Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused
of kowtowing to the Chinese government by
pulling from its China App Store a product
enabling users to circumvent firewalls and
access restricted sites.
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused
of kowtowing to the Chinese government by
pulling from its China App Store a product
enabling users to circumvent firewalls and
access restricted sites.
OpenDoor, a free app that provides users a
randomized IP address to keep their browsing
habits anonymous and shielded from censors,
was removed after the tech giant deemed it
contained "illegal content," the app's lead
developer told CNN.
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused
of kowtowing to the Chinese government by
pulling from its China App Store a product
enabling users to circumvent firewalls and
access restricted sites.
OpenDoor, a free app that provides users a
randomized IP address to keep their browsing
habits anonymous and shielded from censors,
was removed after the tech giant deemed it
contained "illegal content," the app's lead
developer told CNN.
It remains available in App Stores outside China.
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused of
kowtowing to the Chinese government by pulling from its
China App Store a product enabling users to circumvent
firewalls and access restricted sites.
OpenDoor, a free app that provides users a randomized
IP address to keep their browsing habits anonymous and
shielded from censors, was removed after the tech giant
deemed it contained "illegal content," the app's lead
developer told CNN.
It remains available in App Stores outside China.
The developer -- who wished to remain anonymous,
saying that "as the developers of an app that protects
users' privacy and anonymity online, it only makes sense
to do the same ourselves" -- said Apple provided no
notification that the app had been pulled, with the
developers only learning from consumers.
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused of kowtowing to the Chinese
government by pulling from its China App Store a product enabling users to
circumvent firewalls and access restricted sites.
OpenDoor, a free app that provides users a randomized IP address to keep their
browsing habits anonymous and shielded from censors, was removed after the
tech giant deemed it contained "illegal content," the app's lead developer told
CNN.
It remains available in App Stores outside China.
The developer -- who wished to remain anonymous, saying that "as the
developers of an app that protects users' privacy and anonymity online, it only
makes sense to do the same ourselves" -- said Apple provided no notification
that the app had been pulled, with the developers only learning from
consumers.
Complaints about iPhone's price in China
When Apple responded to OpenDoor, they were told only that the app
contained content that was illegal in China. Apple requires developers to
comply with legal requirements in all locations in which the product is made
available. The company did not respond to CNN's request for comment.
OpenDoor, a self-described "small team of programmers spread across the world
collaborating over the Internet," considers it has reasonable grounds to
challenge Apple's move, as its product is a browser app and any content
accessed through it is at the discretion of the user.
But the developer said there were no plans to try to force the tech giant into a
rethink.
How can Apple step in to the Chinese market without strict censorship?
@Mantianyufeihong, Weibo user
Hong Kong (CNN) -- Apple has been accused of kowtowing to the Chinese government by pulling from its China App Store
a product enabling users to circumvent firewalls and access restricted sites.
OpenDoor, a free app that provides users a randomized IP address to keep their browsing habits anonymous and shielded
from censors, was removed after the tech giant deemed it contained "illegal content," the app's lead developer told CNN.
It remains available in App Stores outside China.
The developer -- who wished to remain anonymous, saying that "as the developers of an app that protects users' privacy
and anonymity online, it only makes sense to do the same ourselves" -- said Apple provided no notification that the app
had been pulled, with the developers only learning from consumers.
Complaints about iPhone's price in China
When Apple responded to OpenDoor, they were told only that the app contained content that was illegal in China. Apple
requires developers to comply with legal requirements in all locations in which the product is made available. The company
did not respond to CNN's request for comment.
OpenDoor, a self-described "small team of programmers spread across the world collaborating over the Internet,"
considers it has reasonable grounds to challenge Apple's move, as its product is a browser app and any content accessed
through it is at the discretion of the user.
But the developer said there were no plans to try to force the tech giant into a rethink.
How can Apple step in to the Chinese market without strict censorship?
@Mantianyufeihong, Weibo user
"Unfortunately, we're not aware of any app developer ever (successful) in challenging Apple's decision. In fact, we won't
be surprised if Apple decides to pull our app from all app stores and/or terminates our account in retaliation (to publicity
over the issue)."
The developer said that prior to its removal from Apple's China App Store on July 11, the app was being downloaded about
2,000 times a day in China, accounting for about a third of the app's total downloads.
The Chinese government strictly polices Internet access, censoring web users and blocking access to sites deemed
sensitive.
