Schlock Mercenary: Enemy of the State
Posted June 4th, 2008 by Howard TaylerJust prior to the big EV1 outage this weekend I heard from Cybermaus, a Schlocker from the Netherlands who is currently in China…
I am in China (Shanghai) for the last few days, having problem getting my daily digest of Schlock Mercenary, and suddenly I realize: Schlock is being censored!
I can get most internet OK, but for some I get a ‘cannot find’. And now I pay attention, it is always Schlock and Sinfest. But Sluggy, Nukees, Freefall have no problems. Only if I start a VPN via my home router (Netherlands) and route through there, it works.
…
So Howard, not sure if it is something to be proud of or not, but it seems you are among China’s state enemies. I hope my repeated attempts to open your page doesn’t have the PLA knocking on my door…
I, too, hope the PLA doesn’t knock on your door. And now I’m wondering if a Chinese hacker couldn’t have managed to find a way to remotely take control of a certain datacenter’s electrical room and activate the self-destruct on one of the transformers…
UPDATE: from a look at the comments below (and my email) it appears that if there are Schlock Mercenary filters in place in China, they’re either not very effective, or they’re not being universally applied. If you’re reading this in China somewhere, weigh in! The PLA can’t track you ALL down…
Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized, Politics, Humor
June 4th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
It must be recent, I managed to read Schlock one and a half years ago in Beijing. Maybe they didn’t like the way Ob’Enn name their ships, they really sound like the names in the summer palace.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Just my two cents, but it could even be something as simple as the word Mercenary in the title. Still, one never knows.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
The Chinese group code-named “Titan Rain” is a state-operated and large team of hackers, who have been regular cybervisitors to government and commercial sites here for several years. And doing whatever damage they can, from time to time.
Perhaps you have come to their attention.
They are likely more like UNS special forces than like mercenaries, though this is speculation on my part.
But if nothing else, many of them evidently speak English, and I’ll bet they’re enjoying the strip.
I certainly do.
===|==============/ Level Head
June 4th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I can’t remember anything recent that the PRC could object to, other than the general mercenary theme.
Surely if chinese hackers are taking out thePlanet, it’s because of someone else’s activity.. like a Falun Gong and Dalai Lama coalition with strong ties to Taipei and a background image of that guy with the tanks site.
Although I guess it would be kind of cool to have a whole country inexplicably hate you. It’s quite a resume builder. But frankly, if they did take out the datacenter just to silence you Howard, I’d be worried about them going straight to the source.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Or maybe it was Prandialism. Or maybe they just twigged to the fact that the heroes are soldiers who don’t always work for a government. Or maybe it was Xinchub being a villain, even though we now know he’s just been working for the security of the UNS the whole time.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Oookay. I was replying to Filipe’s comment, but apparently I type too slowly.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Well, perhaps they have been working a backlog. You know, they have just recently gotten to less-than-obvious web comics. Personally, I think the following thread is the mostly likely bother:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20001204.html
BTW, the comic search function is broken.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I’m posting from Shanghai now, using my basic connection through China Telecom, and I can see Schlock just fine… not sure why Cybermaus would be having trouble, really.
I’ve only had trouble reading Girl Genius online, out of a baker’s dozen or so of online comics, and that was a while ago — so there is some history of China blocking web comics, though I suspect they are merely a casualty in some other blockage. (For example, LiveJournal and a lot of other blog-type sites have been blocked for ages, and I suspect they will remain so.)
June 4th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Hi Howard -
I live in Tianjin. (just down the road from Beijing - a small city of 10 million that nobody outside China ever hears about, despite a U.S. President having lived and worked here - before he was President)
I’ve never had any problems connecting to Shlock Mercenary, but for the last 6 years Sinfest has been blocked - I read it via a proxy.
