China drops Dropbox

Chinese gov is ridiculous. My girlfriend made a one word posting on the Chinese clone of facebook that read "freedom". The post disappeared in minutes and she received a private message warning her that her account may be deleted if she continues making such posts.

One upside is that Chinese people seem to be a little more tech savvy. ie. many of them are forced to learn about proxy servers so they can go around the blocking.

Edit: By Chinese facebook, I meant the Chinese CLONE of facebook. Facebook itself is totally blocked in China.

When I read the comment about how "it was an honor" to be banned by the GFWoC, this poem cam to mind. "When the regime ordered Books with dangerous knowledge To be burned in public and everywhere Oxen were forced to pull, carts with books to the bonfires, one of the persecuted poets discovered one of the best studying the list of the burned disconcerted, that his books were forgotten. He rushed to his desk, flying on wings of rage and wrote a letter to the the authorities. Burn me! he wrote with a quick stroke Burn me! don't do this to me! Do not spare me! Have I not always reported the truth in my books? Yet now you treat me as were I a liar! I command you: Burn me! "

OTOH, this means that Dropbox has obviously gotten big enough to be a threat to the authorities.

It's almost a rite of passage for a successful startup now.

we're bummed about this. it's probably a fruitless exercise, but does anyone have any insight into how to get unblocked?

If all non-Chinese servers rejected any requests from China, would this be counter-productive? Basically if everyone else banded together and said "You can have all of it or none of it, but you can't pick and choose." would this force open China's hand or would it just make things miserable for people that actually care. The number of people that actually care is a very very small percentage; most of my Chinese friends don't care about accessing material from outside China. They're interested in games, chatting, and watching movies.

I live in China as an expat (from the US). It's not really clear to me what the political/social motivations are for blocking Dropbox. Maybe Dropbox is going to merge with Facetwit; that's blocked here too but dropping Dropbox is something new.

As a paying user in China (just paid for my 1-year plan), I'll just continue to use Dropbox over my VPN. Such insane censorship will fall. Freedom will prevail. But I wish the Chinese government gets sued to hell over WTO violations.

It would be a great open source contribution to build similar sharing capabilities into Linux and bsd and watch prc ban operating systems.

It's sad how the Chinese government don't seem to realize that they're impeding their own people's progress and global competitiveness, especially for business that requires innovation and speed, with such moves.

I will throw my 2-cents in. My wife posted the name CCP on the Chinese version of Twitter and received an immediate message. Scared her enough to quit for good. For those who can read mandarin: http://twitpic.com/19h81p

We need to push our representatives to call foul on WTO violations. These are unfair business practices as web-based companies need to be protected too.

It's all about "block and copy" so the west is losing precious resources and hard-earned IP.

Several months ago I came across an issue where it became obvious that a file in my Dropbox public folder was being blocked by the GFWoC (public files are accessed via the dl.dropbox.com domain). I ran some tests using online services that attempt to access your web resources from within the firewall perimeter, and sure enough my links were blocked. I am surprised that the rest of the story is only now developing.

is this kind of activity by the Chinese government really sustainable or will the ever-increasing flow of information win-out? personally, i think it's only a matter of time.

I don't even know why they call it internet. They better start calling it super-huge-intranet or something...

I'm in China now, & this kind of shit has bothered me for a long time. Eventually I will probably end up over here (family). Sure, I have a VPN set up, but that just makes things slower. How on earth am I supposed to run a business without Google, Facebook, Twitter & Dropbox.

Does dropbox have many Chinese customers ? Has it been identified as a 'circumvention device'?

Well, China just got even more amazing. I don't think the Chinese people were very affected by Google leaving. But DropBox is a very useful tool. I'm not sure it has any remarcable competititors that can relevantly fill the gap.

• This is most likely related to viewing Dropbox as a source of information sharing that cannot be controlled. It is a testament to Dropbox's influence, that the government would see DB as a threat. Until DB can promise the government a sufficient amount of control over the content shared, they won't be allowed to be accessed here. (See Google)

• Up until this point, the whole Google fiasco has been settled quite well.

1. Google didn't want to remain in China and be forced to censor content. Check. 2. China didn't want to make an exception. Check. 3. Google still has a presence in China and doesn't have to filter its content. China hasn't lost face and been forced to make an exception. Check.

Even though it's not ideal and the service gets blocked sometimes, I sense that China and Google came to an agreement together that Google's move to Hong Kong would be the most appropriate thing to accomplish the two seemingly contradictory goals. You will note that if China didn't want Google at all, they would've blocked Google in HK from day one. That's not to say that Google will never be blocked, but at this point it's safe to say that the government does not see Google as a big enough threat to warrant being blocked.

• Could DB do something similar? Maybe. It seems that DB would have to reach out to the Chinese government and cooperate to some degree in a sign to show that there is a desire to be in China. Then, like Google, they could choose to pull out to HK, where hopefully there would continue to be this unspoken agreement to let foreign companies be. This might backfire in that the government might just pull the plug on all foreign companies in HK, feeling that the initial overtures were superficial and that there was just a desire to be given a certain level of access in China without having to abide by the other stipulations that other companies have. If DB chose to try and cooperate with the government, this would lead to some form of censorship (either by DB, the government, or by the users themselves) thus defeating some of the benefit of using DB. DB is fundamentally different from the service that Google offers, though, so following Google's path might not work.

• This whole thing makes me sad. Chinese culture is fundamentally different from Western culture. That doesn't justify certain things but you'll have to talk to people (real people…not just read chinaSMACK) to understand better some of the reasons for these policies. The point is, though, that the Chinese government is dealing with a different set of problems with a different set of values than other Western governments. Until there are some changes in the problems or in the values, we'll continue to see different permutations of these kinds of policies. I've also seen a pattern of non-risk taking behavior here. Policies like these discourage people take chances at producing great ideas. Most Chinese comp sci students want to get a good job at a stable company. From what I have seen, and I'm still learning a lot about tech here, the lack of the entrepreneurial spirit is related to a lack in the quality of programming. There isn't the same kind of cut-throat competition that I've seen in the States and this leads to less motivation for learning the best (or better) way to do things. There are obvious exceptions to this, but in general, the motivation for someone to set up their own business is very low. It's too risky.

Is there confirmation besides this one post?

how bout drop.io? are they blocked as well?

OT but yay for dropbox using bbPress. Let me know if you ever need help with it.

Their forums seem to be down, with some kind of Wordpress (hosted, even) error message.

Strange.

There is no evidence they are intentionally blocking the startup. If it was it could be for safety/trust issues as your files are uploaded to a third party, and viruses can be spread easily as files are synced in realtime.

just one thought on this situation: why don't Chinese netizens protest loudly against such policies??

Are the Chinese gov officials nuts?

I hope dropbox will refund the payment to all the users who are now unable to use their service.