Blocking IP Addresses, Nation By Nation

Quite soon the Chinese government won’t have to try to censor the net. The western world will just filter off all the traffic coming from China, doing the job much more efficiently.

The above quote came from a Slashdot article on China and its Relation With Spam. I don’t normally read the comments on Slashdot articles but I had a hunch some of the posts to this one would be quite extreme; SPAM is one thing that drives most geeks nuts.

The thing that surprised me the most if that there seems to be two main camps. People who run networks and who block and refuse to accept connections from China, Korea and similar dens of useless computer laws and the people that claim this is a violation of rights / free speech etc. To the people in this second group I have one thing to say. Bollocks.

I can block who I want on my servers and as long as I mention it nice and clearly to my users I can block these ranges for them too. If you don’t like it, then tough. Let the local legitimate users lobby for changes to the law, tidy up their own act and then, after this has been done, I’ll let them talk to my networks again. In the mean time I hope you enjoy the “Connection Refused” messages.