I’d guess ‘mercenary’ is the problem in Shanghai
June 4th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
It could be any number of reasons, but I don’t think you are being blocked. I live in Changsha, Hunan. (ie… the heartland of China about 1 hour from where Mao grew up.) Been here for 5 years and you have never been blocked. And I count my blessings that I can get my Schlock fix. I don’t know what is happening to Cybermaus, but I can see you just fine.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Or…
Wikipedia’s content-facists turn out to be strongly allied with a certain totalitarian govt.’s censorship bureaucracy.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Oh well… I’d say the ISP back in Shanghai just FUBARed their routing tables. As a quick remedy, I’d suggest having some coffee in Starbucks while using their free Wi-Fi - it always worked for me.
Actually, I started reading Schlock like, about 2 yrs ago while living in South China and there were never any problems - always up and running, no blocks.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:48 am
I’m weighing in from Wuxi, which is just an hour or two west of Shanghai by train (depending on whether you are on the fast or the slow train). I have been living in China for 3 and half years in three different cities (the other two in Shandong province a bit to the norht of here). I haven’t had any problems connecting to Shlock.
I’m glad to have no problems getting my Schlock fix daily.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:00 am
I lived in China last year and it always seemed very random what they chose to block and what they didn’t. I could read Schlock, but not Girl Genius. Couldn’t play RavenBlack City (text-based vampire game), either. The Chinese government does NOT, however, block most proxy browsers, which are the most common way of getting around the government censorship. That’s what I did :D
June 5th, 2008 at 2:16 am
OK…. tried posting this once, hasn’t shown up, I don’t know if there’s a time lag. So I’ll try again.
I lived in China last year, and it always seemed really random what the government chose to block and allow. When I was there, I was able to read Schlock, but not Girl Genius, and I wasn’t able to play RavenBlack City (a text-based vampire game). China doesn’t, however, block most proxy servers, which is the best way to get around the government’s censorship. That’s what I did :D
June 5th, 2008 at 3:24 am
I’ve moved to Beijing from Houston 4 years ago and Schlock has never been blocked here. Other websites are on occasion blocked/unavailable but it is usually temporary. It quite possibly is a local problem in Shanghai where a range of address have been blocked and Schlock just happens to be in that range. The photo site Flickr is blocked in that manner-part of Flickr works here, part of it doesn’t.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:38 am
You do realize, of course, that “Schlock Mercenary: Enemy of the State” is too cool a title NOT to use it somehow in the future, right?
June 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
That’s odd… I live in Xinjiang, of all places, and Schlock comes through perfectly. Sinfest, however, is most definitely and completely blocked.
The Chinese system of blocking Internet content varies from place to place and from ISP to ISP. You see, the government releases a list of content that needs to be blocked to every ISP, each of which is responsible for making sure that it gets blocked by whatever means possible. This means that blocking is very uneven and often haphazard. For a while, some years ago, my local ISP in Heilongjiang was blocking any site with a reasonable large image on it, I think in an effort to combat pornography.
As I understand it, were the PRC to send every internet connection through a single server (as they do in, for example, the United Arab Emirates), access would be so painfully slow as to be effectively impossible. So, they decentralize and compromise. Still, there are definitely some sites that cannot be reached from China, even by proxy server, Tor, or whatever other magic exists these days!
June 5th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Living in Beijing I have noticed that sometimes Schlock is filtered and sometimes not. But considering how often random sites go up and down I am more inclined to think that is fat fingers on the person(s) deploying the filters rather than actual conscious filtering of Schlock.
Sinfest seems to be pretty consistently filtered though. :(
June 5th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Yeah, it does make a lot of sense that GG would be blocked if LJ is, as the site prominently promotes the Studio Foglio blog on LJ.
