<IT WORLD> China
firewall slams shut By Martin J
Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - The Great
Firewall of China came into full force this week
when the country was virtually cut off from the
rest of the world as the government cracked down
on rumors and speculation over the recent scandal
involving a top Communist Party leader whose wife
is now accused of murdering a British businessman.
The world's largest Internet population,
500 million strong, found itself walled in on
Thursday when they could not access any
foreign websites outside of
China. Web users in Hong Kong were also affected
as they could not access Chinese websites - the
People's Republic became a digital island for a
few hours.
Some commentators speculated
that the outage was caused by damage done to
undersea cables following the earthquake near
Aceh, Indonesia, earlier this week. Others were
closer to the truth accusing the government of
heavy-handed censorship since all websites would
have been affected if the network was down.
Chinese Internet companies have speculated that
the Great Firewall was being upgraded and that a
big "off" switch for the Internet was being
tested.
A wave of Internet postings about
party official Bo Xilai, who is currently under
investigation, has spurned reaction from the
government's burgeoning Internet police force,
which resulted in clampdowns on blogging sites and
forums.
Two of China's Internet giants,
Sina and Tencent, have been recently punished by
the government for allowing people to comment
freely on micro-blogging website Weibo. Officials
warned through state media that the government
would punish anyone responsible for spreading
rumors online, though they did not refer
specifically to the Bo Xilai scandal.
Xinhua also stated that authorities closed
16 websites for spreading rumors of "military
vehicles and troops entering Beijing". State
television stated that the Internet had "provided
space for some people to make up and spread
rumors. As long as it is easy to click a mouse,
some people can slander others, destroy stability,
or even endanger the security of the state".
As the government tightens its control
over the Internet, its users are evolving more
astute methods of evading censorship such as using
language homonyms where two words are written the
same but have different meanings. Tracking dissent
on the Internet is becoming an uphill battle for
the builders of the Great Firewall.
e-Books Apple and a number of
publishers have been accused by the US Department
of Justice of conspiring to raise e-Book prices.
It has been alleged in the civil lawsuit that
Apple and publishing company executives met to
discuss how to respond to regular discounting of
e-Books by online retailer Amazon.
The
five publishers and Apple hatched an arrangement
that raised the price of many best-selling e-books
from under US$10 to up to $14.99, according to the
suit. The new structure was then to be imposed on
Amazon.
Three of the publishers, including
number one bookstore Barnes & Noble, settled
with the government over the antitrust claims.
They will now have to offer discounted e-books,
which could result in them taking a loss via the
Nook e-reader platform as opposed to the tidy
profit previously made by overpriced titles.
Apple and two other publishers denied the
accusations with Apple stating that "the launch of
the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and
competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip
on the publishing industry". Pot and Kettle come
to mind when a company like Apple talks about
monopolies.
Quoting from the late Steve
Jobs, the suit cited a passage from his biography
where Apple offers publishers an "aikido move" in
which they'll "go to the agency model, where you
set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the
customer pays a little more, but that's what you
want anyway."
Amazon called the settlement
a victory for consumers and users of its Kindle
e-reading device. It promised to continue
discounting e-Books, which would put pressure on
rivals Apple.
Industry The first
quarter of 2012 yielded good news for the global
PC industry, which posted a slight increase in
volume of 2.3% over the same period last year.
Industry analysts IDC stated the results were
above projections of a further decline due to hard
disk supply constraints, economic woes,
competition from tablets, and uncertainty about
Windows 8.
Hard disk availability,
following flooding in Thailand, which produced 40%
of the global supply, was the largest factor in
limiting the demand for PCs. Large PC
manufacturers absorbed a lot of the price
increases by maintaining inventory and having
better access to hard drive supplies than
consumers. Analysts predict growth to continue
towards the end of the year when Windows 8 hits
the shelves.
Martin J Young is
an Asia Times Online correspondent based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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