix of info via a series of RSS addresses is basically seeing no more flow.

Alright, while this is hardly the end of the world for the Net-connected in China, it’s a pretty big issue when you’re realistically talking about tens of millions getting screwed with by the nation’s topmost admins. For many people to now be required to find circumventions of the block so that they can again get a hold of something that first and foremost is supposed to offer nothing but convenience to the user, is a whopper of a disruption, and something we can think nothing but another ridiculous act by those governing China’s tubes.

Surely the authorities will remove the block sometime in the near future – though what they do in the near future is anyone’s guess – but ‘til then regular folk over in the PRC will need to get enterprising with their browsers and get ever more familiar with using things like proxy servers, or, if one wants to go the new and popular route, using Tor.

Let’s hope that those manning the Great Firewall start to see the errors of their ways soon and let the people have their feeds. RSS never hurt nobody. Sure, information is powerful, but China’s Web police should know better than to shoot the messenger.

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