Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin of the Balkinization blog tests to see which legal blogs can be accessed in China and which are filtered out by the government’s censorship technology. He finds little consistency in the pattern:
[A] law student who picked me up at the airport explained to me that he had heard of Balkinization in China but that, at least in Chengdu, the site was blocked. When I got to the hotel I checked and sure enough, he was right…
For amusement, I also tried to see if I could reach a number of other prominent law and law professor blogs. I was able to reach Volokh Conspiracy, SCOTUSBlog, How Appealing, Election Law, Instapundit, Mirror of Justice, Concurring Opinions, Becker-Posner, PrawfsBlawg, Feminist Law Professors, Business Associations Blog, Lessig Blog, and Black Prof. I was not able to reach Balkinization, Althouse, U Chicago, Leiter Law School and The Conglomerate.
There is almost no reason to believe that, from the standpoint of the Chinese government, Balkinization is more subversive than Volokh Conspiracy or Becker Posner, or a number of other blogs on this list. It is likely that, as with most Internet filtering schemes, the results are some combination of overblocking technology, arbitrary decisionmaking, and simple luck of the draw.
I’m glad to see that the VC is available in China. However, that may be because the government’s censors haven’t gotten around to reading my highly critical post about Chinese land seizures – a pattern of violation of property rights that makes Kelo seem like a walk in the park by comparison.