China banned access to YouTube again, only this time it did not explained why. Google, the Web search giant that owns YouTube, said it registered a decline in traffic on the video-sharing site in China starting Monday at noon. 

 

Since Monday noon, Chinese Web surfers who wanted to access YouTube have been received wit an error message reading "Network Timeout. The server at youtube.com is taking too long to respond." Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company does not know the reason for yet another ban, but said it would work as quickly as possible to restore the access to YouTube for Chinese residents. 

 

China’s ban o YouTube has already triggered criticism from the Centre for Democracy and Technology, leading advocacy group that promotes constitutional liberties in the digital age. The group said that Beijing failed to live up to international norms. The ban is in contradiction with the rule of law and the right to freedom of expression, said the group’s president Leslie Harris according to BBC News. 

 

"Anytime a country limits or takes down content online, it must be forthright and specific about its actions and do so only in narrowly defined circumstances consistent with international human rights and the rule of law," said Ms Harris.

 

With 298 million internet users, China is the country with the biggest online population in the world. Beijing did not say anything about blocking YouTube.

 

However, this is not the first time China blocks access to YouTube to its residents. The last time it did it was during the Tibet unrest in March 2008. Thousands of protesters were either demanding the independence of Tibet or manifesting their discontent with the growing influence of the Han Chinese in the region. The riot turned violent and, according to official Tibetan sources, about 140 protesters were killed. 

 

During that period, the Beijing government not only banned access to YouTube, but also blocked access to Web sites such as Voice of America, The New York Times, and to television broadcasts such as BBC and CNN which were covering issues such as the Tibet and the Taiwan cases that bothered the Chinese government and its policy. 

 

The usual response one could get from the Chinese officials about the Internet ban issues is that China is not afraid from the Internet, it just manages it according to law in order to “prevent the spread of harmful information," as Qin Gang, spokesman for the China’s Foreign Ministry put it. 

 

However, this ban is something new because it apparently came without being caused by something like political unrest or anti-China stuff posted by bloggers.