Cultural Shock: Urgent! I am being sued by my ISP...

Just to clarify: this person is not me.

Translation: 急！！！我被宽带网公司给起诉了。在线等！谢谢 from Wenxuecity

I received the following letter today

Court Case: Voltage Pictures(The Plaintiff)

Court: United States District Court District of Columbia

Copy Righted Work:xxx

It seems to be due to a movie I downloaded. The letter also came with a subpoena:

Production: You Are COMMANDED to produce at the time, date, and place set forth below the following documents, electronically stored information, or objects, and permit their inspection, copying,testing, or sampling of the materials:Pursuant to the attached order, provide the name, current address, email address and MAC address of all individuals whose IP addresses are listed in the attached spreadsheet

Place: xxxxxxx,Washington DC, Date and time: 10/20/2013

I have never seen anything like this!!! What does it mean?! Do I have to hire a lawyer? They gave me an objection deadline: Feb 11, 2011

This is an emergency. I am really nervous. They say that this is a Civil lawsuit and not criminal investigation, but I have never received such a letter before! Please help me make sense of it! Thank you all!

---

In the comment section, the dude reveals that he used emule. On a separate note, VeryCD took down eD2k links to most of the TV series, movies, and music, to the great dismay of Emule users in China.

Sina Microblog

Sina microblog, the latest fashionable trend in the Chinese online community. Every single person I have ever heard of owns one. Yet, I can't shake off the feeling that the success of the microblog came because Sina is standing on the shoulder of a giant, just like older internet services QQ (which copied ICQ), Baidu (which copied Google), Renren (which copied Facebook), and others.

Take a look at the two screen shots below. The first one shows the layout of actress Yao Chen's Sina microblog, and I have explained the Chinese texts in red. The second one is Coldplay's Twitter account.

Yao Chen's microblog

Coldplay's Twitter page

I'd say the most Sina did was to move the brief "About" blurb from the top right hand corner to the left, under the owner's name. Perhaps the most obvious telltale sign indicating Sina's blatant "borrowing" is the 140 character limit. Fortunately, since Chinese is more compact than English, one can express a lot more information on Sina than he can on Twitter.

To the media giant's credit, Sina added a few more features to make its microblog friendlier to Chinese usage. Notice the fields under each tweet, which list the number of times a message has been re-posted as well as a the comments readers made in response to the particular message. In essence, each tweet has been converted into a mini-thread. This is no doubt a shrewd move to take advantage of the giant popularity that the BBS forum format enjoys in China. To increase user interactions, Sina also sends notifications each time someone either retweets or replies to one's message.

To make information gathering more convenient (and coincidentally to prevent its users from ever having to leave its website), Sina included many multimedia functions. Pictures can be included with the tweets, and the embedded videos play on the same page.

All in all, I think a non-Chinese Twitter user can readily take up Sina microblog because things are almost identical to Twitter. Of course, he would still have to overcome the small hurdle of not understanding Chinese. And oh, the new microblog has censorship too.

Which Regions of China Use Internet?

From one of my websites.
Visitors from Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan regions are sparse

Chinese Antivirus Giant "Rising" Bribe Officials to Eliminate Competition

Liu Xu (right) to pick Tian Yakui (left) up from prison. Picture from Ynet

Rising Antivirus, or Rui Xing (瑞星) as Chinese call it, is one of the largest anti-virus software companies in China, with over 500 employees and more than 50 million Chinese home users.

Eastern Micropoint (微点主动防御软件), on the other hand, is a still a start-up, unremarkable except for the 2005 allegations that it released several malware to the internet.

The connection between these two? Yu Bing, former director of Beijing Cyberpolice in charge of internet security (北京市公安局公共信息网络安全监察处). On February 4, 2010, Yu bing was tried by Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court (北京市一中院) on charges of graft amounting to 14 million yuan as well as deliberate framing and persecution of Eastern Micropoint.

IT Companies Locked in Vicious Competition

If roots are traced far back enough, Eastern Micropoint is actually related to Rising Antivirus. Its owner Liu Xu (刘旭), known as "China's No. 1 expert in antivirus software" and a member of the 863 Program, was Rising's senior director and principal engineer before 2003. Its deputy director Tian Yakui (田亚葵) was formerly Rising's vice president and Director of Oversea Sales before March 2004.

Troubles for Liu Xu and Tian Yakui began after the two left Rising to found Eastern Micropoint in January 2005. Their research and development focused on novel technology that utilizes behavioral analysis to counter computer virus. Namely, it provides protection without having to examine real virus samples, and the product was set to launch in July 2005. If successful, Eastern Micropoint would be poised to gain significant market shares.

Beginning July 2005, Beijing police cyber security department subjected Eastern Micropoint to a series of "inspections." The reasons for these inspections varied from "evaluation of antivirus software companies" to "internet security routine check up." Eastern Micropoint employees, including top management and R&D division, were repeatedly summoned. July 21 of same year, inspectors confiscated company computers and sent them Rising Antivirus. The same computers hosted much of Eastern Micropoint's core technology.

In addition to frequent summons and inspections, Liu Xu received two "suggestions" from Yu Bing, who was director of Beijing Cyberpolice at the time: either sell his start-up to Rising or go back to his home province Fujian.

Liu Xu ignored Yu Bing. And luckily for Eastern Micropoint, all the important files were properly encrypted prior to the computer confiscation.

On August 30, police arrested Tian Yakui, accusing him of undermining computer information systems and stealing trade secrets. The Beijing cyberpolice released details of the arrest to the public, claiming they cracked the first case of "malicious and intentional spreading of computer virus." The announcement gained much attention at the time.

The Falsification of a Crime

Liu Xu frequently uses the word "persecution" to describe his experiences from four years ago.

An exact account of what had transacted was given by Zhang Pengyun (张鹏云) and Qi Kun (齐坤), both of whom are recently convicted and sentenced for their involvement in the wrongdoing.

In August 2005, Yu Bing ordered deputy directors Zhang Pengyun and Qi Kun to evaluate damages due to computer virus infections at two Beijing companies, Si Mai Management Consulting Firm (麦特管理顾问有限公司) and Jian Qiao Securities Company (健桥证券公司). Zhang Pengyun did not think there was enough evidence to make a case against Easten Micropoint, but Yu told him: "Do as I tell you, or you will be going down."

