Its regional (Score 5, Interesting)

Before I launch into opinion, let me first state the facts jack. China's Internet censorship (the great firewall part of golden shield) is regionally based. Similar to the US radio having locality based censorship. In February for example, the university I teach at(Inner Mongolia Uni of Tech/science), could not access wikipedia- but could access flickr. In Beijing, it was the opposite- its locality based and gladder for firefox kills it anyway. That said, I still have full internet. Yesterday the DNS kept crashing out, but internet is rolling along fine and dandy...or as close as we get here at 100kbs on a pppoe. All sites are behaving normally. Now opinion. While I am a firm believer and activist for Freedom of Information, in this case I believe shutting down a bit of commuications may be needed. Many people in China are a bit on edge currently, with the olympics, the protests, the whole t1b3t thing- and the earthquake moved them right to the edge. Rumours are circulating around the country here about radiation dangers, the government not acting, the goverment causing the earthquake like some kind of James Bond Villian...lots of BS. The end result of this is that people are too panicked and nervous to help out with reconstruction or aiding survivors- not good. The limiting of information until the area is secure and survivors helped is very important at this time.