Barry Levine, newsfactor
The New York-based Art of Peace Foundation has charged the Chinese government with trying to block access to Songs for Tibet, which features music by Sting, Moby, John Mayer, Dave Matthews, Alanis Morissette, Garbage and others, as well as 15 minutes of talking by exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.
Apple Investigating
The group has described China's blocking of Internet sites that it dislikes as "The Great Firewall of China," and it has called the album "a celebration of Tibet and the Dalai Lama's philosophy of peace, nonviolence and compassion." While there is no China-based iTunes store, users in that country had been able to log onto the site in the U.S.
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which has authority over Internet use, has not responded to requests from news media for comments.
Apple said Friday it was looking into why access to the iTunes Store blocking. According to news reports, the popular music site has been unavailable for the past week. Huang Yuna, an Apple spokesperson based in Beijing, said the company has noticed that Chinese users have had problems logging into the site.
The album has already had some success, which the publicity surrounding the blocking could increase. The foundation said it was a top seller in the U.S., Europe and Japan, and has reached the number-four spot on Billboard's chart of top downloaded albums.
The foundation added that the Chinese government is striking back in other ways as well. It said china.org.cn, a portal site managed by the Information Office of the State Council of China, has run articles saying that "angry netizens" have asked that sites selling Songs for Tibet be boycotted.
Sites With the Word 'Tibet'
Songs for Tibet was made available on the iTunes Store shortly before this year's Olympic Games began in Beijing on Aug. 8. It was frequently featured on the site's home page. An Apple message board had hundreds of heated comments between those supporting Tibet and those supporting China, but eventually the comments were taken down.
The foundation has been trying to bring attention to the Chinese government's blocking of any site that it considers controversial, "including sites containing the word Tibet." It said the government has 30,000 Chinese monitoring e-mails and Web sites, and the organization has joined with Amnesty International is trying to open up Net access in China.
The foundation also said that other "dramatic assaults on freedoms of expression" have surrounded the Olympics, including the jailing of 1,000 Tibetan monks "to prevent disruption during the games," the forbidding of any show of support for Tibet at the Olympics, and what it described as a "secret agreement" between the International Olympics Committee limiting the Internet access of Western journalists and blocking sites that monitor human-rights violations.
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