On the Flickr forum Thursday, the site's co-founder Stewart Butterfield maintained that the problem in China had not been caused by server problems as the site's users had originally believed. The post read, "It seems that access to our image servers is being blocked for users in much of China. Our technical staff has looked into this at depth and determined this is not a technical issue from our end. We will keep an eye on the situation and update if we get any developments." The only development so far is that there have been no developments.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle report, Jian Hua Li, a Chinese Embassy spokesman said that while he had never heard of Flickr, the block may be a measure on behalf of the Chinese government to protect children from "racy images." The site allows its users to post, organize and share personal photographs.

It should be no surprise that the Flickr block came on June 7, as three days earlier marked the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square "crackdown." All week, China's Information Ministry targeted sites that published the infamous "Tank Man" photograph, the iconic image of a Beijing man standing in the way of four advancing tanks. The Flickr site does not censor its content in mainland China. In fact, a search in China for "tiananmen tank" on the Flickr site yields 77 results, for which most results are simply the original photograph, while others are artistic, animated, discolored and even psychedelic renderings of the image. Flickr also offers a photograph of a Chinese baby taking a dump on Tiananmen Square. Too racy?

A day after the block on Flickr, Butterfield posted another message on the Flickr forum saying, "We are checking periodically to see if the block is still in place, but haven't detected any change. We hope that this is a temporary issue and we currently believe that it will be. In the meantime, we are investigating our alternatives. Thanks for your patience." As the founders of Wikipedia could tell Butterfield, often there are no alternatives to site blockage in China. Without warning or notification, the government will often block all or some of a website; and, during periods of increased paranoia, during a meeting of the National People's Congress or the week of the Tiananmen anniversary, the censorship police tend to get a bit loose with the button.

The world's major Internet companies drool over China's 150 million web users, a market that is increasing in both number and buying power. Many online services in China, such as Google and Yahoo!, have been attacked for censoring content in the mainland and by doing so, have been accused of colluding in the mass repression of free speech on the Internet. Perhaps, in the coming months, Flickr will be forced to choose whether its photo database will remain unfiltered or whether the site will conform to China's definition of propriety.

According to the consultancy iResearch, Flickr had a 9% share of China's photo-sharing market in 2006 and in March, announced its intentions to launch a Chinese version of the site before year's end. The photo-sharing market in China is expected to grow by 10 million users annually over the next few years. Unless the ban is reversed, as has been the case with Wikipedia for brief stints, Flickr may have to turn its eyes elsewhere.