Evan Osnos of the Chicago Tribune has a nice article on the paradox of today’s Chinese media ecology. You’ve got heavyhanded regulation on one hand, and rampant p2p damn-the-copyright file sharing on the other. Some things off limits, most things not. Osnos notes:
…as blogs grow unchecked, they are creating a generation of Chinese who
never read the state-run People’s Daily newspaper but routinely use a
file-sharing protocol to download films or television programs that
their government officially rejects. It is a generation raised to
expect a censored world and an uncensored one…