
China drops Dropbox - kaptain
http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=19835
======
zaidf
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
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...

~~~
kmavm
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.

~~~
aw3c2
A local clone is not Facebook. Just like Baidu is not Google. Please be
accurate, especially on such sensitive topics.

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Jun8
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
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.

~~~
lutorm
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.

~~~
wizard_2
Dropbox uses https for all of its communication, which makes it a non
monitored form of communication. A lot of people use dropbox for sharing files
and folders for organizing events. You could also share videos and documents
about banned information.

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

~~~
varjag
Big in Japan, Banned in China.

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

~~~
nash
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.

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

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kaptain
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.

~~~
netcan
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?

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kaptain
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
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 :(

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ev0
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.

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

~~~
kaptain
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/...](http://www.kylin-
os.com/products/os/features.html#googtrans/zh-CN/en)

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

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

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

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radicaldreamer
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.

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

~~~
jhancock
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?

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Super74
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
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.

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evandavid
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.

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CoachRufus87
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.

~~~
jhancock
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.

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

~~~
vorg
The "countrinet"

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c1sc0
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.

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

~~~
jhancock
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.

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FabriceTalbot
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.

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kaptain
• 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.

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johnswamps
Is there confirmation besides this one post?

~~~
kaptain
[http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/11/another_one_bites_the_dust...](http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/11/another_one_bites_the_dust_file-
sha.php)

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.

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

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ck2
OT but yay for dropbox using bbPress. Let me know if you ever need help with
it.

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

Strange.

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dmn001
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.

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

~~~
potatolicious
> _"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?

~~~
nandemo
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.

~~~
vorg
Unfortunately, the United States discredited itself in the minds of many young
Chinese over here when Bush Jnr took the US, UK, and Australia into Iraq after
"creating" evidence of WMD's.

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riffic
I'm not sure I follow. What do the troubles of the U.S. have to do with the
price of tea(or freedom) in China?

~~~
nandemo
I don't see the point either. Besides, there are lots of Chinese immigrants in
countries other than US.

It's curious how Bush-bashing gets automatic upvotes even when it's completely
irrelevant (in this point HN isn't much different from reddit).

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winter_blue
Are the Chinese gov officials nuts?

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

~~~
furyg3
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.