As a result, Zhang Pengyun and Qi Kun had to search for virus samples inside company computers. To prove that the virus originated from Eastern Micropoint, Yu Bing's department proclaimed that Tian Yakui's notebook sent 4 viral programs to the World Wide Web through a ADSL connection. Taking the case one step further, Yu Bing organized an "expert team" that purposefully excluded any employees from Rising. Yet the eventual arrest warrant for Tian Yakui was based on charges unconfirmed by experts.

An accounting firm, Zhong Run Hua (中润华), was hired to assign costs. It priced the Rising virus database at several thousands of millions RMB, a figure that Yu Bing lowered to a more plausible 60 million. Also, every infected computer was assessed for damage and reported as 100,000 yuan financial loss per equipment.

Yu Bing asked one of the companies Jiang Min (江民) for materials to build his criminal case. When the deputy director Yan Shaowen (严绍文) replied he did not know how to write the report, Yu Bing told Zhang Pengyun to write a template document that Yan Shaowen then copied and signed.

Once Yu had enough evidence, cyberpolice took the case to the media, accusing Eastern Micropoint of intentionally spreading virus on the internet. The cyberpolice claimed that Micropoint's unlawful conduct was brought to their attention by multiple antivirus Beijing companies, and after criminal investigation, it was determined that Micropoint seriously threatened online security and caused significant economic loss.

On September 6, 2005, cyberpolice requested National Antivirus Product Testing and Certification Center not to approve Eastern Micropoint's new product.

Fighting Back

To escape further persecution, Liu Xu decided to move the R&D team to Fuzhou. The team took the train to Xiamen but secretly got off before reaching the city. After two bus transfers, they arrived in Fuzhou at midnight undetected.

One of the employees in the team was Cui Suhui (崔素辉), a 23-year-old recent college graduate from Hebei province. Because he was also on the Wanted List, Cui had to live the next several years in hiding. During this time period, he was jobless and did not even dare to join his family for Chinese New Year celebrations.

Liu Xu and others never gave up. Using their real names, the team continuously reported Yu Bing's misconduct to the government. Finally in July 2008, Beijing Ministry of Supervision launched an official probe. Meanwhile Eastern Micropoint's name was cleared: the ADSL connection, one of the evidence used to implicate Tian Yakui, was never connected; in addition, Tian's notebook only contained 3 virus specimens, all of which unactivated.

On November 20, 2007, 11 months after his arrest, Tian Yakui was released from prison. Beijing Haidian Procuratorate decided not to press any charges. Eastern Micropoint received its product certification in February 2008.

Tian Yakui has aged years due to the imprisonment. "High tech products face intense time to market pressure. 3 months is enough to impact product success, let alone 3 years." Tian told a reporter on February 4. Because of unlawful tactics on Yubing and Rising's part, Eastern Micropoint directly suffered 30 million yuan loss. The company's indirect financial loss exceeds thousands of millions.

Rising Antivirus, with its now severely tainted image, will not comment on the case. It is keeping silence as the management wait for the verdict on Yu Bing. Rising's executive vice president Zhao Sizhuang (赵四章) has been arrested on charges of bribery.

Yu Bing had escaped to South Africa earlier but returned to China in September 2008 under advice from Supreme People's Procuratorate. He was arrested on September 18 on charges of corruption, bribery and abuse of power.

Yu Bing pleaded "Not Guilty" at the beginning. Two hours into the trial, however, he admitted to all corruption and bribery charges.

It was said that Yu Bing accepted bribes from four companies, all of them related to internet. Rising alone gave him 4.20 million yuan.

Sources
http://it.people.com.cn/GB/42891/42893/10965942.html (北京网监处数人落马 瑞星微点案两败俱伤)
http://it.people.com.cn/GB/42891/42893/10941551.html (中国杀毒业第一假案：瑞星420万行贿官员嫁祸对手)

Why Was Baidu Hacked?

I just can't resist. The person who came up with this facetious list is very well acquainted with current news.

As you might already know, Baidu was hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army (ICA) on January 12. Here are some "profound" reasons that Chinese thought of to explain the cyber attack.

A Few Far-fetched Theories

1. The real reason: the new leader of Iranian holy crusaders Abaidu Abaidula (fictitious person)¹ is mad at Baidu for choosing a name that sounds like his. -_-!

2. Abaidu Abaidula was searching for SB on Google and found Baidu². Thanks to Baidu, his name is now the butt of a joke. Abaidu Abaidula is mad. -_-!

3. Political protest is only an excuse. In reality, Iranians were attempting to buy missiles in reaction to the ever-growing U.S. military threat. Ignorant of the fact that Baidu auctions off search result rankings, Iranians bought the first one on the results list, only to realize later the missile quality was terrible. Iranians are mad.

4. Lately there have been too many upheavals in the Chinese internet community. Frantic with PR management and bribing left and right, Baidu forgot to pay domain renewal fees. -_-!

5. Because Baidu CEO Robin Li does not believe in Brother Chun, Baidu failed to self-ressurect with full character attributes [if you play any computer game, this shouldn't be hard to understand] -_-!

¹This is a play on the common Islamic name Abdullah, which is a homonym of Abaidula.

²For reasons unknown, if you search SB on www.google.cn, the first result you will encounter is Baidu. Likewise, if you search SB on www.baidu.com, the first results that shows up is Google. Typically people attribute this "coincidence" to the rivalry between the two companies.

Conspiracy Theories

6. The ICA supposedly did not use its customary signature this time. Therefore, it is possible that the Chinese government orchestrated the attack on Baidu (while pretending to be ICA) to pave the way for a future invasion of Iran.

7. "Concerned Departments (departments in charge)" made an emergency announcement: to prevent further escalation of the cyber attack, they have decided to cut off all U.S.-China and Europe-China internet communication.

8. The site attack is merely part of ICA's graduation exam. Successful domestic sites take over is enough for a graduation certificate. To get the actual diploma, each soldier has to hack into foreign sites. Furthermore, thanks to the Google sponsorship, breaching the defenses of Baidu guarantees anybody a diploma plus a job offer.

