China seems to continue with its censorship practices, even
when it comes to Apple. Chinese customers of Apple’s iTunes Store reported that
they were unable to download songs this week.
The most probable explanation for that is a pro-Tibetan
album featured on the online music store, which includes the contributions of
artists such as Sting, Moby, Alanis Morisette, and many others, as well as a speech
of the Dalai Lama.
The album was released by the Art of Peace Foundation and it
is entitled "Songs for Tibet".
It was released on iTunes on Sunday and one day later, iTunes users began
complaining on the official iTunes support forum that they were unable to login
and purchase music from the Apple download service.
According to an Associated Press reports, they were greeted
with an error message that said: "iTunes could not connect to the iTunes
store. An unknown error occurred.(-4) Make sure your network connection is
active and try again."
The album is meant to draw attention on the reprovable actions
of the Chinese government against Tibetans, an attitude that almost stood in
the way of the Olympic Games, an attitude that Chinese people must submit to,
an attitude that the rest of the world disapproves of.
The above mentioned album appears to have had quite a
success following its launch on August 5, which of course displeased the
Chinese authorities.
The attitude of the Chinese government is not the first of
its kind, and it shows once more that the only way they know how to make
problems go away is by pretending they don’t exist! But Tibet exists, Tibetans’
problems are real, and the Chinese censorship can only harm its relationship
with the outside world.
Apple declined to give any details on the situation, but
they did say they were aware of it and that an investigation is under way.
"We are aware of the log-on problems but we have no
comment at the moment," the company told the Associated Press.
The Chinese
authorities also refused to comment on the situation, so there is still no
official confirmation of the reason why users all over China are unable to
access the iTunes Store.
China is known to be a very restrictive country, especially
when it comes to the Internet, which in their vision seems to be “the source of
all evil.” Censorship goes as far as prohibiting access to YouTube or banning
other Web sites from showing any news related to the Tibetan protests and even
closing Internet cafés.
China
managed to surpass the United
States in terms of Internet users earlier this year, when its Internet
population reached 221 million users.
