Two China Search Sites Shut Down

Could this be censorship or simply a glitch? To get a straight answer on that matter, I suppose it helps to ask the right people…

Censorship or maintenance? That’s the question after two Chinese search engines shut down temporarily. The sites, iAsk and Sogou, resumed operation Tuesday evening.

Agence France-Presse and South China Morning Post both reported the closure of the search engines, which are operated by Sina.com and Sohu.com respectively. The shutdown launched speculation that the sites may toughen their censorship methods.

The AFP wire service said some spokespeople at the companies claimed they were only going through upgrades. But the Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, said the stand-alone sites have been given time “to rectify their mistakes” after censorship tests showed they failed to filter certain keywords.

The obtuse nature of the incident reflects concern over China’s stalwart attempts to censor the Internet (see China Tightens Web News Grip, China Shuts Web Sites, Net Censors Active in China).

“We don’t know how to interpret what’s happening without more information,” said Nart Villeneuve of the OpenNet Initiative, a collaboration of researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and the University of Cambridge.

Mr. Villeneuve, director of technical research at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said that upgrades to filtering software or other technologies used to restrict Internet access don’t usually require shutdowns…. Source: Red Herring

[tags]china,keywords,search sites,web news,censors[/tags]