Along Chinese government's line of thinking

9. According to report by CCAV (derogatory nickname for CCTV): Shanxi college student reported the ICA to authorities through dedicated hot-line, claiming his mental state has suffered terribly because of the attack.

10. Baidu immediately issued a statement: "This morning, Baidu's domain name registration in the United States was tampered with, leading to inaccessibility. Concerned departments at Baidu are actively resolving the problem. "

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will soon seize this opportunity to berate unreliable foreign internet domain registrars--for stability, get a .CN domain.

11. Ministry of Truth denied any responsibility for the attack on Baidu, Comrade Yu Shan (云山) phoned Robin Li: "The Iranians did it. Not us."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs convened for an emergency session, during which Qin Gang castigated the ICA who has dared to challenge the Number 1 Superpower in Internet blockade.

Source
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=695764888

http://www.ifs.org.cn/ Hacked and Now Back Online

Institute of Forensic Science Ministry of Public Security P.R.C was hacked Beijing time, January 2, 2010.

The "news" was first exposed on Tianya, and one post recorded the whole process. Of course river crabs soon gobbled it up, which is why anyone clicking on the Tianya link would encounter a "404" error (I really wanted to read it...nothing like food preferred by river crabs to rouse the curiosity).

Call it immature or what not, but it really seems Chinese Netizen bystanders are as excited as the hackers?

The takeover of this government website was supposedly a collaborative effort, as attested by the various IDs left on the webpages.

Here is the poem on the front page.

Perhaps, Love and Not in love
by 清风原木
Dying quietly, remembering you in silence
A hacker as skilled as I still could not invade your heart
Overflowing emotions do not even encounter an echo
Despite of capturing so many servers, I am still a Guest
.....

And the poem goes on, in rather bad writing.

Message left by another hacker. There are misspellings...


More at http://bbs.news.163.com/bbs/shishi/161932242.html

What Netizens were conjecturing:

1. Institute of Forensic Science Ministry of Public Security P.R.C is just a lab. Not that important.

2. You call that a poem?

3. I guess by the poem that the hackers are young. They probably learned a thing or two and thought they are already taller than the sky.

4. People, what do you think are the motivations these hackers have?

They actually were aiming for The State Administration of Radio Film and Television but walked through the wrong door?

Wanted to destroy some criminal evidence?

Fell in love with someone at the Ministry?

Love the jail food?

Just learned a couple of techniques and wanted to experiment?

5. Maybe they will be like that Panda Virus guy and receive job offers after a stint in the jailhouse.

查完一圈回来，发现豆瓣什么统统被和谐了。沉默又有效率。不论如何，国家尊严不容触犯。

Has it come to this?

Social satirist and blogger hecaitou twittered:

In the past 10 years, the World Wide Web has provided countless news tips, writers, content and articles to the traditional media. Today, the World Wide Web is facing the coldest spells in ten years, teetering on the brink of obliteration. We earnestly request friends from paper media to speak out on behalf of the internet. If we go extinct, your days will be numbered too.

在过去十年，互联网为平媒提供了无数新闻线索、专栏作家、内容文字。如今，互联网正在遭受十年来最大的寒流，覆亡在即。恳请平媒的朋友为网络说点什么，我们如果死光了，你们的日子也不会长了。

I had noticed SINA, among others, began requiring real-name registration, and any comments on the news report takes at least five minutes to clear moderation/censors.

I had noticed that CCTV recently published an article titled "Internet Triad in Control of Public Opinion: Five Million yuan Bribe Can Influence Court Decision (网络黑社会操控舆论：花五万元可左右法院判决)." In it, CCTV "exposed" a thriving industry "bent on" harming the Chinese businesses, the Chinese people, and indirectly the Chinese government. Given how the state-media operate, I knew this has to be either the harbinger of some new Net policy or paving the way for one.

At the websites I visits, there are many exasperatingly restrictive measures, and this is when my personal use just consists of personal entertainment and information gathering (I mean, I would understand being censored if I expressing anti-government sentiments).

But hecaitou's plea still came as a shock.

Many Netizens often jokingly say that the internet is the only venue where pi min (a derogatory term for people who expose any wrongdoing) can at least talk about the injustices without fear of swift retaliation. What happens when internet likewise becomes sanitized? I can't wait to see the formulaic 3-step reporting of "1. Chinese people are happy; 2. Chinese leaders are busy looking into the welfare of the Chinese people; 3. People everywhere else are living in hell" on the web too.

---

Related Post(s)
Comparison Between Chinese and Western Blogs
Inside the Great Firewall: Censorship 2009

Foxit Reader

When searching for an alternative to Adobe Reader, I discovered Foxit Reader, which is also free. As far as I see, it has several advantages:

• Occupies less space. Foxit 5MB vs. Adobe Reader 38MB
• Allows the user to comment any PDF
  
• Faster start-up than Adobe, which might or might not make a difference to users
  
• Opens up files in tabs rather than separate windows (This is a relief because the separate window feature used to be one of my pet peeves)
• And I think it crashes less too--need to experiment with this

There is one flaw, however, which is

• The Foxit plugin doesn't work so well with Firefox. Internet Explorer has no problem.
  

In my case, the reason I have to use Foxit Reader is its commenting/highlighting feature, which comes in handy when having to read many PDF documents. Paying for Adobe Professional can also solve the problem, but since I have little use for Professional's other features, buying it would be an overkill.

Depending on what your needs are, you might find Foxit to be a better option than Adobe Reader. Just letting whoever stumbles upon this blog know that there is a choice.

Oh, and to everyone, Happy Holidays!

Impressive! Using Excel to Draw Computer Graphics

【エクセル講座】オートシェイプで書いてみた【双葉理保】(Japanese)


Tudou：http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/uJavfodii74

This is another one..not excel



Talented people everywhere.

Online News/Posts Deletion: New Form of PR Crisis Management in China

"Had Jiujing Zhou (周久耕) hired us for crisis management, he would still be the director of the real estate bureau of Nanjing's Jiangning District and smoking his expensive Vacheron Constantin cigarettes." On November 11, 2009, this arrogant statement by a Nanjing web design and development company drew nation-wide attention, focusing the spotlight once again on the most recent form of crisis management in China--comprehensive elimination of negative news coverage and forum posts from the internet.

