Of This Site’s Blocking & Unblocking

The Thai cyber patrol can actually be quite responsive and kudos to LoxInfo. Last week I got messages from readers that this site was blocked by their ISP LoxInfo. Instead of absolutelyBangkok.com a familiar frame showed up: “This URL has been blocked by a court order OR it could have an affect on or be against the security of the kingdom, public order or good morals. CS LoxInfo Plc.” This being mainly a lifestyle and cultural blog.

aB.com respects the kingdom’s laws and is well aware that the illegal content they are looking for is related to terrorism, child pornography, defamatory material and material which is an infringement on individuals. Not really stuff you read on aB.com. Well, a loyal reader contacted LoxInfo. Within 24 hours he was reassured there is no inappropriate content on aB.com and they undid the blocking promptly. Here is what had happened:

A reader complained to LoxInfo via email and an exchange of emails ensued which he was kind enough to forward me. It remains unclear what exactly the “inappropriate content” was that led to the blocking of this site, but it is encouraging to see that the concerned parties responded quickly, professionally and efficiently.

The first reply reader T. received from LoxInfo was the following – he had wondered why this inconspicuous site was blocked:

Dear Mr (…)

Thank you for your email and we apologize for the inconvenience.

We have passed the problem to the relevant department for invesitgation.

Once we have received their findings we will contact you immediately.

(…)

The finding was the following, explained in an email received a few hours later:

Dear Mr (…)

Thank you for your email of February 20, 2010.

Please be informed that CS LoxInfo PCL have associated with Thai Hot Line Organization which is the organization to inspect the content on internet network.

Regarding your concern, we have considered that there are inappropriate contents on this website; therefore, we have to block this website accordingly.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

(…)

Meaning, LoxInfo said they had received a report by Thaihotline.org and they were acting accordingly. Thaihotline.org is an online project sponsored by Thailand’s major ISPs to achieve “creative internet usage and safe internet society in Thailand.” Meaning someone had reported illegal content on aB.com. That’s very easy to do. Anyone can. Just fill out a standard form. And they reacted.

So the reader contacted Thaihotline.org directly – again by email – and within hours he got this reply:

Dear Sir,

I’m sorry to know that you are facing an inconvienion situation. We are going to check if we have reported the http://absolutelybangkok.com/ trought ISP or not.

Usually we have officers to check all of the reported website before send notifications to ISP, therefore it’s also a doubt for us that this case has happened.

I’ll see what I can do and respond for you guys soon

Best Regards,

Thaihotline.org

A few hours later a second email by Thaihotline.org:

Dear Sir,

Usually whenever we have gotten the report, we send notification to ISP to consider if there is inappropriate content and should be blocked or not. Therefore, there are some other ISP like Inet or True that doesn’t block the website. However, we are going to coordinate with LoxInfo to reconsider blocking the website since the inappropriate content we notified has been removed from the website, so it’s up to their consideration.

Best Regards,

(…)
Thaihotline.org

I’m not aware of what “inappropriate content we notified has been removed from the website,” but not even an hour later an email by LoxInfo confirmed that the site was unblocked already:

Dear Mr (…)

Regarding your concern, we were informed that http://absolutelybangkok.com/ is unblocked already.

Please try to open again.

(…)

That’s basically it, but it goes without saying that it remains unclear who reported the site for what reason.

Well I have my ideas, but that’s pure speculation without having access to the data.

You all know these are not easy times in Thailand, but it came as more as a surprise that this comparatively tame lifestyle and politics blog was targeted while a ton of sleazy and outright dangerous and malicious stuff out there is most easily accessible by the click of a button.

It actually shattered my trust in the work of the Thai cyber police so much that you think this has become a place where anyone can accuse anyone of anything. This being the “open” “pluralist” Thailand of the Democrats. This Thailand is not the Thailand it used to be, I thought, and me, back then most critical of Thaksin, saw myself longing for the much less censorship and more open society back then.

