
404: Disney Scrubs Winnie the Pooh Off the Internet - mads
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://winniethepooh.disney.com
======
idlewords
The site redirects with javascript based on the location you view it from. You
can see the redirect table in the source.

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mroche
For those of us on mobile, is it feasible to paste the source here?

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idlewords
Here you go:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGfd3mTVUAA98k2?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGfd3mTVUAA98k2?format=jpg&name=large)

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nneonneo
Site works for me. It appears to be a dynamic JavaScript redirect in certain
countries:

    
    
        Disney.redirect = new Disney.Rdr({
            "can:qc": "http://www.disney.ca/",
            "usa,gum,pri,asm,vir,mnp,can": true,
            "bel": "http://www.disney.be/winnie/",
            "bgr": "http://www.disney.bg/disney-knigi-i-spisanija/",
            "cze": "http://www.disney.cz/medvidek-pu/",
            "zaf": "http://www.disney.co.za/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "bra": "http://www.disney.com.br/winniethepooh/",
            "dnk": "http://www.disney.dk/peter-plys/",
            "esp": "http://www.disney.es/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "fin": "http://www.disney.fi/nalle-puh/",
            "grc": "http://www.disney.gr/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "hun": "http://www.disney.hu/micimacko/",
            "isr": "http://www.disney.co.il/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "nld": "http://www.disney.nl/winnie-de-poeh/",
            "nor": "http://www.disney.no/ole-brumm/",
            "pol": "http://www.disney.pl/kubus/",
            "prt": "http://www.disney.pt/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "rou": "http://www.disney.ro/winnie-de-plus/",
            "swe": "http://www.disney.se/nalle-puh/",
            "tur": "http://www.disneyturkiye.com.tr/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "jpn": "http://character.disney.co.jp/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "chn": "http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/",
            "kor": "http://www.disney.co.kr/",
            "twn": "http://www.disney.com.tw/pooh/",
            "hkg": "http://www.disney.com.hk/characters/",
            "sgp": "http://home.disney.com.sg/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/",
            "mys": "http://home.disney.com.my/characters/classic/winnie-the-pooh/pooh/",
            "rus": "http://www.disney.ru/pooh/",
            "col,ven,ecu,pry,ury,chl,per,bol,mex,cri,dom,slv,gtm,hnd,nic,pan,blz,arg": "http://www.disneylatino.com/winniethepooh/",
            "bhr,egy,jor,kwt,lbn,omn,pse,qat,sau,som,are,yem,dza,mar,tun": "http://www.disneyme.com/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "ita,vat,smr": "http://www.disney.it/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "aus,nzl": "http://home.disney.com.au/disneyfilms/winniethepooh.html",
            "gbr,irl": "http://www.disney.co.uk/winnie-the-pooh/",
            "deu,aut": "http://www.disney.de/winnie-puuh/",
            "fra,glp,mtq,reu,hti,myt": "http://www.disney.fr/winnie-l-ourson/"
        }).run()
    

In some jurisdictions (Quebec, Korea, Hong Kong) it redirects to a generic
landing page, but in others it goes to a country-specific Winnie the Pooh
page. Interestingly, in China it appears to redirect to
"[http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/"](http://www.dol.cn/minisite/winnie/"),
although I cannot access that page from where I am (Canada).

EDIT: Note that the redirects for Quebec, Korea and Hong Kong are not new.
They were all there in earlier pages, e.g. in September 2013:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130914105628/http://winniethep...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130914105628/http://winniethepooh.disney.com/)

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Moru
They seem to all end in 404 for me (Sweden). Maybe they are just in the middle
of redesigning the homepage?

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nneonneo
The redirects themselves haven't changed for 6 years, so they've probably
suffered from link rot. Disney historically appears to have let individual
country-specific sites manage themselves, and only more recently moved to
unify them which probably broke all the links.

So yeah, they are definitely in the middle of redesigning all of the country
sites.

