Oh oh, there go my podasts

Readers of this blog know I am a big fan of podcasts…Well yesterday, itunes was blocked in China:

The government of China has blocked access to the entirety of the
iTunes store, and the publishers of a single new Tibet-themed album are
claiming responsibility.

The album, Songs for Tibet [iTunes link],
is a compilation of music by Sting, Alanis Morissette, Garbage and
others, plus a 15-minute lecture by the Dalai Lama. The album is being
released by the New York City-based Art of Peace Foundation, whose
spokesman Michael Wohl said he believed the album was responsible for
the outage, but couldn’t prove it.

Is this a temporary block from the net nanny? Or is a local company launching an online service ad needs a little leg up? What does this mean for an iphone release in China? Podcasts are proving very useful in education. Aside from teh obvious language and news podcasts, we used them to introduce courses at SAS.