When out of the blue you’re on par with treason, that’s kind of absurd or not. Anyone could be a next target. No one would be safe in such a society. Even though, as our dear deputy prime minister recently said, the Thai judicial process was the best in the world.

Yes, there is some kind of transparency. I was positively surprised by how quickly the contacted officers responded to the reader’s inquiry. A big thanks to this reader, I owe you.

Point is, I always took especial care.

Much online content is highly subjective. A good intention may easily look bad.

How can you know?

Sphere: Related Content

Comments

27 Responses to “Of This Site’s Blocking & Unblocking”

Richard Barrow on February 23rd, 2010 8:34 pm

Thanks for giving us the backroom story to the blocking of your site. I have found from personal experience that LoxInfo tends to be a bit trigger happy when it comes to blocking sites. And they don’t always do you the courtesy of giving you the redirected “this site is blocked” page as in your case. There have been a number of times they were more sneaky by making page requests time out making us think that the server of that website was experiencing problems. But, then, why does that same website open within a second if you use a VPN. Not that I use one of course as that would be illegal in Thailand. Much the same as it would be illegal to block a website without a court order.

Keep up the good work.

Quality comment? 0 0
Catherine on February 23rd, 2010 9:53 pm

Dan, nice to see that you are back online. Emails were certainly flying back and forth, wondering what was up.

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Talen on February 24th, 2010 3:05 am

Good to hear this was resolved, not to mention quite professionally and fast.

I wonder what actually triggered the blocking … and why they would say you have removed the offending bit when you were never told what it was in the first place.

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Richard Barrow on February 24th, 2010 8:23 am

I would guess it was a certain blog post as that page alone was blocked to start with. Then later the whole site. It reminds me of the time when Loxinfo was blocking the keyword “lèse majesté” which meant any page on the Internet with those words in the title were blocked on the fly.

Quality comment? 0 0
BangkokDan on February 24th, 2010 9:13 am

Well it’s comforting to say the least that other ISPs saw there’s no merit to the “complaint,” meaning, they ignored the notification by Thaihotline.org.

This site reports on yoga, Thai cheese, photography, politics, interviews people and clearly loves Thai people and Thai culture, but is annoyed by Thai politics’ repetitive setbacks and “avoidable” issues.

Bottom line is, the reader got it in writing from Thaihotline.org, this site is clean.

A cop out? There are enough willing martyrs around here sporting all kinds of colors. I’m wearing no shirt.

BangkokDan

Quality comment? 0 0
CJ Hinke on February 24th, 2010 2:12 pm

The frustration, by web owners and web users alike, is evident in this saga. First of all, a website owner doesn’t know he’s blocked until some kind reader tells him. Then he needs to determine how the block is being effected, e.g., a redirect page to w3.mict.go.th, splash-screen, or (the sneaky one) browser error. It then needs to be examined which ISPs are blocking and which govt agency, from MICT to the Royal Thai Police, are effecting the block.

We know a lot about this at FACT, as we were blocked along with 71 red shirt sites during the Songkran rebellion last April. We got some good and unintended intel to help others:

“How to unblock your website in Thailand”:

http://facthai.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/how-to-unblock-your-website-in-thailand/

and

“How Thailand censors the Internet”:

http://facthai.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/how-thailand-censors-the-internet-2/

(Keep these handy!)

The trick, folks, is to be completely fearless and determined in confronting the censors in govt and ISPs. And to never give up – we were fully prepared to stage a nonviolent sit-in at the ICT ministry until we were unblocked.

Always make these efforts completely transparent and public. Get as much media attention in every venue to your blocking as possible.

This year, to pre-empt the censors in advance of the Thaksin court decision, FACT has posted a notice to the censors that we don’t wear any shirts!

http://facthai.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/fact-wears-no-shirt/

The interesting part is that websites are always blocked for obscure reasons. We have certainly thought that certain posts might result in our censorship but it wasn’t for those!

Wear being censored as a badge of honor even if it’s a pain in the ass. If they don’t block us, we win – our information gets out to the public. If they block us, we still win – more people know about us.

