The information and communications technologies (ICT), including the Internet, in China have been growing rapidly because of strong support from the government during the past 15 years.13 The Internet infrastructure in China has experienced extraordinary growth in terms of scale, technology, and quality.14
12 For example, When President Barack Obama visited China in 2009, he said:" I am a big supporters of non-censorship...in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet--or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think [it] should be encouraged." See Robert Mackey, Obama Walks China's
"Great Firewall," N.Y.TIMES, Nov. 16, 2009, at http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/obama-on-chinas-great-firewall/. For other criticisms on Internet filtering, see e.g. Kevin Werbach, The Centripetal Network: How the Internet Holds Itself Together, and the Forces Tearing It Apart, 42 U.C.DAVIS L.REV. 343, 367 (2008).
In the meantime, the Chinese government has endeavored to control the information flowing on the Internet via various approaches, such as regulations and technologies.
13 See e.g. Wacker, supra note 11, at 58.
14 See e.g. Wei Wu, Great Leap or Long March: Some Policy Issues of the Development of Internet in China, 20 TELECOMM.POL’Y 699, 699-701 (1996); Jonathan J.H. Zhu & Enhai Wang, Diffusion, Use, and Effect of the Internet in China, 48 COMM.ACM 49, 50-52 (2005).
5
“Filter” originally means blocking data from entering or leaving a network by programming the router.15 The aim was to provide Internet service providers (ISPs) with means to control viruses, worms, and spam.16 The same technology has been employed by the government to filter online information,17 and that became the “Internet filtering,”
which represents the technical approach to prevent Internet users from accessing specific Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses.18 The reason to block online information from citizens is that such information is deemed too sensitive by the government.19 A great number of countries have developed their own Internet filtering systems because of political, moral, religious, or security concerns.20 Traditionally, there are two types of Internet filtering technique: the inclusion filter and the exclusion filter.21 The inclusion filter typically uses a “white list” to include websites that are permitted for browsing, whereas the exclusion filter employs a “blacklist,” which specifies websites that users are prohibited from visiting.22 Countries blocking websites usually request Internet service providers (ISPs) to implement the task because it is the cheapest way to filter online information.23
The Chinese government has adopted the exclusion filter by requesting carriers, such as China Telecom, to install Cisco’s apparatus, which can drop information from at least three hundred IP addresses.24
15 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH,RACE TO THE BOTTOM:CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN CHINESE INTERNET CENSORSHIP 9 (2006)
The Chinese government provided the carriers with a list of forbidden websites and their addresses, and ordered these carriers to block the sites
16 Id.
17 Id.
18 Marc D. Nawyn, Code Red: Responding to the Moral Hazards Facing U.S. Information Technology Companies in China, 2007 COLUM.BUS.L.REV. 505, 510 (2007).
19 Jonathan Zittrain & John Palfrey, Introduction, in ACCESS DENIED: THE PRACTICE AND POLICY OF GLOBAL INTERNET FILTERING 1, 1 (Ronald Deibert et al. ed., 2008)
20 Id. at 3; Faris & Villeneuve, supra note 5, at 6, 9.
21 Nawyn, supra note 18, at 510.
22 Id; Ling, supra note 7, at 184.
23 Faris & Villeneuve, supra note 5, at 13-14.
24 Id. JACK GOLDSMITH &TIM WU,WHO CONTROLS THE INTERNET:ILLUSIONS OF A BORDERLESS WORLD 93 (2006).
6
through Cisco’s equipment. 25 These sites include Amnesty International’s (www.amnesty.org), Reporters without Borders (www.rsf.org), the BBC (news.bbc.co.uk),26 the Economist (http://www.economist.com), and the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com)27
From the government’s perspective, because new websites continuously emerge, the inclusion filter usually includes too few websites, while the exclusion may exclude too few.
. In this way, certain information has been dropped and can never reach the domestic end users.
28 In order to avoid such over-blocking or under-blocking, governments have started to the “content-analysis” technique as a new tool for Internet filtering.29 Content-analysis approach prevents users from accessing any website or URL path containing certain keywords designated by the government.30 One advantage for the government to adopt the content-analysis approach is that it does not have to incessantly update the white list or blacklist. In China, keywords for content analysis may include Tibetan Independence, Taiwan Independence, human right, Falun Gong, and etc.31
The Chinese government has built a complicated technical system into the Internet to filter online information since the digital network was built.32 In 2002, Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Eldman produced a list of foreign websites blocked in China through the help of an end user there.33
25 GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note
The Chinese government blocked them or has blocked them because they were deemed as a threat to the Chinese state. Of course, China is not the only country that filters away politically sensitive content. Other countries with similar motives include Bahrain, Ethiopia, Libya, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand,
24, at 93-94.
