Saturday, September 1, 2012

Baidu Revises Censorship Notice, Recommends Users Try Alternate Search Terms


These screenshots showing Baidu search results for "Li Wangyang" (李旺阳) show that, at some point between August 21 and September 1, 2012, Baidu changed the censorship notice is provides users when it blocks all results.

The notice now reads:

"Search results may not comply with relevant laws, regulations, and policies, and have not been displayed. It is suggested you try other related terms." (搜索结果可能不符合相关法律法规和政策,未予显示。建议尝试其他相关词。)

Prior to the change, Baidu's notice read:

"Search results may not comply with relevant laws, regulations, and policies, and have not been displayed." (搜索结果可能不符合相关法律法规和政策,未予显示。)

This had been Baidu's notice since December 2008. As this screenshot showing a search for "Opening Ceremony Fake Singing" (开幕式 假唱) from August 2008 shows, prior to that, Baidu's notice read:

Search results may relate to content that does not comply with relevant laws, regulations, and polices, and have not been displayed." (搜索结果可能涉及不符合相关法律法规和政策的内容,未予显示。)

Translation: Sun Daluo's Court Judgment for Sharing Books and Articles

The PRC government sentenced Sun Zhiming (孙志明, who wrote under the alias Sun Daluo (孙大骆)) to one year imprisonment for the crime of "di...