internet – Fighting a ban with humor and tags

The clampdown on China’s bulletin boards or BBS’s keeps on spreading over the internet combing both humor, new media tools and some gloomy prospects. Danwei summarizes here.
Isaac Mao answered questions of Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices and he expects also a clampdown on weblogs:

Not only BBS, but all internet sites are tightened by government in these days.
Even personal website with independant domain name should be declared before
June (see Zheng’s post)

Isaac is looking for strategies where blogs will be hosted on many servers, preferably outside China.
ESWN has been analyzing the ‘closure’ messages on different BBS’s and sees a wide variation of approaches. The SMTH Tsinghua BBS complies with the order, but reacts emotionally:

Accordingly, the BBS committee wishes to use this letter as a public notice and, at the same time, we ask all our users inside and outside the school to support the decisions of the BBS committee and love SMTH as you have done for the last ten years.During these ten years, many of our users have graduated from Tsinghua University and they have maintained their deep emotional attachment to SMTH. SMTH continues to be an important channel and source of information for them after they graduated.During these ten years, many non-Tsinghua users have also benefited from the scholarly and information platforms at SMTH.
Over these ten years, SMTH created a deep foundation for a scholarly board, and the contribution from the outside visitors have given SMTH a great reputation in the field of education.

They could have done very little apart from complying, writes ESWN. Students are now protesting with humor at the BBS, using ‘mis’-quotation from chairman Mao.
China Digital Times has the most complete overview of the situation.
The information office of the State Council has promised more openness. I know their head (formally he has the title minister) Zhao Qizheng from his time as vice-mayor at Shanghai and know he is up to the challenge. With the BBS’s he has a little issue to prove what his words are worth.