14 DAY TRIAL // In what can be considered a surprising move, a Beijing Judge has sided with Chinese blogger Hu Xingdou in a case against his ISP Beijing Xin Net. The ISP had previously shut down his web site claiming it contained what they rated “illegal” content. The court found that the ISP could not prove that it was indeed illegal content and neither that it had notified Mr Hu before shutting down the site.
Hu Xingdou is a professor of economics and regularly discussed topics like government corruption or police brutality on his site, subjects not very well seen by Chinese officials. In March he had several posts against the reeducation through labor system, a form of imprisonment without a trial in China, at which point Xin Net shut down his site. The IPS claims however that it acted on orders coming from higher up. Mr. Hu proceeded to sue Xin Net on the grounds that he was not informed of the move or asked to remove the content as it was stated in the contract with the IPS. The Daxing court decided in his favor saying that the IPS didn't have proof of the illegal content and that it didn't proceed according to the contract.
Hu commented on the ruling hoping it would be the beginning of a change in Chinese Internet regulation, though he didn't believe it to be a sign for a greater freedom of speech. "This means the Internet will be regulated more through a set of clear rules and less with arbitrary, intransparent decisions. It is a warning sign to the internet surveillance authorities as well," he said. He also wanted to sue the Suzhou Internet police from where the orders were thought to have originated but he is now contemplating whether to go through with it. "We want to file a complaint to a court in Suzhou but [I am] 100 per cent [sure] it will be rejected," he said.
Online censorship in China is a delicate issue and one that is not likely to go away soon. Cases like these pop up from time to time and this is the first time that the courts didn't side with the government. The ruling isn't that important for free speech as whether or not the content itself was illegal wasn't the issue being judged but rather if the ISP acted in accordance to the law. This is a step forward though for better regulating Internet use in China. Currently a number of bodies are monitoring and censoring online use but the laws themselves are somewhat vague and opened to interpretation either by the authorities or by the ISPs.