26 ANDREW MURRAY,INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW 74 (2010); Farrell, supra note 3, at 588.
27 Deibert, supra note 2, at 147.
28 Nawyn, supra note 18, at 510-11.
29 Id. at 511.
30 Id. at 511; Faris & Villeneuve, supra note 5, at 15; Ling, supra note 7, at 184; Susan L. Shirk, Changing Media, Changing China, in CHANGING MEDIA,CHANGING CHINA 1, 14 (Susan L. Shirk ed., 2011)
31 See e.g. GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note 24, at 96; Stevenson, supra note 2, at 541.
32 Nawyn, supra note 18, at 512; Stevenson, supra note 2, at 540.
33 Jonathan Zittrain & Benjamin Edelman, Internet Filtering in China, 7 IEEEINTERNET COMPUTING 70 (2003).
7
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Syria, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam34. For different purposes such as blocking pornography, some democratic countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, and New Zealand, filter online content as well.35
But how could the Chinese government control the information flow into the country? It actually built a great firewall via the help of the U.S. hardware vendor Cisco,36 which has made the whole country’s Internet into a huge intranet.37 It is estimated that the company earns USD$500 million each year in China.38 Other companies that provide filtering software to China include Sun Microsystems, Websense, and Bay Networksboth, all of which are U.S. companies as well.39 The filter has been constructed on different layers of China’s Internet, but primarily at the backbone, which is the physical infrastructure that links the domestic Internet to global networks.40
34 Bambauer, at 382; Faris & Villeneuve, supra note 5, at 9-10; Shaojung Sharon Wang & Junhao Hong, Discourse Behind the Forbidden Realm: Internet Surveillance and Its Implications on China’s Blogosphere, 27 TELEMATICS &INFORMATICS 67, 74 (2010).
35 Bambauer, at 382; Derek E. Bambauer, Filtering in OZ: Australia’s Foray into Internet Censorship, 31 U.PA.J.INT’L L. 493, 516-17 (2009).
36 GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note 24, at 93; Stevenson, supra note 2, at 541-42.
37 Deibert, supra note 2, at 147; Stevenson, supra note 2, at 540-41.
38 Stevenson, supra note 2, at 542.
39 Id; Deibert, supra note 2, at 148; see also Farrell, supra note 3, at 587 (“American engineers aided the Chinese in censorship by developing special routers, integrators, and a special firewall boxes”); Wacker, supra note 11, at 69 (“[i]t is ironic, therefore, that while the Western media frequently criticize China for obstructing the development of the Internet, it is Western firms that are supplying the technological means which enable China to carry out surveillance.”) Some literature focuses on the legality of those U.S.
companies’ support of the Chinese filtering regime, especially whether they violate the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006, see e.g. Ling, supra note 7, at 192-94; Nawyn, supra note 18, at 544-554; Stevenson, supra note 2, at 545-558. In the meantime, human right supporters also sent out appeals criticizing Cisco's involvement with the Chinese filtering regime. See e.g. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tell Cisco: Stop Helping China Abuse Human Rights!, at
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=504 (last visited Aug. 10, 2011).
40 Farrell, supra note 3, at 587; Nawyn, supra note 18, at 511-12.
8
The metaphor most frequently used in describing the Internet filtering in China is
“the great firewall,”41 which is obviously the combination of “the Great Wall” and
“firewall.” The Great Wall was originally built to keep foreign barbarians out of ancient China while the great firewall denotes China’s attempt to block undesirable content from its netizens. Different from the firewall established to protect enterprises’ information security, the Chinese great firewall is set around the whole country.42
The country’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) is authorized to build the network connected to the global Internet, and, thus, has the opportunity to ensure government control over the network.
43 Because online information enters into the country through a limited number of points, the Chinese government is able to control the information via controlling these points.44 Government control over information flow is via several Internet access providers (IAPs), “each of which has at least one connection to a foreign Internet backbone.”45 IAPs peer at three Internet exchange points (IXPs) run by the Chinese government, and these IAPs “grant regional Internet service providers (ISPs) access to backbone connections.”46
41 See e.g. Ling, supra note
Therefore, individual Chinese end users purchase Internet access from several thousand ISPs, and those ISPs are in effect retail sellers of Internet access wholesale of the few IAPs. Different from the decentralized Internet architecture in most countries around the world, most ISPs in China need to connect to the global network through one of the four state-controlled companies operating the IAPs
7, at 177, 180, 184; David Pierson, Brief Web access in China as Great Firewall Falls, WASH.POST, A09, Jan. 5, 2010, at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010403599.html; Qiang, supra note 6, at 206.
42 GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note 24, at 92
43 Farrell, supra note 3, at 585; HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, at 9.
44 YOCHAI BENKLER,THE WEALTH OF NETWORKS:HOW SOCIAL PRODUCTION TRANSFORMS MARKETS AND FREEDOM 267 (2006); GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note 24, at 93.
45 OpenNet Initiative, Internet Filtering in China: 2006-2007, http://opennet.net/studies/china2007 (last visited Mar. 26, 2010); see also Deibert, supra note 2, at 147 (“[s]uch funneled access provides the most important outer layer of control and basis for “firewall” technologies to be implemented that ostensibly block controversial or politically undesirable Web sites”); Faris & Villeneuve, supra note 5, at 14
(“[China’s] blocking is done at the International gateway level affecting all users of the network regardless of ISP.”)
46 GOLDSMITH &WU, supra note 24, at 93.
9
and IXPs.47
In other words, the Chinese government had architecture the national’s Internet into two layers. The lower layer is the network where ISPs provide Internet access to consumers, while the upper layer is another set of connections where the lower layer can connect to the network outside the country.
By effective managing the IAPs and IXPs, the Chinese government is able to control information flowing from abroad.
48 It is reported that in the upper layer there are nine gateways connecting the nation’s Internet to the international Internet.49 By controlling a number of key connection points in the upper layer, the government is capable of controlling online information flowing from abroad. Therefore, commentators have described the country’s Internet as a huge Intranet.50