Volleytalk banned from GAMES by CHINESE?

[bigfan]

IOC feels media heat on Internet restrictions

IOC feels media heat on Internet restrictions

BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Saturday faced mounting questions over Internet censorship, days before the Beijing Games, despite earlier pledges that its use would be unfettered.
While China has allowed access to some websites that were blocked earlier in the week, many sites still remain inaccessible to reporters covering the Beijing Olympics that start on Aug. 8. On Friday the IOC had said the issue had been resolved.
"We would like to see the greatest degree of openness," IOC communications director Giselle Davies told reporters.
"There has been no change in the IOC's position. The IOC would like to see open access," she said in response to several questions regarding the IOC's determination to push through what it had promised.
Some questions led with quotes from IOC officials that the Internet would be free.
"When there were problems on Wednesday, the IOC's team... met with the organising committee and asked if they could be resolved," Davies said.
"We can only encourage moving towards that openness and transparency."
That led to the unblocking of several sites, including human rights group Amnesty International, BBC China and Deutsche Welle news sites.
The issue had caused a major stir days before the start of the Aug. 8-24 Olympics with IOC officials insisting there would be no censorship and Beijing Games Organising Committee (BOCOG) saying sensitive sites would remain blocked by the Communist authorities.
Although Internet access will be relatively free for reporters for the period of the Games, it is still tightly controlled for the rest of the country.
Sites related to spiritual movement Falun Gong, and other issues that are frowned on, are regularly blocked. Some U.S. newspaper blogs were also blocked.
BOCOG is responsible for directly running the Beijing Games under the auspices of the IOC, which sets general policy.
Amnesty International has condemned Internet restrictions during the Games as "betraying the Olympic values".
(Editing by Miles Evans)
(For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" at www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at blogs.reuters.com/china) SportRelated information follows Ads by Google

[XAsstCoach]

So....what makes you think VT is banned from the Olympics?

On a side note, VT is slow to load so I'll bet VT is in the filter file of the Great Firewall of China.

Got several other websites I visit that are really slow to load too!

[OverAndUnder]

The ironic thing is that simply talking about the existence of the firewall and mentioning the names issues that are censored (like that country with the saffron-robed leader and worldwide celebrity), is only going to increase the potential censorship of a particular website. That's the really stifling aspect censorship, whether in the form of Chinese internet filtering or USA military operations news restrictions -- the most important thing the censors must try to do is prevent anyone from even talking about the censorship.