Friday, June 08, 2007

Flickr blocked in China?

The photos in Flickr seem to be blocked in China. This is a really strange move. I'm a member of the Beijing Photographers Flickr group and everyone is finding the same thing. We presume it's the GFW as all the photos are viewable via proxy.

If anyone has any information regarding this I'd be very interesting to know what's going on, and why.

(Update: Flickr help has lots of info on this. It seems to be a GFW problem)

On the subject of the GFW, I've stopped using Tor now. It was too slow and by writing a proxy file which redirects to alternative IP addresses automatically, sites like wordpress and blogspot should be accessible. For those without an easy to find alternative IP address I now use the PhProxy add-on for Firefox, which allows a single click to go to any page by Proxy.

6 comments:

Jono said...

Just out of interest - as I will be in Beijing throughout next year - whilst viewing photos is not possible on Flickr, is it still possible to upload them? Most of my blog readers are not based in China and hence providing that they are able to view the pictures, the block isn't a problem although a slight bother.

Unknown said...

Hi Jonathan,

I haven't had any problems with uploading photos, though I don't know if this is because of the Firefox fix. I have heard rumours that people haven't been able to upload, though this doesn't seem to be widespread. Sorry for the lack of real information. I would take a look on the Flickr help and search for 'China'. The help pages are also blocked in China at the moment. All of this is a pain, but there's usually a way around it.

All the best,

J

Jono said...

Hi Jonathan
I have had a look at the Flickr help section and there is plenty of info on there. As I will not have my own computer to begin with in China, I'll probably use Firefox portable on a USB pen and install the extension that is recommended to be able to access Flickr. As you said, at the moment (and always?) there will be a way round the blocks.
Cheers
Jono

Robert said...

I just got back from China after 2-week vacation. Was disappointed to find that pics on flickr were blocked as I was not able to show people my pictures.

Found your poage by goolging "flickr blocked china"....

So Since when are you "a member of the Beijing Photographers Flickr group" ??? and since when are the flickr images blocked ?

Unknown said...

Hi Robert, I've been a member of the group for a couple of months, though I haven't been to a meeting. I really joined to find out what was going on with the block.

It's been in place roughly since I wrote this blog post. A real pain!

lily said...

are u using firefox explore? if u r using firefox then u can download a firefox flickr add-ons, then it will be working. u can download the software here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4286