Baidu (百度)

Baidu, a popular Chinese search engine, is one of the most famous Chinese companies to offer the "public relation protection service." Its reputation has been less than stellar and in 2008 was chastised by state media CCTV for letting websites bid for their page ranks (among other reasons).

Baidu's PR services came under intense scrutiny amidst the scandals and death reports concerning Sanlu baby milk powder (三鹿奶粉), when an internal confidential document from Sanlu Dairy Company leaked. The document mentioned a payment of 3 million yuan to Baidu to suppress any negative news links in Baidu search results. After more posts with unfavorable details about Baidu PR operations surfaced on the internet, Baidu made a public announcement, in which it categorically and fervently denied any collusion with Sanlu Dairy Company.

How Many of These Companies Are There?

An article on Xinhuanet (via Beijing Daily) detailed a reporter's investigation into these "posts deletion companies" (删贴公司). A keyword search on Baidu returned millions of results, among which several advertisements are prominently displayed. Besides contact information and phone numbers, some even include informative and well-written tutorials on proper internet crisis management.

The reporter chose one of the heavily promoted PR companies and contacted them via QQ (a Chinese internet messenger). The conversation proceeded as follows:

away(reporter): Hello!
away（记者）：你好！

Xuer(sales rep): Hello, this is professional posts exterminator.
雪儿（删帖公司）：你好，专业删除帖子。

away: How much do you charge for removal of forum threads due to personal reasons?
away：个人要是删论坛里的帖子怎么收费？

Xuer: Can you show me the link(s)?
雪儿：链接地址给我看看。

away: Please hold, let me find it.
away：稍等，我找一下。

On an online housing forum, the reporter found some complaint about broken heaters and sent the link over.
记者随后在搜房网某小区论坛上找到了一个抱怨供暖的帖子发了过去。

away: There are other similar threads. Can you quote me a price and also describe steps you take to delete the thread? I am responsible for maintaining the property. Too many complaints like this would adversely impact my status as one of the exemplary employees
away：还有几条类似的，不知道价钱和程序如何？我是物业的专管员，如果投诉多了有点不合适，我原来是服务标兵。

Xuer: We charge 2000 yuan.
雪儿：你这个信息删除收费是2000元。

away: 2000 for just one thread?
away：一条就两千吗？

Xuer: Yes, or you can show me all the negative information that need to be removed. I can give you a bulk price.
雪儿：是的，要么你把所有的负面信息都找出来放在文档里面给我看看，我给报一个打包价。

away: It takes some effort to find them all. What about a ballpark number instead? Also how do you go about this? Do you provide the service first or do I pay first?
away：找起来有点费劲，我就是想知道，最低大概多少钱？还有，怎么走这个程序，先删还是先收？

Xuer: We require half of the money to be paid up front as deposit. The rest can wait until we delete everything. A job like this requires 2 to 3 days.
雪儿：先给一半定金删除完再给余款就行。删除这样的信息要2到3天时间。

away: Do you guarantee elimination of negative information from this forum only? Or the entire World Wide Web?
away：是就这个论坛找不到呢，还是所有的搜索都找不到？

Xuer: I will only delete this thread. No promise that other websites won't have similar complaints. The price I have given you is the lowest we can offer, because it is a little hard to remove material from that forum.
雪儿：我就给你删除这条，不代表所有网站都没有。你这个信息出现在门户网站上不好删除，价钱我都给你是最低了。

Internet Crisis Management for Businesses

To find out more about PR services tailored to a business, the reporter contacted the same company again, this time via phone. Mr. Salesperson on the other end of the line sounded very excited about the prospective customer but still insisted to see the links before he could determine the price. Since the reporter pretended to be a food company representative , the cost of deleting one thread rose to 4000 to 5000 yuan. It depends on the nature of the threads, explained the young man, and the websites from which negative articles are to be removed. Food, sanitation, drugs, and health-related are more expensive than others. News that have been printed on paper or discussed on TV are beyond the scope of their services.

After several rounds of investigation, it was obvious none of the PR companies have a fixed list for price. Links and articles must be provided first before the cost can be estimated. Furthermore, the companies usually recommend posts-deletion in bulk, claiming it is the most economical for costumers. The two employees mentioned above emphasized that their company can be trusted and will sign confidentiality agreements if necessary. Some of these professionals even showed a demo of their work flow.

Brand Maintenance

The reporter attempted to schedule an in-person appointment with one young man who works for such companies. Despite of reassurances that both he and his company would remain anonymous, the skittish worker canceled their meeting at the last moment. Persistent efforts on the reporter's part finally procured him a telephone conversation. During the call, this young man said that posts-deletion services are not a secret. Many of the negative information online can be totally erased, regardless whether the customer is an individual or a large business.

Furthermore, some companies will offer a year-long service called "brand maintenance" for 50000 yuan as annual payment. Under this service, any negative news appearing in that year will theoretically be deleted. Of course how thoroughly this is carried out depends on the size of the PR company and the scale of the scandal. In the case of Sanlu, no one could have reversed the tide.

How Negative News are Eliminated

In theory there are three ways PR companies can promote a customer's good name.

1. Flood search engines with positive news articles.

2. Pay website moderators to delete negative information.

3. Hacking

Contrary to some beliefs, most PR companies do not hire hackers, because hacking a website is high risk and high tech. As public relation companies, they prefer asking inside people at various websites to delete the requested information (for a fee).

Articles that have very high viewership are extremely difficult to kill; few website moderators and editors are willing to risk their careers. The most difficult articles to remove are the ones that appear on the home page of a website.

Is Online News/Posts Deletion Legal?

Currently there is no law regulating these companies.

Wuxi Policeman Fired for Being a "Snitch"

I was reminded of this piece of news after reading on CBS:

"I strongly disagree with what Obama said about the Internet firewall," said Tao Weishuo, a 24-year old postgraduate student from Fudan University. "I think all Chinese people have Internet freedom -- we can speak out freely on the Internet about current social affairs." He said the question to him came from a Web site outside China.

