The Chinese Firewall

Every once in a while when I'm on the internet I come across a site that I can't get to. This is the famous Chinese Firewall. What's funny though is that I'll try again at a later time, and I'm able to access it jsut fine.

This week, Youtube was added to the lsit of unaccessible sites.

For two days.

I noticed on Wednesday that I couldn't get to it. At first I just thought it was a crappy connection because Youtube has always been slow over here. Then I heard that it had actually been blocked. Today I was reading some things online and the website had an embeded Youtube video that loaded successfully (though slowly.) At first I just thought the other site was working like a proxy to get around the firewall, but then I checked Youtube and it was back.

This has happened before to a lot of places I go to including:

1. Cracked.com

2. Facebook

3. A couple webcomics I read.

I'm not sure who's in charge of the firewall, but they seem to be fairly whimsicle at their task. Personally I've never had any trouble with it. Most sites I go to either a) Liked by this mysterious firewall guy, b) have nothing to do with China or politics (though that hasn't stopped him before), or c) simply aren't well known here.

This has given me an idea for my next post though. "Things Banned in China."

Hopefully I can ge a decent list together for Monday.