Fwd: China closes 17,000 Internet cafes

[Peter Kuhm <peter.kuhm@plus.at>]

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Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 17:20:55 +0100
To: infowar.de@infopeace.de
From: Georg Schoefbaenker <schoefbaenker@aon.at>
Subject: [infowar.de] DFN 21.11.01: China closes 17,000 Internet cafes


Infowar.de, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath/liste.html
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http://dfn.org/focus/china/internetcafes-closed.htm

China closes 17,000 Internet cafes
by Bobson Wong, Digital Freedom Network

(November 21, 2001) Chinese officials have reportedly closed more than
17,000 Internet cafes and ordered thousands more to install Internet
surveillance software as part of a major offensive against unsupervised use
of the Internet.

Shanghai's Wen Hui newspaper said today that Chinese police and commercial
officials have examined over 94,000 Internet cafes in the last seven
months. Last April, the government announced it was imposing a three-month
ban on the opening of new cybercafes. All registered Internet cafes were
required to renew their licenses, and those operating illegally would be
shut down.

Only about half the country's Internet cafes have installed the required
filtering software, according to Wen Hui. About 28,000 cafes have been
ordered to install it. In February, the Ministry of Public Security
announced that it released Internet filtering software called Internet
Police 110 that allegedly can also monitor Web traffic and delete or block
messages from sources deemed offensive.

Only half of China's Internet cafes have had their licenses renewed. 

About 15 percent, or four million, of the country's Internet population
rely on cafes as their main source of access, according to the China
Internet Network Information Center. Most of these users are in the
country's smaller cities.

[..]

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