Dated: November 4, 2009

网友曝派出所吃空饷被拘 一民警被认消息源遭辞

Translation:

Policemen Yu shows to the reporter the Termination of Employment letter

How it began

On July 6th, a thread in ER Quan forum (二泉论坛) exposed possible corruption at Wuxi City's Dongbeitang police station (无锡市东北塘派出所). Specifically, the thread incriminated both the Director and counselor who allegedly populated payroll with fake names and illegally obtained a large number of paychecks.

ER Quan, a site serving Wuxi(无锡市), Jiangsu , calls itself the most influential forum in the city. Some say this forum is also heavily monitored by local law enforcement agencies.

People who had read the thread told the media that it did not attract much viewership before a hasty deletion by moderators. When the reporter tried to search it on November 3rd, he could only find a brief record on Google; there were no accompanying Cache snapshots.

Despite of its early demise, the thread attracted enough attention from the police. The Wuxi Xishan District received orders from its superiors to investigate this incident.

By using clues such as IP location, police quickly found and arrested the person responsible. The man's name is Yang Zhao (赵阳), and he works in Jinteng Transportation Company (无锡市万达停车场金腾运输公司). Because Zhao could not produce evidence to prove conclusively that "financial problems existed at Dongbeitang police station,” he was charged with "malicious defamation" and was detained in prison for 5 days.

During the process of questioning, police discovered that Zhao had communicated with an officer regarding the thread. This policeman was determined to be Gang Yu (郁刚), a member of the 8th branch of the Xishan District police department (无锡市公安局锡山分局八士派出所).

Auxiliary policeman confirms the story

Dongbeitang Township is located in the northeast region of Wuxi. Its residents are mostly people from places outside of the city. To effectively maintain social order, Dongbeitang police station has created many auxiliary openings in addition to its traditional positions. Some of these auxiliary openings include "Office of Public Order Defense Team" (联防办) and "Office for Management of Non-local residents" (外管办). Their work pay is drawn from the local treasury, which allocates money for salary once the police station submits an application. According to insiders, the police station routinely inflates the employee numbers to obtain more than the entitled payment.

An auxiliary policeman who wished to remain anonymous confirmed accusations of shady doings. He informed the reporter: "Even though there are only 14 people in our office, the number on the roster exceeds 70." Because those salary applications require signatures, "Our superiors frequently demand that we forge the signatures, each of us responsible for many forgeries. We rarely recognize the names we have to sign."

The policeman claimed that false reporting has been going on for many years. "This year's are fake too. In March, there were 76 names applying for work compensation. In April, May, and June there were 45." But the total number of people who actually worked was always 14.

A separate corroboration came from an official member of the police force. "The boss would ask them [auxiliary workforce] to sign the forms; I personally witnessed this several times. I guess this is what you would call an 'open secret.' Everybody knows about it too."

The Dongbeitang residents complained about the falsified roster in May and June. As a result, the police station had to return hundreds of thousands of Chinese yuan to the local treasury.

The open secret

The police asserted that during questioning, Yang Zhao admitted to being under policeman Gang Yu's instructions.

"Why would I do that?" Gang Yu denied with some heat. But he did talk with Zhao before the thread was published on web.

Zhao was in fact under orders from his boss Gucai Lu (吕古财), manager of Jinteng Transportation Company. Lu had previous grudges against the Dongbeitang police and after catching wind of the incriminating rumors, asked Gang Yu to confirm them. Policeman Yu formerly worked in Dongbeitang.

Gang Yu said that he stopped paying attentions to affairs of the town after his 2008 transfer to 8th Branch of Xishan District. "But I know what the bosses are doing. A lot of people there know."

When Zhao revealed his plans for exposing the corruption, Yu did not seek to stop him. "I acquiesced, and besides, I couldn't prevent him from going public with it. But I never ordered him to do such a thing," Yu was emphatic, "I am a policeman myself. If I wanted to become directly involved, I wouldn't have chosen a method this stupid."

After Zhao's arrest, his boss Lu unsuccessfully attempted go in hiding. Lu was captured and thrown into jail for 3 days.

While in prison, Lu wrote a "letter of repentance". He later admitted to framing policeman Yu under orders from unspecified sources. Once he did as asked, the police station released him.

On July 17th, Yu was put on a two-month leave for supposedly masterminding the false allegations. Yu refused to apologize, insisting that he never told anybody to write any article online. The most he did was to read the thread and "slightly revise it." Besides, falsifying payroll has long been an open secret.

On August 26, Wuxi police terminated Yu's employment for "improper and illicit behavior".
'
Director of Dongbeitang division: the accusations are unfounded

On October 8th, Wuxi police reiterated its decision to fire Policeman Yu, citing: As a member of police squad whose responsibility is to be eliminate illegal activities, Yu has committed an egregious error of ordering untrue and defaming content to be posted on the World Wide Web. Both the original writer and email exchanges confirmed his unacceptable behavior.

But was the information disseminated by Zhao false? Some police in Dongbeitang believe otherwise. "We don't know why our bosses want to misrepresent the payroll. We just know they do it," an unnamed police stated.

When our reporter approached the accused Director Teng (滕) with this story, Teng declared that "Somebody has been inventing unfounded rumors. I have never done anything like this."

Of the many respondents that the Nddaily journalist interviewed in the investigative process, few were able to produce any paper evidence, though most admit to having observed the falsification process. The journalist was eventually able to meet an insider who kept records of such things "just in case" and was subsequently supplied with a falsified payroll for the auxiliary police force.

The September 2008 payroll that has been verified to contain around 70 false names

As the photo shows, in the payroll dated from 2008, there are only 14 real employees. The 70 other names who received a monthly salary of 1200 yuan were invented. The total illegal pay was almost 100,000 yuan in September. The reporter visited a number of the 70 people listed on the payroll. Their replies were the same: they never worked for the police station, never were an auxiliary police; the signatures on the application form were not their own.

"The police should verify the truthfulness of that thread," Yu said, "Instead, the first thing they did was to punish the informers."

The Wuxi police department stand by its claim is that the thread was a big hoax, containing basically rootless slander.