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jdkee
I am not sure why we are allowing China to censor the internet. The internet
was designed to route around damage, which in this case is the prohibition of
free speech. Despite what a despotic regime would prohibit.

~~~
ReptileMan
China is not censoring anything. American companies are trying not to offend
them.

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JohnJamesRambo
What spineless imbeciles are at the head of these companies? Removing Winnie
the Pooh? It’s like living in an absurd Monty Python sketch gone haywire.

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nneonneo
Beloved as Winnie may be, he probably hasn't generated substantial revenue for
Disney in a long time. People are only noticing that he's missing from parts
of the Internet now that there's focus on him, but the reality seems to be
that his internet presence has been fading for a long time.

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th0ma5
Site seems up for me
[https://winniethepooh.disney.com](https://winniethepooh.disney.com)

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tjoff
Swedish 404 for me.

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glenndebacker
Also in Belgium as it redirects to Disney.be/Winnie which does not exist

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shakna
I wonder if this means efforts to release my family's IP from Disney would be
more likely now.

I'm a cousin so I'm less directly involved, but the Milne's have been trying
to get Pooh released to the Public Domain for years.

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mizzao
Only one comment so far in this thread has mentioned the obvious timing:
Winnie the Pooh is often used to poke fun at Xi Jinping, and as the Hong Kong
protests have started to garner more attention the CCP is starting to pressure
more companies to censor undesirable content.

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pcl
It works for me from my VPN sites in:

US, NL, IN, AU, JP

It fails from my sites in:

NO, HK, CN (Shanghai; redirects to the HK domain), SG, IL

In many of the failing countries, it simply turns into a redirect to the
country-specific Disney domain, but Norway and HK get not-found messages after
the redirects, and the Singapore domain doesn’t load at all.

(I couldn’t test my Canada VPN site, as my corporate VPNs stopped connecting,
presumably due to some sort of rate limiting.)

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gamblor956
Winnie the Pooh is still visible from America.

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ikeboy
What?

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mpiedrav
Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek monicker for Xi Jinping. While it's
banned behind the Great Firewall, it _should_ be available outside China. But,
outside China, the link now redirects to a generic regional Disney site.

Nowadays, anything that upsets the Chinese government seems to be out of
bounds for large corporations. It's always about profit and reputation.

Edit: redirection through JS is in place for some countries:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21211422)

Way simpler than editing DNS zones.

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HenryBemis
Seriously, even if someone doesn't like South Park (I'm more of a Rick and
Morty type) you/we all have to watch South Park - Band in China. A very simple
way to describe how China is playing this game (and we let them win).

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mpiedrav
> (and we let them win)

That's indeed the key point. While the Chinese government can censor whatever
it pleases and enforce any policies on its citizens, it's up to US
corporations to decide whether they want to keep in line with them.

For what it's worth, corporations will be gradually replacing public
institutions and governments in a few decades from now (at most in a century).
Not by coups, but by making them largely irrelevant in everyday life.

Democracy will then be as archaic as monarchies.

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smitty1e
And governments will do victory laps about protecting free speech, while the
tyranny is outsourced to corporations.

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jrs235
That's the point of (politicians) supporting mega corps. When only a few mega
corps determine if you have a job and therefore can buy and survive they can
indirectly control the masses.

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awa
Works fine in the us right now

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rambojazz
But what was the problem with Winnie the Pooh? Who is offended by it so much
to require a complete removal?

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spats1990
Seems up for me but redirects to Disney Korea's site because I'm in Korea.

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catalogia
Where are you that it's 404ing? Works fine for me in Japan.

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thegreatco
Works fine for me in the US

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Razengan
Whomever said they didn't know how World War III will be fought has their
answer: Censorship and tariffs.

It has begun, and it's not nations versus nations, it's corporations versus
citizens.

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joshspankit
I feel like World War III was economic, and China already won.

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Razengan
Rich people won. The peasants lost.

As it should be, eh?

