China Blocks YouTube

Red China’s government threw a hissy fit over videos showing Tibetan violence and blocked YouTube. When Pakistan blocked it to stifle anti-Islamic videos it caused instability and brought down lots of routes on the whole Internet. That hasn’t happened this time, which merely means that China has better router admins for their totalitarian regime.

From Reuters here:

YouTube, owned by search giant Google Inc, has been unavailable for users in China, which filters the Internet for content critical of the Communist Party, since late on Monday.

A Google spokesman confirmed that access to the video site has been blocked in China over the past 24 hours.

Rubin would not comment on whether YouTube has contacted the Chinese authorities to confirm it has officially been blocked or if it is a technical problem.

An Internet crackdown that began in January has closed hundreds of Chinese sites, including a popular blog hosting site and several sites popular with Tibetans.

It has been described by analysts as another step in the Party’s battle to stifle dissent in a year of sensitive anniversaries, including the 20th anniversary of the government’s bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Michelle Malkin has more on this and wonders if Google will bend over backwards again for China.