July 6, 2000

9:14 AM

The story of Huang Qi,the man who started the first human-rights website in China, is one of the most depressing internet stories I've read. Now that he is jailed for "subverting state power," no US internet firms are sticking for him, as they're too busy trying to market their sites and services in China. I've participated in protests before, but I really wish we could get together and protest bigger things, things that might improve or save others' lives. I hope the proposed data havens like Sealand get online and allow sites such as Qi's to continue.
posted by mathowie (3 comments total)

I agree. Sort of. The problem with Sealand/HavenCo is that is *very* expensive. For things like this I prefer the mass distribution strategy. Mirror the content all over the place.

But I don't think that's the issue here. I'd love to mirror Huang Qi's articles. But I can't because he's not writing anything. He's in jail. And since we're talking about China, he's probably screwed.

All we can do is make a lot of noise as individuals. I'll put this up on my site tomorrow. But that won't do anything. If you feel that governments shouldn't be able to shut down critical websites without protest, you should too. We need some sort of virus style growth so that it gets into the media and becomes an issue.
posted by y6y6y6 at 12:50 PM on July 6, 2000

This article involving the Sealand CTO has some interesting information. Especially the first part. It mainly talks about the logistics of doing this.

This service is close, but not really what you're thinking of. Related interesting stuff here.
posted by y6y6y6 at 5:22 AM on July 7, 2000