14 DAY TRIAL // Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights Defenders made a special survey concerning the Internet censorship in China, a country which is doubted to be the most restrictive one when it comes to online content. According to the two organizations, the Chinese government is the only country which hired thousands of experts who monitor the local users' online activity in order to detect malicious actions and stop them as they occur. This caused an impressive offensive of bloggers and website owners after some of them were sent to the court due to prohibited activities on the Internet.
"This system of censorship is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom. With less than a year to go before the Beijing Olympics, there is an urgent need for the government to stop blocking thousands of websites, censoring online news and imprisoning Internet activists," the two organizations stated according to the official page of Reporters Without Borders.
It's a well-known fact that China has always been one of the countries which preferred to control its online consumers and took all sorts of weird decisions to reach its goal. For example, it recently implemented some virtual cops to patrol the top country's portal that are supposed to monitor visitors' activity and inform them about the prohibited activities which might be started.
"As MSN's instant messaging service is run by a foreign company, the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau prefers not to use it out of concern that its orders could be revealed. So the bureau asked all the websites in August 2006 to begin using RTX (Real Time eXchange), an instant messaging service for companies that is operated by the Chinese company Tengxun," it is mentioned in the report.
If you want to read the entire report published by Reporters Without Borders, you can take it from here (PDF format).