imdb

is IMDB (www.imdb.com) working for everyone else? It hasn't worked for me the past few days and I'm wondering if it got blocked for some reason. I'm pissed as it's my main searching ground for finding movies to watch.

works here, in Zhaoqing.

Lin
Zhaoqing, Guangdong


 

It's out for me too - Zhejiang.

Just did a quick bit of research and it has definitely been blocked over most of China - rumor is some movie about T***t was/is appearing on the front page so it got the chop.

Not available in Changsha

Gone here too, now.

Lin
Zhaoqing, Guangdong.

 

Yep--out for me too (in Zhejiang).

Wow--those censors don't miss a beat, do they?

I've been trying for about 3 days here in Dongguan- nada.

I looked.  IMDB has a forum.  One, erm, hot button question was asked about Chinese culture in general.  In the 8 or 9 follow ups, one or two specific hot button topics were related as if western media influenced opinion where truth.  A reference to some recent mass-hectare was made.  But the first post in that thread was made over two months ago.  And I didn't find anything else making mention of, erm, hot button topics.  So, my take is the Chinese government is, rightly and properly, shielding its populace from awareness of, *choke*, the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.  It is called The Squeakquel.  I rest my case.

Squeakquel? yah sounds like textbook capitalist roader propoganda, well played china.

 http://tr.im/JNPK

Ah.

Yeah.  Has anyone seen that film?  Even the trailer is distressing.  Actually, very distressing.  And surely unacceptable to many Chinese.

Try it today!

http://www.imdb.com/

First time it has ever worked for me without re-routing.

Thanks.

Interesting, let's see how long it lasts. I don't know why it was blocked in the first place. Perhaps people giving bad scores to Chinese films.

I was using IMDB pretty regular and its blocking seemed to coincide with its availability of movies and videos; it went from only info about movies, to also a movie site where you could watch entire feature films for free. If you look at how other video sites have all been blocked in recent years in China (yutube, vimeo, break, etc) and also the political developments of the use of social media with alphabet soup influence, I think this is the underlying reason why the firewall blocked it.

Also, look at how the internet archive got blocked for a while and when it came back its url structure (from my casual use, I may have missed existing trends) included www.archive.org/blah/DETAIL/url where you can not access these "detail" archive links that have videos, but you can access most other places on the site.

I think it's all about China wanting to protect itself from social media and related content that it cannot control. Another example would be a while back around the beginning of the Arab Spring and a certain message showed up on many Chinese discussion boards with a certain flower and telling them to go to McDonald's and have a meeting, Huntsman showed up by coincidence, blah, blah.

It's been so long since I used IMDB I can't remember where to go to watch films.

I think it's that kind of stuff that is making them crack down on any video sites, but it's great to have imdb back 'cause I use it all the time.