(BD: Fair enough, still, this is mainly a cultural and lifestyle site. And as per the correspondence above the blocking was up to the individual ISP, it wasn’t an order or anything. It’s up to the ISP. Someone in that office just felt like it.)

Quality comment? 0 0
jon on February 24th, 2010 3:15 pm

Dan, I wonder if the “inappropriate content” might have been in the comments section.

It is well acknowledged that AB clearly plays to the rule, comments often pick up the ball and run with it, as they say.

Just a thought.

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Catherine on February 24th, 2010 3:31 pm

jon, that’s what I was thinking. Sometimes those commenting can get out of hand. But if that’s the case, why is ThaiVisa still online? TV does delete comments, but I’m always coming across some fairly snarly ones.

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jon on February 24th, 2010 3:36 pm

BTW, CJ Hinke, the first two links you provide appear to be blocked themselves as the destination is a broken link with http://w3.mict.go.th/ showing (I’m on TOT).

(BD: The links load just fine over here, on True.)

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Leading Thai Blog Blocked « Jon Russell: Social Media In Thailand on February 24th, 2010 4:15 pm

[...] unknown to Bangkok Dan, the man behind the blog, as he explains in this post. Last week I got messages from readers that this site was blocked by their ISP LoxInfo. Instead of [...]

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Blockage Of Prominent Blog Highlights Absurd System « Jon Russell: Social Media In Thailand on February 24th, 2010 4:19 pm

[...] unknown to Bangkok Dan, the man behind the blog, as he explains in this post. Last week I got messages from readers that this site was blocked by their ISP LoxInfo. Instead of [...]

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CJ Hinke on February 24th, 2010 4:49 pm

Thanks, jon, for the info. I’m “in process” with MICT and TOT and will be updating all the phone numbers in this post. I use CAT & FACT is not (yet) blocked there.

TOT has told me the problem is now solved.

As I can’t check TOT myself, will you please report if FACT becomes UNblocked there? Thanks.

facthaiATgmailDOTcom

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Robin on February 24th, 2010 5:35 pm

I’m on TOT and just now accessed FACT. So that’s good. Keeping fingers crossed for FACT, aB.com and similar to continue being accessible …

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Jaded on February 24th, 2010 5:52 pm

The government must believe, in my view quite rightly, that in order to support their own fragile position the censorship of blogs is very necessary now. The spin doctors who represent Thailand’s creeping authoritarianism recognize that they need more than their tame apologists at The Nation to rationalize the power elite’s fascist tendencies. As the writers of The Nation and to a slightly lesser extent, the Bangkok Post, debase themselves and their professional standards to support the establishment even their most conservative foreign readers are starting to recognize just how biased the reporting has been. If you invest in Thailand then Thailand blogs are becoming the important day to day information source in rather the same way that financial blogs were the early indicators of the financial crisis over the last few years. The traditional sources have tried to compensate for the impact of the blogs. In the finance community people who don’t have time to get around to the FT will still read FT Alphaville. But heavily censored attempts to do something similar with the Thai press seem pretty worthless with the possible exception of Yoon’s own blog.

A site like aB.com consolidates the information in the most important blogs on an minute by minute basis. You can see similar things working very well in finance. A classic of the genre from a few years ago used to be bankimplode.com but as the information about the parlous state of banks has become common knowledge the site has lost its edge. Make no mistake. Many serious decision makers who probably control most of Thailand’s potential FDI are now reading the Pundit, Prachatai and the daring Political Prisoner’s in Thailand.

This is no longer a fringe activity. The emasculation of the local English language press has made alternative news sources very important. One reason that Not The Nation has less relevance now is the marginal nature of the blogs is disappearing. I love their stuff but I don’t think many people would think the Thai political situation is really a joking matter any more.

