Slashdot Mirror
China Rewards Porn Snitches
MinimeMongo writes that the "Associated Press reports that China's police ministry on Sunday handed out rewards of up to $240 to people who reported pornographic Web sites in a campaign to stamp out online smut...The online crackdown is part of a sweeping official morality campaign launched this year on orders from communist leaders."
A lot of people would have the public believe that wide availability of pornographic material leads to an increase of sex crimes
Actually, it is a commonly-held belief that sex crimes (ie: rape) are more about power and control than sexual gratification. I doubt that porn has much of an impact in that respect.
There are very little English-language websites blocked in China. You mostly notice it when you try to access free web hosting like Geocities, or Blog websites. Even English porn is not usually blocked. It's for this reason that Slashdot has yet to be blocked, even though some of the comments here would make a Chinese censor's hair rise on his back. Chinese-language websites, however, are heavily controlled.
:)
The reason is that they are mostly concerned about the minimum effort for maximum results. By paying close attention to Chinese websites, they ensure that only a small percentage of the population can actually see the 'open' web. Sure, some will be able to fire up Google and find some 'bad' stuff, but that's not the majority of Chinese.
If you're a Laowai connecting your laptop in a hotel room, chances are you can surf for porn or political websites as much as you want. But if you're Chinese, and you're dialing up from home, you'll find your options are very limited.
On a side-note, given the connection to Western websites tends to be flaky (even through FTTB such as in my home), it's tough to distinguish between bad connections and censoring. Talk about obscurity through inefficiency.