—-
ShadowDragon, FTW.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am
It might be a little optimistic to believe that the PLA can’t track down all of you. Or, indeed, all of anyone. It’s the largest military organization in the world.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am
“Well, perhaps they have been working a backlog. You know, they have just recently gotten to less-than-obvious web comics. Personally, I think the following thread is the mostly likely bother:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20001204.html
BTW, the comic search function is broken. ”
Wow… I read the first several years of the comic altogether in the space of a week or so, but even then, I still didn’t notice how much the art changed. It’s one of those things that you never see happening until you jump backward and it leaps out at you.
Oh, and ummmm, currently unblocked by my employer in Kansas, so that’s something right?
June 5th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Sadly, even our own military have something against you. I sent a link of the comic to a friend in Iraq and it got blocked by the government firewall.
He was able to get it unblocked but it took him nearly a month. He is about half way through the archives last I herd. I am buying him a set of books when the next one comes out.
I just wish there was a way to see his face when he opens his care package this Christmas.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Well, there is, it just involves a passport, and a LOT of sunblock for you… :)
June 5th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I don’t think a passport is enough to get into the green zone. I’m pretty sure you have to have actual business there, or be famous.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Chiming in here as a longtime reader of the comic who’s been living full-time in China for the last 2 years. I’ve never had any trouble reading Schlock here (been in and out of the country for the last 5 years or so), but Sinfest has been blocked for a while. Girl Genius became accessible a few months back, but the Foglios’ more, ah, “mature” offerings are still off-limits. Sinfest’s occasionally NSFW content might have something to do with the Chinese ban on that strip as well.
The general state of the Chinese internet has improved a lot over the last two years - now you can access both Wikipedia and Youtube! Perhaps they figured that the influx of hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users onto Wikipedia would rapidly dilute any anti-state information there. Who knows. For anyone in China who’s interested in more sensitive stuff, there are pretty easy workarounds for most of the Great Firewall - Anonymouse being one of the simplest.
Great comic, and keep up the good work!
June 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
HAhahahahahaha…oh my god thats funny. Dont know if its on purpose or not but that is funny. if it is on purpose ‘grats for that
June 6th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
zippthorne sayeth: “I guess it would be kind of cool to have a whole country inexplicably hate you.”
Which is a bit different than “Mars likes you.” or “Brazil has decided that you are cute.”
June 6th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Mars licks you
June 6th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Bizzybody - Nice Miracle of Science reference.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I’m in Wuxi, China, halfway between Shanghai and Nanjing, and I’m reading Schlock every day with no problems. It loads fairly quick. I don’t think China is blocking my Schlocking.
June 7th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Ah..finally managed to log in.
I’m currently deployed, and it’s amazing how many sites are blocked on gov computers, and host nation networks. talkorigins is banned for being “religion” (????), several comics are banned as pr0n, and “personal pages” and “chat” and “blogs” are banned by the USG. Also, no images on Wiki, just in case.
I’ll be glad to get home, or get my laptop working properly. Wireless is having issues.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am
is it just me or have the comics gotten really boring lately ? there was so much potential in this story line which was never exploited. methinks howard needs a break from comic creation to recharge his creativity.
and the boring thing will kill the comic faster than the PLA ever will.
June 8th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Zurk: We’re still at Credomar. There’s untapped potential, yes, but it’s not so much “untapped” as “yet-to-be tapped.”
It’s possible that what’s happening here is a disconnect between the story I’m telling, and the story you’re telling yourself should come next. Nothin’ I can do about that, I’m afraid. Except, of course, to assure you that my story is the right one. Yours ends badly for everyone. :-)
June 8th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I thought last week was a bit… below the standard we’ve come to expect. That’s what you get for spoiling your fans, I guess.
But then I discovered that it was all one big set-up for yesterday’s comic. A once-a-day webcomic isn’t the best medium for a long set-up like that, but it should work fine across three pages of a book. Mercenary.
Oh, and I was about to question your maths on today’s comic, but you beat me to it.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Ok even if they are government pc enthusiasts(aka geeks, oh come on we know we are geeks :D) they are still geeks! Im betting you that they probably read this strip.