I just had an email from a friend who is in charge of the section of one big organization that finances major projects in Thailand. It’s panic stations as they realize how miserably misinformed they have been on the local realities. Finally, even the most information deprived members of the financial elite are waking up to the implications of Thai politics. Last week I heard the most senior members of a foreign bank with a minority stake in a very large Thai institution stridently interrogate their seemingly complacent Thai opposite numbers on the political future of Thailand. Not that they really got any straight answers but simply the desire to ask these question represents a radical departure from previous practices. It seems fair to say that there is now a general recognition that trying to ignore the local situation in the hope that it will just go away is not a very viable policy.

It seems to me that having neutered other news sources to a point where they are no longer effective, bloggers are now on the front line of the censorship war. Bravo!

(BD: Unfortunately what’s going on in the Thai blogosphere remains a black hole for most here.)

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CJ Hinke on February 24th, 2010 6:25 pm

An AB reader has just reported FACT unblocked by TOT in Bangkok. Other reports, please!

Now I have to get to the bottom of why it was blocked in the first place. (Answer next issue!)

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Oneditorial on February 24th, 2010 6:32 pm

In general, I don’t see anything wrong with your blog, except for the frequently derogatory and xenophobic comments about Thailand and Thai people by some psychosomatic, wounded foreigners.

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anon on February 24th, 2010 8:48 pm

So you’re saying that you felt more free while thousands of drug dealers were being summarily executed?

You should be overjoyed at the good intentions of the Abhisit government in protecting Thailand’s beloved institution.

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Absolutely Bangkok blocked…and unblocked! « FACT – Freedom Against Censorship Thailand on February 25th, 2010 2:11 pm

[...] http://absolutelybangkok.com/of-this-sites-blocking-unblocking/ [...]

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BangkokDan on February 25th, 2010 4:03 pm

@anon

Not that I want to dispute that figure anon, but that figure is disputed and you know what, I prefer that chocolate-coated ya ba are not sold in front of kindergartens. Bangkok Pundit has all the background on it.

The situation’s again not too good, don’t ask me why.

BangkokDan

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What Else? No. 1 – Zero Rupees Note Edition « Saiyasombut on February 27th, 2010 6:51 am

[...] found his own site being blocked by a Thai ISP. Thankfully, it is already unblocked and he has the full story how it happened. The gist is, that nearly everyone can report to a service called Thaihotline.org, set up by the [...]

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stefan on March 1st, 2010 3:42 pm

“Absolutely” isn’t fabulous Dan, maybe it’s in the name?:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/28/absolutely-language-word-use

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BangkokDan on March 1st, 2010 7:20 pm

stefan, pretended absolutism may indeed be the real issue at stake … No idea why this tame site came up with such a preposterous name. Am neither a vodka drinker nor an advocate of the absolute. Maybe I should change the header and domain? possiblyBangkok.com?

BangkokDan

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stefan on March 1st, 2010 9:14 pm

Who’s suggesting change Dan, it was just an apt link and the articles header was bait. The CIF comments were better than the article, as often happens. aB ain’t tame by any standards. Rock on, abso…

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crocodilexp on March 8th, 2010 11:31 pm

The spy-on-your-neighbor site sports a link for reporting illGEal content. Very Thai in its remarkable sloppiness. I doubt their vetting process is any better.

Perhaps your site was reported for promoting alcohol to innocent Bangkok youngsters. It has “Absolut” in the name, after all.

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True Blanket Censorship on March 24th, 2010 11:17 am

[...] recently spoke about the arbitrariness of Thai censorship in this post. TrueMove now takes the issue to a new height with a here yet unseen “blanket [...]

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Leosia on March 24th, 2010 3:41 pm

Since MICT spend their considerable free time and taxpayers money surfing the internet looking for links and keywords I would advise protecting your links like this:

http://lix.in/

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NNP on May 29th, 2010 7:27 am

CS LoxInfo seems to be blocking many sites that I need to visit for my work in Thailand. Far to many sites to make it feasible to write to them and give them a list – it would take hours for me to compile. The list would include the main U.N. human rights page.

Quality comment? 0 0

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