Restriction or Retribution?

Has blatant censorship has reared its head in the Big Lychee?

At the moment, the author of Hong Kong's ugliest (in more ways than one) web site claims it's being blocked by two of the biggest ISPs, owned respectively by tycoon Li Ka-shing and his son, Richard Li, because of numerous barbs he's made against them and other companies they own.

I checked it out; nothing but a white screen comes up on page load, which is a massive improvement. However, it's still accessible by proxy.

Oh, you want to see the site? Sorry, but I refuse to link to it.

Why? Because in the past the owner has trashed not only my site, but many of Hong Kong's bloggers as well. Somehow we're all dull and uninteresting, yet he's the king of satire. One look at his lame jokes would convince you otherwise.

Had he played nicer in the sandbox, he'd be getting a lot more support, but he didn't. Never rub another man's rhubarb.

But I digress.

If it's true that he's been singled out, it would be scandalous. Hong Kong isn't like mainland China; we're supposed to have freedom of speech. As such, local ISPs have no business preventing access to information.

I'd be on his side if indeed he's been censored, but a traceroute tells a different story. I made several runs, including a trace through one of the ISPs in question. Each time, the ping from my computer died at the 17th hop, on a server in Washington, DC. While testing the address I was able to load the page as normal a couple of times without a proxy before it went back to a blank page.

A Hong Kong blogger reported that his traceroute through a different ISP encountered similar ping death, but at a different North American server. He's also had intermittent access to the site.

So are the Lis responsible for the blocks? The answer is important; should it be proven that they ordered them, all eyes will be watching to see what penalties they incur. If left unchallenged, they'd have carte blanche to censor any site at any time, which would be a gargantuan breach of Basic Law.

But at this point a local block seems ridiculous; were that the case, logic dictates the ping would die on a Hong Kong-based server. Not only that, but one would think the Lis have better things to do than focus on one little man's trash-talk. In the absence of damning evidence to the contrary, the whole affair smacks of a persecution complex.

I prefer to think of it as karmic retribution.

Update:

The so-called censorship by two of Hong Kong's biggest ISPs turned out to be nothing more than an opportunistic and desperate ploy to garner attention.

Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, the owner insists he was the victim of some Byzantine conspiracy to silence his free speech rights, going so far as to trumpet the return of his site's functionality a "victory for consumer rights and the free Internet".

Anyone with the temerity to point out the flaws in his argument was either attacked outright or subject to childish behaviour.

At what point does denial of the obvious become delusion? Jumping up and down and waving your arms about while wearing a tinfoil hat doesn't change fundamental facts.

But there's no point debating someone saddled with a one-track mind.

Now that all has returned to normal, he can go back to believing he's the sole champion of free speech in Hong Kong, and the rest of us can go back to ignoring him.

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