An Offer to Our Readers in China
Posted by Jonathan on February 2nd, 2006 (All posts by Jonathan)
Following Stephen Gordon, this blog makes the following offer:
If you are a Chinese user of Google who has received notice that your search has been censored, let us know. We will search Google from the United States and post the results here.
Feel free to contact us at the support email address located under the search box in the upper right corner of this page, or in the comment section of this post.
(We reserve the right not to search for porn or other topics that we think are out of character with the spirit of this offer.)
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:22 pm
So now Chicagoboyz are censoring the search results to Chinese people too? Where will it end? Liberty is doomed.
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:43 pm
(1) not censoring “core political speech”, as the 1st Amendment case law puts it, and (2) exercising our property rights to allow the use of our own blog in whatever way we deem fit. Other people’s free speech rights are not unlimited on this space, a point we have made repeatedly in the past.
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:50 pm
It was a joke. Knew I should’ve put in a smiley face at the end.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Yeah, the perils of dry humor on the Internet.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Umm, won’t it just result in Chicago Boyz being one of the blocked sites? Banned in Beijing!
The Chinese people have been busy finding ways around the Great Firewall. One of the easiest, apparently, is by using a Mac, at least according to Samizdata.
There is a lot of programming talent in China, and not all of it works for the government. Don’t count on the firewall lasting.
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Dude, sorry to be so, like, unhumorous.
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Mitch: Maybe. I don’t know. It would be kind of neat to be actually blacklisted somewhere, though I suspect we aren’t important enough.
Lex: Don’t let it happen again. Humor is no laughing matter.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Lex,
Dude? Is dry humor a generation-x thing? I’m in my 50s. Hardly a ‘dude’.
You were quite lawyerly and, taking me seriously as you did, understandably so. No insult or slur intended but let me ask, without humor, what are the “other topics that [you] think are out of character with the spirit of this offer”?
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
“…other topics that [you] think are out of character with the spirit of this offer?”
I don’t know. Jonathan put that. But it is like a lawyer saying “including but not limited to” — it means we here at the Boyz reserve the right to act in our own unfettered discretion on our own blog. I suppose something very vulgar or offensive to us or our readers, as we see it.
The “dude” thing is a running gag around here, btw.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Gotcha.
Thanks Lex.
February 3rd, 2006 at 5:09 pm
All I meant was, I prefer to focus my limited resources on matters related to restricted political speech.
April 13th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
I suppose i.m the first Chinese reader to post the comment:)
I wonder how you will response if I ask for a search.
April 14th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Post a search string. One of us will perform the search and post the results here.