Tech Shout!

Yahoo’s popular Internet photo-sharing Web site Flickr appears to be blocked in China by the government, according to the sources at Yahoo. Reports which conclude that Chinese authorities restricted access to the site mainly due to photos of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre are doing the rounds all over.

Pauline Wong, a spokeswoman for Yahoo Hong Kong said that the company was aware that some pictures on the Web site could not be accessed from inside China, although the site as a whole could be browsed.

Wong said, “Yahoo recently did some testing on different versions including accessibility, then we found out some of the images cannot be surfed (on the Chinese site).”

In 1989, thousands of armed protestors as well as citizens were gunned down in Beijing, China at the end of six weeks of democracy protests. Thus, the 1989 Tiananmen massacre continues to remain taboo in China.

“We are investigating the issue. We know that it’s not a technical issue, there appears to be some kind of restrictions on access,” she continued.

Wang also said that Yahoo did not receive any kind of notification from China. Besides, China’s Ministry of Information could not be reached for comment at the time.

Later, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the US capital of Washington said that the authorities were trying to protect children from ‘racy’ images.

Also, Flickr founder, Stewart Butterfield said that this problem is being regularly monitored.

Butterfield said, “We hope that this is a temporary issue, and we currently believe that it will be. In the meantime, we are investigating our alternatives.”

There was a message posted on Flickr by Stewart Butterfield that says, “Access to our image servers is being blocked for users in much of China. Our technical staff has looked into this and determined this is not a technical issue.” The denial of service has left thousands fuming, and Chinese blogs and bulletin board services have been aflame with searing criticism of the country’s paranoid ‘Net Nanny’.

Just a few days ago, Yahoo-owned Flickr announced the launch of its photo-sharing Web site in several different languages.