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The Thomas Crampton Channel
Herdict: Real-time censorship trackingPosted by Thomas Crampton on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 5:30 PM
The recent YouTube block in China brought attention to the hitherto unknown site Herdict. Site founder Jonathan Zittrain tells Thomas Crampton how he wants Web 2.0 tools to monitor censorship. The video can be found on Daily Motion, Blip TV, Yahoo and Vimeo. |
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Comments on Herdict: Real-time censorship tracking
Doesn't it defeat the purpose to have this video hosted on youtube? I've got a big blank white space on my screen where the video is supposed to be. (I'm in Beijing.) The dailymotion link isn't loading for me either.
I agree, Vance. It's ironic.
Thomas, dailymotion has long been banned within china (possibly due to its "tolerance" on semi-porn), did you not get the memo ?
Thomas:
Youtube remains blocked as is Dailymotion.
Maybe time to start using Vimeo? The VPN-less masses of China also want to watch.
Is Herdict a good idea? Yes. Anything that scrutinises government draconianism is a good idea. As long as it's accurate and monitors all governments.
I added it to Yahoo earlier. Does this work?
If not, I will add to Vimeo shortly.
Great idea!
Been using the toolbar regularly now since youtube starting going down a few weeks ago.
One problem I've had in reporting results (via the toolbar) has been that Herdict itself may become blocked by the GFW.
But I found a workaround when using the toolbar! After typing a URL you wish to report on, you'll get the first dialogue box with the tabs "Inaccessible", "Accessible" & "Cancel".
After that, another "Herdict Site Reporter" dialogue box pops up with "View Site Report" & "OK" tabs.
Clicking on "View Site Report" frequently leads to a "Connection Timeout" for to the Herdict.org site, followed by the site being unavailable for some time afterward.