Chinese social media users were critical of Apple's move, saying the decision diminished the company's moral standing,
and comparing it unfavorably to Google as a champion of Internet freedom.
"The fruit is contaminated," wrote a user on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog under the handle @XieGov. "Where's
your integrity!" asked @Shenzhenlangya.
"The only one who doesn't surrender to evil is my great Google!" wrote @Meihoujiushilaowang.
A smaller group were more understanding of the company's position, however, acknowledging that conforming to China's
censorship policy was the price to pay to do business in the country.
"Apple is determined to do well in China," wrote Sina Weibo user @Mantianyufeihong. "How can Apple step in to the
Chinese market without strict censorship? How can it do business without showing their sincerity (to the government)?"
Other apps previously removed from Apple's App Store in China for falling foul of censorship laws include one providing
access to forbidden books, and a news app for a U.S.-based broadcaster founded by the banned spiritual group Falun
Gong.
Web censorship: the net is closing in
Across the globe governments are monitoring and censoring access to the web. And if we're not careful millions more people could find the internet fractured, fragmented and controlled by the state
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Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 April 2013 11.15 EDT
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Customers at an internet cafe in Guilin, China, where the government places severe restrictions on web access. Photograph: Martin Puddy/ Martin Puddy/Corbis
Every state in the world has its own laws, cultural norms and accepted behaviours. As billions of people come online in the next decade, many will discover a newfound independence that will test these
boundaries. Each state will attempt to regulate the internet, and shape it in its own image.
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
by Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen
Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
The majority of the world's internet users encounter some form of censorship – also known by the euphemism "filtering" – but what that actually looks like depends on a country's policies and its technological
infrastructure. Not all or even most of that filtering is political censorship; progressive countries routinely block a modest number of sites, such as those featuring child pornography.
In some countries, there are several entry points for internet connectivity, and a handful of private telecommunications companies control them (with some regulation). In others, there is only one entry point, a
nationalised internet service provider (ISP), through which all traffic flows. Filtering is relatively easy in the latter case, and more difficult in the former.
When technologists began to notice states regulating and projecting influence online, some warned against a "Balkanisation of the internet", whereby national filtering and other restrictions would transform
what was once the global internet into a connected series of nation-state networks. The web would fracture and fragment, and soon there would be a "Russian internet" and an "American internet" and so on, all
coexisting and sometimes overlapping but, in important ways, separate. Information would largely flow within countries but not across them, due to filtering, language or even just user preference. The process
would at first be barely perceptible to users, but it would fossilise over time and ultimately remake the internet.
It's very likely that some version of the above scenario will occur, but the degree to which it does will greatly be determined by what happens in the next decade with newly connected states – which path they
choose, whom they emulate and work together with.
The first stage of the process, aggressive and distinctive filtering, is under way. China is the world's most active and enthusiastic filterer of information. Entire platforms that are hugely popular elsewhere in the
world – Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter – are blocked by the Chinese government.
On the Chinese internet, you would be unable to find information about politically sensitive topics such as the Tiananmen Square protests, embarrassing information about the Chinese political leadership, the
Tibetan rights movement and the Dalai Lama, or content related to human rights, political reform or sovereignty issues.
To the average Chinese user, this censorship is seamless – without prior knowledge of events or ideas, it would appear that they never existed.
China's leadership doesn't hesitate to defend its policies. In a white paper released in 2010, the government calls the internet "a crystallisation of human wisdom" but states that China's "laws and regulations
clearly prohibit the spread of information that contains contents subverting state power, undermining national unity [or] infringing upon national honour and interests."
The next stage for many states will be collective editing, states forming communities of interest to edit the web together, based on shared values or geopolitics. For larger states, collaborations will legitimise their
filtering efforts and deflect some unwanted attention (the "look, others are doing it too" excuse). For smaller states, alliances along these lines will be a low-cost way to curry favour with bigger players and gain
technical skills that they might lack at home.
Collective editing may start with basic cultural agreements and shared antipathies among states, such as what religious minorities they dislike, how they view other parts of the world or what their cultural
perspective is on historical figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong or Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Larger states are less likely to band together than smaller ones – they already have the technical capabilities – so it will be a fleet of smaller states, pooling their resources, that will find this method useful. If some
member countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of former Soviet states, became fed up with Moscow's insistence on standardising the Russian language across the region,
they could join together to censor all Russian-language content from their national internets and thus limit their citizens' exposure to Russia.