Policeman defends his rights

After serving 25 years on the police squad, Yu finds the discharge hard to accept. Reading about the Caoxian Case [in which a Shandong man was able to expose corruption on the internet and receive reparations] led Yu to contact the lawyer who defended that Shandong man.

Some discussion with the lawyer led Yu to conclude that his punishment should have been at most a reprimand and re-education [but he was discharged instead]. Yu believed that the exposure had angered some superiors.

On September 9, Yu appealed to be reinstated, maintaining he had done nothing wrong. On October 8, Wuxin police repeated their previous decision and reminded Yu that he can take the appeal to the Department of Governmental Personnel or other appropriate authorities.

Yu submitted his appeal to the police department of Jiangsu Province and is currently awaiting the outcome.

Aftermath

None, except a statement from Wuxin police restating that Gang Yu has violated the law, the corruption rumors are false, and that Yu ordered Gang Zhao to write malicious information online.

Source(s)
http://nf.nfdaily.cn/ttlist/content/2009-11/04/content_6184625.htm
http://news.thmz.com/col63/2009/11/2009-11-09650124.html

---

Related Post(s)
Comparison Between Chinese and Western Blogs
Inside the Great Firewall: Censorship 2009

Free Proxies

People need to get in the GFW. People need to get out of the GFW. Either way, a reliable proxy can come in handy. Unfortunately, of all the free ones I tried, none were very stable. Usability spans maximum of a week.

Online Proxies

Advantages: Easy to use. One can simply type in the URL of the block site and hit enter. The Ports they have are already checked and verified to be valid.
Disadvantages: Can be slow. Websites that feature Javascript often don't display properly.

http://proxy.daili.name/
http://www.publicproxyservers.com/

If pages do not display properly, go back and make sure that the "Remove Scripts" field is un-checked. It sometimes helps.

Individual Ports

Advantages: Better display for dynamic elements on webpages
Disadvantages: User must check for themselves that the ports still work. In addition, web browsers must be configured properly.

http://www.proxyfire.net/index.php?pageid=ProxyLists

Socks 4/5

I tried to use this for some online gaming stuff because socks4/5 allows web browsing as well as data transfer. The problem, as with "Individual Ports," is that a reliable and long-lasting one proves very difficult to find.

Also for Socks 4 and Socks 5, one needs to install a program like SocksCap 2.40 (freeware) first.

**I personally prefer configuring internet browers and using socks 4/5.

Document/Ebook Readers and Download Sites

Apps Designed for Computers, Not Mobile Phones.
I wish there were an all-purpose document reader.

1. To open .rtf, .txt files

-Notepad (come with Windows Operating Systems), functionality is minimal
-Wordpad (come with Windows Operating Systems)
-See #2

2. To open .doc files

-Microsoft Word or Word Viewer

-Open Office

3. To open .pdf files

-Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader

4. To open .lit files

-Microsoft Reader

5. To open .prc files

-FBReader

Inside the Great Firewall: Censorship 2009

One intuitively knows that something is not right when the following "disclaimer" repeatedly shows up after any potentially sensitive article:

"本人只是无意间（并非故意）浏览上述内容，本人并不理解其意义，且本人浏览后将自行洗脑，请组织放心，故本人不因此而负法律责任，请勿跨省或跨国追捕。欲追究具体法律责任者，请联系原作者，谢谢！"

It roughly translates to

"I inadvertently (emphasis on "unintentionally") browsed through the aforementioned content. I in no way understand a word of what has been written and after browsing, voluntarily brainwashed myself, so organizations [and authorities] please rest reassured. I refuse to claim legal responsibility for the content above and decline any inter-province pursuit/arrest. For specific legal accountability, please contact the original author [not me], thank you!"

Complaints against the Great Firewall are many, particularly from expats living in China. But what does censorship entail for Chinese living in China? Beneath the facetiousness of the comment above I sense a fear almost tangible. As 2009 draws to a close, a review of the various censorship measures put into effect this year reveals some alarming implications. To illustrate, I have compiled a list consisting of all the small and major events that I as a forum/blog addict noticed (By the way, Leechblock does work to some extent). Even without access to general statistics, the list should be representative of the current status in Chinese web-sphere.

Government Initiated
January
Thrust to eliminate all vulgarities from internet. Vulgarities include, but are not limited to, porn, pictures showing excessive amount of bare skin, and writings that touch upon homosexuality (Chinese term: BL) and incest. In addition, any website not officially registered with the government are forcibly shut down.

First-hand Account
To avoid being branded a vulgar website, some installed code that indiscriminately replaced any "vulgar" characters with the Chinese word for "mouth" (口). The changes came overnight, so instead of normal content, the readers suddenly saw a junk yard full of squares. Bemused netizens were driven crazy when words like "snow white" (雪白) and "luring" (诱人) become meaningless rectangles, even though the contexts in which they appear are assuredly innocent.

Personally I welcomed this because some websites I go to increasing rely on soft and outright porn to attract traffic.

Link
http://it.people.com.cn/GB/119390/118342/142545/

April
One thread appeared on a small forum that I visit, in which the author mentioned warnings from friends and family about the disease-ridden pork sold in his city (they warned him not to buy or eat pork anymore). Fellow netizens either joined him on condemning the inferior food quality in general or spoke of similar incidents in their cities. Among them, a man said that when his town was hit by avian flu, the local officials suppressed all negative news, punishing anyone that contributed to the leak of unfavorable information because it could potentially impact the local poultry trade. "Such rumor-mongering is greatly frowned upon [by the government]," he concluded.

Five hours later I discovered the thread was deleted. Because the author and my family live in the same city, I took personal interest in the matter. However, he did not respond to the messages that I sent to him.

(Note: I think the thread was deleted because the moderator wanted to avoid possible legal troubles)

May
Hangzhou planned to become the first city in China to require real-name registration for web users.

First-hand Account
Netizens, whether they are Hangzhou-based or not, collectively worried about the implication of this move. Few people are cheered by the prospect of more reliable information (made possible by supposedly holding individuals legally responsible for what they publish online). Rather, most fear that the content they put online will one day come back to haunt them and result in legal repercussions/persecutions. Probably due to the heated and widespread protest, Hangzhou quickly mollified its stance by stating that the real-name registration system only applies to online businesses and organizations.

