Banned In China

I am not sure what I said, but apparently the Chinese authorities don’t like this blog. I got this from a friend and reader:

Hi Fred,

I’m in Shanghai, and it looks like aVC is now blocked in China (it wasn’t before).

Shame, since I just moved here. Oh well, will use a proxy J But I tought you’d be interested to know

Is there anyway to get "un-banned? I wonder if its the entire blogs.com domain that is being blocked?

There is another url you can get this blog at. It’s avcblogs.com. I never knew that until I saw it on google the other day.

#Politics#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. WayneMulligan

    Hey Fred,I lived there for a bit so I’ll share what I learned about websites “going dark”.My first blog was on xanga.com (I wrote it while I was there) and there were days I couldn’t access it and this is what the local PC cafe manager told me. Since your site isn’t hosted on your own domain, China will sometimes block entire domains/networks if someone else on that domain wrote something negative.Wait a few days and see if you’re back up.-Wayne

  2. Gerald Buckley

    While in Dubai last December I noticed several sites were inaccessible (specifically Twitter). The mobile variant m.twitter.com was still accessible by iphone and pc. Was in Bahrain last Feb and everything was wide open. I think Wayne’s correct… “wait and see what happens” is probably the best method. Unless you have access to theFull feed blogs will always make it through by at least one of the various hosted feed readers (Google, FeedBurner, etc). No way “they” can plug all the holes. Humans will always find a way to get information around, over or through artificial barriers. Babies turn up the volume, patriots wave one if by land & two if by sea, netizens find holes, wriggle through and route around the damage.

  3. Dave Hyndman

    Is “banned in China” kinda like “big in Japan”?

  4. charlie crystle

    Maybe you can suck up to the Chinese government like Yahoo and Microsoft do.

  5. jackson

    I think it’s your association with me. I’ve been hard on ’em of late. What a buch of pussies.

    1. fredwilson

      Yeah I was thinking it was that line about being the top polluter that did it 🙂

  6. GregCannon

    For blogs, “banned in China” brings the same cachet that books/movies used to get from the “banned in Boston” tag.

  7. Steven Kane

    C’mon old friend — where’s the outrage?!?My gosh, the blogosphere gets into an uproar over the slightest whiff of civil liberties infringment here in the USA and in Europe (where dissent is explicitly tolerated uner law) but when the Chinese or an Islamic regime crush dissent and protest and even intellectual dialogue in brutal outrageous wholesale open oppressive moves, the blogosphere is indifrerent, or worse, cowardly and pandering and sycophantish.Why?WHY?

    1. fredwilson

      I am outraged. But I didn’t want it to come across the censorship of my blog was the issue. Their entire regime is the issue. I am boycotting the olympics for sure

  8. Tangos

    Actually, I don’t think it is about your blog, it is because blogs.com is blocked.

    1. fredwilson

      I thought so. They banned typepad

  9. Brian

    Usually they block by web server IP address, so if your hosting provider is splitting your IP between your blog and something bad, that might do it.

  10. Brian

    Usually they block by web server IP address, so if your hosting provider is splitting your IP between your blog and something bad, that might do it.

  11. arikan

    Domain and IP bans happened a lot in Turkey recently (WordPress.com, YouTube.com and many other smaller services). As we know, if there are multiple ISPs and backbones in the country, not every one’s access is blocked. Also savvy internet users can figure out things through OpenDNS and some other tricks on their computers. But at the end, this is a shame. I think blocking people’s internet access to certain places is a wild human rights violation, if you especially consider the read/write nature of the web.HOWTO bypass Internet Censorshiphttp://www.zensur.freerk.com/

  12. Leo Chen

    I ran into a similar situation, a friend of mine in Shanghai messaged me and said he can’t get to my blog. Apparently China blocks all WordPress.com, Blogger & Typepad blogs. I have since switched domains and am hosting my own blog – no longer banned in China. I did have a few old posts on my previous WordPress.com blog about censorship in China which I deleted from my new domain. Didn’t want to risk getting banned – it is REALLY ridiculous & annoying…