Tech blog

Beijing: Who says you can’t beat the pirates and file-sharers on price? Not Quacor.com, a new Chinese website whose English tag-line says it all: "The world 1st website for copyright movie absolutely free!".

Quacor, which opened shop last weekend, is offering a roster of Chinese and foreign films ranging from chop-socky comedy Shaolin Soccer to hacker fantasy Matrix Reloaded for download or streamed viewing without charge.

If it sounds a bit too good to be true, it may well be: we cash-strapped comrades at the FT Beijing bureau have yet to manage to actually watch any of the films despite repeated efforts, and the site’s discussion board is full of complaints that it is not working.

Quacor staffers say their servers have simply been swamped by demand, though, and the site may still be, er, one to watch.

Beijing: Traffic lights here are notoriously unpredictable, in part because police try to ensure government leaders and visiting VIPs enjoy unimpeded transit around the city.

The result is that ordinary motorists at major junctions often find themselves sitting in front of a red light with no idea when it might change to green – and if it does, whether it will stay that way long enough to cross.

No doubt that’s how Wikipedia is feeling. After being blocked by the Great Firewall for a year, the cooperative encyclopedia’s non-Chinese versions became available to web-surfers in China last month, followed last week by the local-language edition.

The apparent change of heart by Beijing’s secretive censors prompted speculation they now plan more tightly targeted blocking of specific Wikipedia entries, such as the one that discusses the government’s bloody suppression of popular protests in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

(See informed discussion of Wikipedia’s unblocking here).

Mere partial blocking would be good news for China’s budding army of Wikipedians, but no sooner had thousands of would-be contributors signed on than the traffic light suddenly changed back to red; on Friday all editions of Wikipedia were unavailable from China.