Link
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/05/hangzhou%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Creal-name-web-registration-system%E2%80%9D-is-%E2%80%9Con-the-shelf%E2%80%9D/

June
Forum T (another one that I go to) received the following warning from the government:

Dissemination and discussion of sensitive or inharmonious topics are prohibited. Especially in relation to politics. Any articles about national leaders, history of CCP and history of PRC will encounter swift deletion (special mention goes to Culture Revolution, Great Leap Forward, and XX Square). Discussion of current events and hot topics (for example writer Han Han) must also cease. Violation will result in permanent banning of account.

(Note: 90% of the people who visit this site are males. Therefore, the direct consequence of this warning is that they promptly switched from politics to discussion of girls and adult videos....)

Also in June
Remember Air France Flight 447 that mysteriously plunged into the ocean? There were six Chinese citizens on board, none of whom survived. Later a thread on Tianya exposed the six individuals (all employees of a steel company) for corruption, taking the expensive and ultimately fatal trip to Brazil at public expense.

The thread first appeared on Tianya and soon went viral. The deletion and ID banning came equally quickly.

Link
http://xusp007.blog.eastday.com/xusp007/art/650400.html?p=1

July
The list of "inappropriate" words grew ever longer in Baidu forums. In the lists are words like "64", "Arabic" (阿拉伯), and "tofu crumbs" (豆腐渣， in reference to the shoddy construction jobs that populate the Chinese infrastructure scene).

Baidu users whose tolerance level for censorship has long been exceeded joined together to create a "hot" words website, dedicated specifically to checking for these special phrases. The site cannot keep up with the growth rate of the banned word list, however. It is never up-to-date.

Link to the Checker:
http://welkin.byethost3.com/test.html

August
Online blog providers began to request real name registration for new users. Some even require that the newcomers provide their personal identification number--equivalent of SSN in US. In the name of promoting mental health for the youths, online RPG games also joined the movement of asking for names and personal IDs. To ensure the accuracy, they even teamed up with the police network to review provided information.

September
At the small forum mentioned previously, a netizen warned us about the danger of being indiscreet on internet. Specifically, one neighbor was furious about the supposed unjust treatment he received from his company and discussed, in a high profile thread, of organizing a protest. Within two days, the man was handcuffed and taken to the police station.

A friend explained away the increasing number of regulations by saying that this year is a special year. I can't help but wonder, is it really a once-in-every-60-years occurrence or is it just the beginning?

Another Type of Censorship?
Those interested in China should know about Baidu, the indigenous and unrivaled search engine in China (unrivaled in terms of number of users). Being a Chinese business, it will obviously comply with the government censorship. But, there is more.

Among some Chinese Baidu is also known as gangster corporation, a nickname that speaks volumes about its business practices (besides blatantly plagiarizing Google). For example, the Search Engine Results Page Rank on Baidu can be bought. It has long been public knowledge that BD has a special hotline catering to businesses that wish to promote themselves. In other words, one can pay money to Baidu for an improved SERP rank. This is not all. Baidu also offers to censor any negative news for a fee. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons that Baidu came under fire was because when San Lu Milk scandal first broke out, netizens could not find any relevant reports via Baidu searching (One cent if you correctly answer the question "why?" I will say though that the rumors as to this reason have never been officially confirmed).

The Shockingly Transparent Swedish Society--Ratsit

Imagine a U.S. website that allows its users to snoop around the profile of any resident--famous and ordinary people equally open to examination. Not only are the home address, phone number, and part of the social security number publicly listed, the website also offers reports of the person's income tax for a nominal fee.

Such a site is hard to imagine. Given the fierce protection of individual privacy rights in the U.S., and fear of identity theft, no website like this can operate legally within the country. Therefore, when I first learned of Ratsit, I was totally shocked!

Ratsit, a popular Swedish website, is yet another manifestation of the openness of this Scandinavian society, where one can easily find out almost everything about a person, including who his spouse is, what companies--however small and unprofitable--he founded, and how much money he makes. This is in addition to the home address and phone numbers.

When it first came online, Ratsit had no restrictions in terms of who can search what, and it serviced 50,000 credit checks per day free of charge. Swedish people had a field day back then, snooping on everyone from their bosses to their relatives-by-marriage...until they realized others are just as blithely searching them. Now, addresses are still free, but salary number cost a few kronas, and the income/tax investigations are no longer anonymous.

Ratsit is only one of the many websites that offers these services. Internet together with the tax offices means that all of the following information are freely accessible by the public:

1. Address and phone number
2. Last taxed income
3. Vehicle ownership and license plate number.
4. Current passport photo.
5. School grades if the person went to a public school or university.

By making all these data available, the idea is to let citizens monitor one another, thereby reducing the occurrence of corruption--if someone only earns $100 per month but goes on cruises everyday and lives in a huge mansion, then something illegal is bound to be going on.

Well, that's the theory at least. And the Swedes seem to have a lot of faith in this system.

Ironically, Sweden does not list any information about criminals (for example, sex offenders) like U.S. sometimes does.

Woman Shuts Off Electricity to Neighbor's Apartment to Win an Online Game

I play a similar (probably the same) game. If this article is an indication of people's determination to win, then no wonder my fields always get raided, even at midnight Chinese time.

---------------------------------------

Zhao Jing and Tang Hong, who are neighbors living on the same floor, share a common hobby -- an online virtual farming game where players can grow, harvest, or steal (fellow players') crops. This past Independence holiday both of them stayed at home. With so much free time, they could concentrate on being "city farmers", and somehow, this led to a fight.

Zhao Jing and Tang Hong live at Hong Ling Apartment Complex in Dalian City. They are good friends and often hang out together. A few weeks ago co-workers invited Zhao Jing to a website that offers an online farming game. She thought it was a fun application, taking great enjoyment in planting and stealing. She in turn taught Tang Hong how to play.

During the long Independence holiday, they planted more expensive crops than usual, because not having to work they could pay more attention to their game status and prevent others from stealing their plants.

