Logging Into Second Life from China Without a VPN

I'm back in China working on a couple cool projects I'll share with you soon, but meantime, wanted to share this picture -- the view of my Second Life office in Waterhead, as seen from the view of my Shanghai hotel, in the Jing'an Temple district. I was able to log into SL without using using a VPN, which is what I did last time I was here. Some readers speculated you would need a VPN to get past China's Great Firewall, as you have to do to reach other Western services the Chinese government deems controversial, like Facebook and Twitter, but turns out, Second Life is not one of them. An SLer who's a professor near Shanghai once feared Second Life was destined to be banned here, if it got any more popular, but so far, its relative smallness compared to say Twitter is probably keeping it off the radar. Now if Linden Lab once again allowed real money gambling in Second Life (it was banned in 2007), and if it started to gain traction among Chinese gamers, that might very well change.

Obviously, political and sexual content in Second Life would also be a trigger, but my guess is the user interface and language barrier would make is too difficult for Chinese users to jump into virtual sex in any great numbers, and political expression is a very small sliver of the total SL content out there.

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Comments

[salty]

not sure, but there might be difference in attempting to log into SL from an international business hotel in a metropolis and a private modem in a social housing estate in an industrial city in central china...

[Rus]

There is no worry about normal commerical establsihment and normal residential house. I have some friend living in China. They are on and off from home and office. China has very small player in SL. And SL is already not to accept their credit card or other payment. SLers from China are all living by themselves. And this is one of the reasons not popular in China.

[eddi haskell]

Aren't all the Anshe Chung alumnus from China? I thought Anshe herself was from China- the Mainland part, and not Taiwan or Hong Kong.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

I was in China just last week and can confirm that SL access there is fine from normal housing lines. The authorities won't care about SL unless Chinese pro-democracy areas start getting some traction - and unless the sex causes some big furore the authorities won't care about it. They already ignore Chinese drug and gun peddling sites despite the fact that they are supposedly illegal.

Incidentally New World Notes is perfectly accessible from China but some other SL blogs using popular blogging software are blocked e.g. Inara Rey's site.

[Hamlet Au]

Yeah I noticed I'm able to load NWN from China with no problems, so I guess I'm not being blocked. I'm kind of offended by that! :(