The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. You may know them from such projects as
How to build a fake Google Street View car,
public domain donor stickers,
internet famous class, the
first rap video to end with a download source code link, or their numerous
firefox add-ons (such as
China Channel,
Tourettes Machine, or
Back to the future). FAT members have been hard at work standardizing various open source graffiti-related software packages, including
Graffiti Analysis,
Laser Tag,
Fat Tag Deluxe and
EyeWriter [previously] to be
GML (Graffiti Markup Language) compliant.
Fuck Google.
Fuck Twitter.
FuckFlickr.
Fuck SXSW.
Fuck 3D. FAT Lab is
Kanye shades for the open source movement.
posted by finite
on Mar 13, 2010 -
8 comments
Official Google Blog:
In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different ... ... we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists ... ... We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.
posted by memebake
on Jan 12, 2010 -
227 comments
Caijing (财经) is an independent, Beijing-based magazine devoted to reporting on business in China. The publication's title means "Finance and Economics."
[more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on Jul 26, 2009 -
6 comments
With the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Thursday, China's ever-vigilant censors have stepped up the reach of the "Great Firewall," blocking Western sites like Twitter, Flickr, and (just one day after its launch) Microsoft's Bing.
via [more inside]
posted by infini
on Jun 3, 2009 -
54 comments
Although I Am Dead (
YouTube) (Parts
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) Compelling documentary by
Hu Jie (胡杰) on the death during the Cultural Revolution of Bian Zhongyun (卞仲耘), recalled by her now octogenarian husband. He photographed her corpse after she was beaten to death by Red Guards, students at the middle school of which she was deputy principal. The film's inclusion in the documentary section of
YunFest has apparently led to the
authorities shutting down the event.
(Via)
posted by Abiezer
on Apr 5, 2007 -
19 comments
Google Images Censored in China A picture says 1000 words, and Google.cn is censoring them all. Check out the side-by-side screens of a search for "tiananmen+square" in Google.com and Google.cn images. Looks like a nice place, with little historical significance. You can try the search
yourself. The text on the bottom left is the censorship disclaimer. Very different than our
results. A far cry from Google's
claim that they do not censor results. Nice to know that they stand up to the government here but not abroad.
A good
spoof of the whole thing.
posted by FeldBum
on Jan 30, 2006 -
57 comments
Don't be evil. Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market. Google will roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood
on Jan 24, 2006 -
93 comments
Microsoft takes down chinese language blog critical of Beijing This was on the global (.com) site
not a .cn site. Meaning this policy affects all Chinese speakers all over the world, including in the US. Interestingly, the pressure seems to have been commercial, as a commercial Chinese blogging company took Microsoft to task for allowing the commentary. Is globalization exporting censorship?
posted by delmoi
on Jan 3, 2006 -
70 comments
Every weekly meeting causes me to feel ashamed. I listen to people lie. I listen to people lie shamelessly and authoritatively. And you cannot refute them. You cannot stand up and say, "You are lying. What are you lying?"
Tolerating lies is regarded as wisdom. Those who are anxious to speak the truth are regarded as being victims of too much hormone. People make fun of themselves this way, and then wisely say: "Those naive actions will only bring even worse consequences. Be mature, be rational, be practical. Research more issues and talk less about theories."
This was written by an employee at
The Beijing News after three of it's head editors were
fired from their positions last week. The paper, one of the most progressive newspapers in China, was taken over by editors from
The Guangming Daily, a paper directly controlled by
"The Ministry of Publicity". Via
Eastwestnorthsouth who translated the original blog post as well as
this one written by another member of the staff at
The Beijing News.
posted by afu
on Jan 2, 2006 -
22 comments
"The
explosion of suggestive images [in Chinese media and art] is partly a reflection of changes in Chinese society -- many sociologists say China is in the midst of a sweeping
sexual revolution -- and partly due to market reforms...The government has not given the press free rein to publish material with sexual themes, but the way censorship is carried out means that some media outlets can get away with quite a lot. Rather than issue top-down decrees, Beijing's censors primarily react to existing material, so websites, whose content is easily removable, and publications far from Beijing, which are less likely to attract censors' attention, can take more chances. Still, articles on topics such as '
China's Janet Jackson,' a TV star who has twice revealed a breast in public, and the incidence of erectile dysfunction among China's urban men are now common in the national media."
posted by JPowers
on Jul 30, 2005 -
14 comments
In her autobiography, "Living History," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts how China's imprisonment of a prominent human rights activist, Harry Wu, caused a sensation in the United States and nearly derailed her plans to attend a United Nations women's conference held in Beijing in 1995.
In the officially licensed Chinese edition of Mrs. Clinton's book, though, Mr. Wu makes just a cameo appearance. While named, he is otherwise identified only as a person who was "prosecuted for espionage and detained awaiting trial."
But nearly everything Mrs. Clinton had to say about China, including descriptions of her own visits here, former President Bill Clinton's meetings with Chinese leaders and her criticisms of Communist Party social controls and human rights policies, has been shortened or selectively excerpted to remove commentary deemed offensive by Beijing.
My question: is anybody other than Hillary really
suprised by this?
posted by RevGreg
on Sep 24, 2003 -
14 comments
Corporate censorship in China (via slashdot). I guess censorship and collusion in the repression of people is okay if you're making profits for your shareholders. An eye-opening look into the way that corporations are helping to facilitate censorship on the Internet in China. AOL and Yahoo's attitudes to what I thought were universal human rights is nothing short of sickening.
posted by pixelgeek
on Feb 18, 2002 -
8 comments