Censorship of GitHub

GitHub has been the target of censorship from governments using methods ranging from local Internet service provider blocks, intermediary blocking using methods such as DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks, and denial-of-service attacks on GitHub's servers from countries including China, India, Russia, and Turkey. In all of these cases, GitHub has been eventually unblocked after backlash from users and technology businesses or compliance from GitHub.

GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service and is primarily used to host the source code of software and facilitate project management. As of 2015, GitHub reports having over 10 million users and over 24.2 million repositories. It offers free accounts, a pastebin service called Gist, and free website hosting under its github.io domain. The GitHub terms of service prohibits illegal use and it reserves the right to remove content at its discretion. In addition, users can fork (copy and individually develop) other projects, which GitHub does not automatically take down when served DMCA takedown notices. GitHub uses HTTPS for its connections making data much more secure against interception from third parties.

China heavily regulates Internet traffic and has blocked many international Internet companies including Facebook and Twitter. In addition, Western businesses have said that these restrictions hurt their business by reducing access to information such as by search engines and using VPNs.

GreatFire, a Chinese anti-censorship organization, has attempted to circumvent the Great Firewall of China using mirror websites. However, the links to these pages were posted using GitHub which brings the risk of the site being blocked along with the mirrors. In a previous incident, HSBC bank's Chinese operation was taken offline when the Akamai network was targeted for hosting GreatFire.org websites.

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Wikipedia