Ideology and religious morals are likely to be the strongest drivers of these collaborations. Imagine if a group of deeply conservative Sunni-majority countries – say, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria and Mauritania –
formed an online alliance and decided to build a "Sunni web". While technically this Sunni web would still be part of the larger internet, it would become the main source of information, news, history and activity
for citizens living in these countries. For years, the development and spread of the internet was highly determined by its English-only language standard, but the continued implementation of internationalised
domain names (IDN), which allow people to use and access domain names written in non-Roman alphabet characters, is changing this. The creation of a Sunni web – indeed, all nationalised internets – becomes
more likely if its users can access a version of the internet in their own language and script.
Within the Sunni web, the internet could be sharia-complicit: e-commerce and e-banking would look different, since no one would be allowed to charge interest; religious police might monitor online speech,
working together with domestic law enforcement to report violations; websites with gay or lesbian content would be uniformly blocked; women's movements online might somehow be curtailed; and ethnic and
religious minority groups might find themselves closely monitored, restricted or even excluded. In this scenario, how possible it would be for a local tech-savvy citizen to circumvent this internet and reach the
global world wide web depends on which country he lived in: Mauritania might not have the desire or capacity to stop him, but Saudi Arabia probably would. If the Mauritanian government became concerned
that its users were bypassing the Sunni web, on the other hand, surely one of its new digital partners could help it build higher fences.
There will be some instances where autocratic and democratic nations edit the web together. Such a collaboration will typically happen when a weaker democracy is in a neighbourhood of stronger autocratic
states that coerce it to make the same geopolitical compromises online that it makes in the physical world.
For example, Mongolia is a young democracy with an open internet, sandwiched between Russia and China – two large countries with their own unique and restrictive internet policies. The former Mongolian
prime minister Sukhbaatar Batbold explained to us that he wants Mongolia, like any country, to have its own identity. This means, he said, it must have good relations with its neighbours to keep them from
meddling in Mongolian affairs.
Authors and publication of this study:
Verdine, B. N., Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Newcombe, N. S., Filipowicz, A. T. and Chang, A. (2013), Deconstructing
Building Blocks: Preschoolers' Spatial Assembly Performance Relates to Early Mathematical Skills. Child Development.
doi: 10.1111/cdev.12165 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12165/abstract
Christian Science Monitor
Building blocks: High-level learning comes with low-tech toys
By James Norton, Contributing blogger / October 1, 2013
Toys and childhood are and always will be linked: you can't grow up without toys. They're your distractions, your
companions, and – as we're increasingly growing to understand – your teachers.
A recent University of Delaware and Temple University study called "Deconstructing Building Blocks: Preschoolers’ Spatial
Assembly Performance Relates to Early Mathematics Skills" digs into how three-year-olds of various socioeconomic levels
play with one particular toy (Lego-like building blocks) to explore whether there's a connection between playing with
blocks and learning math.
In a nutshell: yes. The report notes that: "Spatial skill independently predicted a significant amount of the variability in
concurrent mathematics performance." Kids who were able to build block models that matched a sample model, in short,
seemed to possess counting and measurement skills that paid off in terms of ability to count, add, and subtract. The study
goes further, convincingly arguing a casual relationship: playing with blocks, in short, builds skills.
The study also found that despite the inexpensive nature of blocks, children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) families
miss out on some of their benefits, in part because of a social push toward electronic toys and learning aids:
Blocks may not be a purchasing priority for low SES families when the marketplace is convincing parents that their children
need more expensive electronic toys. The fact that low SES children were already worse at the age of 3 is an unfortunate
harbinger given the relationship between spatial and mathematics skill. And the fact that these are low income children
who are attending Head Start, a service designed to mitigate SES differences in development, only increases the concern
for those not enrolled.
And although the study connected blocks with math, language plays a crucial role, too:
Parent reports of the spatial language they used with their child indicated significant differences between higher- and
lower-SES participants. Lower-SES parents indicated that they used fewer spatial words, particularly words that convey
spatial relationships between two objects (specifically, between, below, above, and near) rather than size (e.g., big or
short).
The implications of the study are numerous, but the most bold and obvious finding my be that despite the dizzying
expansion of the digital world, "meatspace" toys still matter – that gripping something with your hands and feeling how it
interacts with other matter is actually a profoundly powerful way to experience the world and learn from it.
The study also suggests that, as with most things, a disparity of income seems to really matter in terms of how children
fare in the world. As the gap between America's haves and have-nots continues to widen, it's worth considering that
income inequality has consequences not just for health but also for education.