Totally quotable: from presentation today on IP tweeted by Peter Dernbach: Total page views to top 5 pirate sites in Taiwan are 5 times more than total page views to top 5 legitimate sites.
- DON'T MISS: The End of China-Taiwan Rapprochement Tourism. Solid and informed analysis, as always, from the awesome Dr. Ian Rowen.
- KMT ASSETS LAW: Party Asset Law Approved. I will comment on this later this week. J Michael Cole argues it can be a catalyst for KMT reform. LOLz. Hung wails and gnashes her KMT teeth. Could be difficult to get assets (who could have predicted that?) says one lawyer. KMT wants constitutional interpretation on party assets law. KMT news organ also reports on Hung's overwrought response. New Bloom comments on it: Time to settle the KMT assets issue
- Taiwan fishing boats reach Itu Aba to protest the recent SCS ruling, but they were not permitted to land, but simply to set foot on the pier to get supplies (the pier is on the reef off the island, not on the island itself. Because of this, supplies have to be schlepped by small boats from the pier to the island).
- DON'T MISS: Solidarity with TISR poll on the South China Sea. Tsai's policy might not be good from foreign policy standpoint, but it is aligned with public view
- Why is the economy stalling? Because the Ma Administration slashed public investment
- Beijing's new strategies towards Taiwan
- Vietnamese in Kinmen stranded, fear gangsters
- How bad is Taiwan's economy. Not that bad.
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!
What do you think of this link: http://qz.com/737219/this-tiny-islet-in-the-south-china-sea-is-now-officially-a-rock-and-the-implications-are-global/
ReplyDeleteIt seems that other countries like the US and Japan have small little "rocks" that are even smaller than Itu Aba but are generating EEZ's. This might set a precedence where these rocks will be challenged.
How US fight air war with China
ReplyDeletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-f-35-in-a-war-against-china-2016-7
I guess all of Taiwan's air fields are ready for US fighter jets?
How much does the govt. spend keeping this handful of people on Ita Abu a year in order to maintain the illusion of it being inhabitable? I'm really curious to know what other programs are going short of funds for this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ccd94b46-4db5-11e6-88c5-db83e98a590a.html
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming you've seen the Taiwan bit three quarters down?
Trump might recognize Crimea as Russian and lift sanctions on Moscow imposed after its 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/trump-crimea/493280/#article-comments
I wonder if Tsai has any plan for the situation when Trump sell Taiwan to China for a price.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/responding-to-the-interview-with-taiwans-new-president/2016/07/28/0504a056-543c-11e6-b652-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely disgusted with the KMT. The bottom author Eric Huang who apparently is the head of international affairs for the KMT writes disparaging comments about Taiwan in a foreign newspaper. This reminds me during the Ma administration, whenever foreign newspapers wrote critical comments about Ma Ying-jeou we always had quick responses to newspapers by TECRO officials from all over the world. How childish and thin-skinned! You never see American Embassy officials or British Embassy officials writing to newspapers defending American or British policies. Let newspapers write whatever they want and let the people themselves judge. And now that the KMT do not control the consulates and TECRO's abroad, they resort to the same childish tactics but with KMT mouthpieces. KMT are just as thin-skinned as the Chinese who can't bear to hear even a hint that Taiwan might conceivably be independent.
Looking at Dernbach's Powerpoint slide, I note an Australian flag.
ReplyDelete'Injunctive relief' sounds like the kind of service that might be available behind mysterious and alluring doorways down dark alleyways.
However, if it means intervention by lawmakers/ISPs to block copyrighted IP available from certain websites, then it is a fairly new thing here, and seen as quite ineffectual.
There is widespread use in Australia of VPNs for accessing copyrighted material (downloading movies etc.), and also for bypassing so called 'geoblocking' to enable paid subscription to services, such as the overseas catalogues of Netflix, etc.
Before Netflix launched here, there were already allegedly more than 200,000 subscribers, accessing the US and worldwide catalogue.
As far as I can see, the injunctive relief has had very little effect on Australians' internet activities.
IP mongering is absolutely disgusting here, where the so called legitimate sites charge 131 NT for "The black bearded barbarian; the life of George Leslie Mackay of Formosa (1912)" which is well within public domain, scanned by npo such as project Gutenberg even. IP is just a game of the powers that be to control, to organize the world's information. What does Geoblocking do? It blocks information to certain regions of the world, especially the underprivileged places in the global south. Why? Money? No. Power. For a Westerner to patent GPS gaming, an idea that's been around way earlier, in 2011, it's called entrepreneurship, but for a Taiwanese to patent almost exact same principle in 2008, it's called greed, rogue, troll.
ReplyDeleteI agree that geoblocking is a relic of the past – however there are fairly simple ways around it.
ReplyDeletePerhaps check out a service such as Unblock-Us at https://www.unblock-us.com
It's a VPN that will make your computer or router 'appear' to be somewhere else, (e.g. the UK or USA). So you can sign up for paid services in those countries, or take advantage of free ones such as the BBC or PBS. You may need to do a bit of fibbing about your home address though.
I thought Taiwan had enough problem then I read about this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/scientology-in-taiwan/493493/
Can we get a break?