“Cultural Threat!”

The Chinese government, in a not-unusual display of authoritarian petulance, has banned the download of over a hundred music titles from popular online music sites in China.

The government claims that the tracks, from a range of American, European and Asian artists including Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and the Backstreet Boys, were not submitted for proper review to authorities in the Chinese Ministry of Culture, and so, recent hits such as Gaga’s ‘Judas’ and Perry’s  ‘Last Friday Night’, along with not so recent ones like the Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way”, have been blocked, all in the name of “national cultural security”.

As horrifying a thought as not being able to grab the latest Gaga online might be to some of us, this is no new thing in China where the government maintains vice-like control over the Information and Communications sector, especially since the Arab uprisings of earlier this year, and the explicit role that social networking sites and apps played in assisting the unrest.

I’m not sure if 2oceansVibe is fully available in China, but in solidarity with our pop-starved Chinese brothers and sisters, I’ll just leave this here in case:

[Source: Associated Press, Vancouver Sun]