On the nights of October 4th and 5th, Zhao Jing's apartment experienced strange power outages whenever her crops are about to be ripe for picking. Though the outages only last about five minutes, this time is enough for a lot of her crops to be stolen. Zhao Jing became quite annoyed. Thus, on October 6th, she stayed by her apartment door, using the peephole to see if anyone is playing tricks on her. What she saw was surprising: Tang Hong walking to the breaker boxes and flipping the switches which controlled the electrical lines to Zhao Jing's home.

Furious, Zhao Jing screamed at her friend: "Even if you want to steal plants, you should not have cut off my electricity!" This started a heated argument. After the fight ended, the two are no longer on speaking terms.

The manager at Hong Ling Apartments decided to mediate. She advised them, "Are you willing to give up so many years of friendship just because of one virtual game? It is not even real houses at the stake here."

Zhao Jing asked Tang Hong, "If you wanted to steal my plants, you should have told me. Why go to the trouble of cutting off my electricity? What if the electronic appliances break?"

Tang Hong replied, she didn't think through the matter. Since Zhao Jing is an old hand at the game, she always stole Tang's plants, but Tang never had the pleasure to return the favor. Tang admit that what she did was stupid, something she thought up at the moment and regretted afterwards. "It won't happen again," Tang promised.

Comments:
1. This sounds so fake. Don't the news editors have better things to do?
2. Tang is creative! My daughter also plays this game, so I should do the same to her friends.
3. This is a blatant advertisement for the game.
4. What game?
5. Are these women retarded?

Source:
http://news.sina.com.cn/s/2009-10-10/100518801032.shtml

LeechBlock Comes to the Rescue of Internet Addicts

I spend so much time on the web each day and loudly complain that I waste too much time. Finally a person recommended LeechBlock. After downloading as well as test driving it, I thought: what a neat idea! I should share with others.


LeechBlock is a Firefox add-on "designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day". It does so by halting the webpage transfers and displaying a figure like the one on the left.

Interested? Please read on.

This small program is easy to add. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476 or google "LeechBlock" for installation file. Once the installation finishes, LeechBlock becomes an accessible option under "Tools". There are three features provided: Lockdown, Options, and Statistics.

First-time users should start with Options, where they can specify which sites they want to block and when to block them (or after certain number of hours of usage). The user can create up to six sets of to-be-blocked sites; each set can contain unlimited number of URLs. What's even better is that the guy who created this piece of software also thoughtfully provided the option of "Prevent access to options" or to "about:config" when the blocking is on.

I believe Options basically contains the bulk of the functionalities. One of the other features, Lockdown, allows the user to block sites specified in Options on a per-use basis. And those curious about their web usage habits can select the Statistics to view how much time is spent on each set of websites.

Finally, before concluding this entry, I have to admit a certain irony in this situation. First, I am blogging and promoting LeechBlock on Blogspot, when blogs are one of the major drains on my time (whether because of reading or writing). Second, while testing Lockdown, I accidentally enabled that option, which initiated the blocking of Blogspot/blogger....then I promptly switched to Internet Explorer, which has no similar add-ons/restrictions, to publish this entry.

Comparison Between Chinese and Western Blogs

Blogspot User Report 9/26/09

I have only been using the Blogger for a few days, but already the experience blows me away, especially when compared to my previous blogging experiences.

My other blogs are all hosted by Chinese internet companies, except for a couple located in MSN Space. Most of them are now abandoned since the updating requires too much work. One is still alive, probably because it is semi-popular and because I have simplified the publishing process to the point where it has become more of a routine than burden.

No matter which Chinese blog service provider is being used, I continue to notice the same issues. So here are some of my itches.

First, none of the Chinese big providers support IFRAME or Javascript. In not doing so, they pretty much castrated the whole creativity process, because customers are limited to the standard templates and layouts. All the customization must be done within the framework the companies offer, which means there is not much customization one can do. By contrast, the Blogger makes the source code of the blog template available--as long as the users have some familiarity with coding, they are free to do whatever. The only limit is set by their own technical expertise.

I don't know whether or not this flexibility is characteristic of all Western companies that offer blog service. If so, then this is more likely a matter of culture differences again. Or differences in company practices.

Second, there seem to be very few, if any, comment filters in Blogspot. On Sina, for example, if I so much as refer to "Sina" in my comment, it will be deleted. If I talk about love for the homeland, it will also be deleted. If my comment unfortunately juxtaposes the character "sun" (Chinese: 日) and "basic" (Chinese: 本), it will be deleted faster than the blink of an eye...apparently, talk about Japan (Chinese: 日本) is not allowed.

What's even more ridiculous is that as of yet, I have not met a company that does not filter out URLs in the comments. Sina does this in its blogs; Baidu follows suit in its forums. Suppose I respond to an article with some relevant link (http://blahblah.com/blahblah.html), within minutes the comments will be sucked into a black hole, never to appear again!

The official reason for this is that the companies do not want rampant advertisements from Chinese who want to promote their side business one way or another. But I suspect there is another reason: they want to hog all the internet traffic and users to themselves. What evidence do I have for this? The obstacles one encounters when one tries to integrate Blog into, for example, an RSS reader that is not by the same company. A smaller Chinese website I sometimes go to carries this to an extreme. On their site, one cannot so much as mention the names of their competitors, because the names (yes there are several competitors, and they are all filtered )will show up as meaningless black squares instead of normal characters.

Third, sensitive topics are not to be discussed or they are severely censored. When the 2008 Olympics was going on, I had a hard time writing my blog in English. It didn't matter what the subject was, even if I were talking about peeling onions, the article would undergo hours of scrutiny before it was published on my blog.

Blogspot is blocked in China, probably because Google does not impose these word and subject filters.

I remember that one of the almost-complaints against Chinasmack is that it never ever discusses politics. Well, one usually acquires the habit of not doing so because of the censorship that is present. I won't talk about politics either--part of the reason is that I am not enthusiastic about the subject; another part is that despite of all the problems, I believe China will become better; what it currently experiences are just growing pains. So what's the use of constant complaints? It becomes old quickly and is not very effective.

Fourth (this is directed towards no one in particular), there are almost no Chinese users on Blogspot now....