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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."
Thanks to the net, as an American am acutely aware of some heinous problems with our government and our economy. The worst of the dangers (govt spin pro-war 1984-style, Patriot Act, outsourcing, horrific public education system) are largely ignored or spinfully reported by mainstream media and these crooks, but I can see for myself online. Hopefully there is a trend here towards more awareness, even though so much is still hidden from us.
What the Chinese govt seems to understand, and what I fear most for their subjects, is that sniffing, blocking, filtering, and controlling the Internet is the most important means of keeping power from the people in the future. How will they do it? Is it possible? I fear that it IS possible. If you control all the fiber coming into the country, and you control everything published inside the country, then you can just keep on governing the old-fashioned way.
You can't legislate morality. As long as there's a demand, it'll be there. It's like "The War on Drugs" in the US.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
Could be a good thing if it ultimately puts another thorn in the side of spammers who promote those pr0n web sites.
go to prison for visiting those illegal websites.
Porn is an accessory to masturbation, the safest sex: no STDs, no conception. With China facing ongoing crises in both those human conditions, isn't porn the State's best comrade?
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make install -not war
So, in order to collect the reward, do you have to answer any questions? Like "How do you happen to know about this pornographic web site?"
But the fact that this story contains the magic words porn, internet, & communist is likely to generate 1,000 responses. Sigh.
For something truly fun and interesting along the same lines, recently the Chinese had a brilliant spin on "citizen crime busters", offering bounties for people with camcorders who caught drivers breaking the law! Now there is a great idea!
Think about it: You get to see a porn site, and you get $240!!!
Wankers of the World, UNITE!!!!
... what authority do they have? Is all pornography illegal for everyone in China? While they might be disagreeable to some, most porn sites are legitimate businesses. Is the Chinese government so far-reaching?
...because as history has shown us, the best way to keep people from doing the things they want has been to make those things illegal.
This'll work out great in the long run, I'm sure.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Could be a good thing if it ultimately puts another thorn in the side of spammers who promote those pr0n web sites. Could be a bad thing if it is nothing but pure censorship.
A government that excuses its actions by acting as a sort of parental figure, is a corrupt government indeed. Human beings are critical thinkers, thank you very much, and it is an insult to the intelligence of a Billion+ Chinese if China's government thinks it should "protect" them from "harmful content" so that they don't "harm" themselves.
I know that's not the real reason, but seriously, who does China think it's fooling?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
I quit my job. I can make a fortune!
Just because a society is different, don't necessarily mean that its peoples are oppressed (and need 'liberating'). It's a big planet, there's nothing wrong with a little diversity.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Abstaining, or voting for a certain-to-lose candidate, means tacitly accepting whichever crook the rest of the electorate chooses for you.
It is precisely that line of thinking that kept Ross Perot from winning. If we thought he had a chance, it would have been a landslide! Don't waste your vote. Vote for the right candidate, whether R/D/whatever. Even if your guy only gets 0.001%, at least you've made a statement. Simply picking the lesser of two evils does a grave disservice to democracy IMHO.
Are they publishing their list of sites somewhere ;)
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just returned from China, where I travelled with my PowerBook and used both dial-up and ethernet connections at many places, including internet cafes and people's homes. After hearing all about the authoritarian firewall and net filtering I was a little surprised to see absolutely no firewall or filtering of any kind in effect. I was able to connect back to my home using SSH, use https to web sites in the U.S. and get to arbitrary places, news sites, and web based email every where I tried.
I could find no evidence of a firewall of any kind. I read about the google results, but what else are people talking about?
Pat
I am glad to these guys getting busted. Let's hope that law enforcement doesn't lose their momentum.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
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.
Yes, you can legislate morality. The question is how effective is that legislation? Murder is immoral, and we have laws against it. Yet murder still occurs. That doesn't mean that laws against murder are wrong or completely useless. So, just because a law doesn't stop all occurrences of an offence doesn't mean we should get rid of the law.
So, what does you can't legislate morality mean? It would seem that it means you shouldn't pass laws that are designed to suppress behaviors that should be personal choices or are part of an individual religious doctrine and don't rise to the level that should be considered a crime
However, we are supposed to be the people in a free society so I hope that John Ashcroft is currently prosecuting people for distributing sexually explicit adult only material and has promised that nobody is safe from prosecution, not even cable companies, I hope Ashcroft doesn't get any ideas...
Forcing porn to go underground (anybody who thinks that outlawing it is going to stop it needs to be less naive) will certainly improve conditions for porn industry workers, in much the same way that forbidding drugs and prostitution has made life so much better for junkies and whores. Making it so a porn actress can't go to the police when something happens will certainly make her life so much better.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You cannot legislate morality
But morality is legislated in many respects: murder, rape, robbery, assault, etc.... If you don't like it, throw on that GBH album of yours and dream of a day when you don't have to answer to any higher power. Until then, get used to the fact that you're less of an individual than you are a thread in a society that demands you to act in a manner congruent to the general beliefs of those around you. Welcome to planet Earth.
You know, the stereotypical politician is meant to be a Used-Car salesman. And frankly, I'd rather have a whore for president than somebody who is as naive as Bush...yes you heard me correctly - I'd rather have a sell-out like Kerry than somebody who actually stands for what they believe in - like Bush. I believe that ruling the most powerful country in the world means that you have demonstrate some flexibility. This is isn't frikkin' Little League, where there is Good and Bad, Right & Wrong. There are lots of shades of grey, and they all need to be dealt with in their own way. Most Americans don't want to look into the causes behind the 9/11 butchers, but the fact is that they were idealists too - true believers to their cause and look what they accomplished. The same goes for Lenin, Mao, e.t.c. When your politicians are selling out to the highest bidder, that's when you know everything's ok in the world. If they start taking up causes, and preaching The Right Way & The Wrong Way or With Us or Against Us policies, that's when it's time to be afraid.
My Favourite Meme
It is precisely that line of thinking that kept Ross Perot from winning. If we thought he had a chance, it would have been a landslide!
That, and the fact that he's a psycho. Would you really have prefered Perot to Bill Clinton?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is anybody worried about looking at voilence and death? Is anybody worried about public brain-washing propaganda?
We live in strange times! War and soldiers and stylised to glory and heros, while sex and other fun and is somehow dirty and should be avoided. A strange so called "Morality", indeed!
In Body Pleasure And The Originbs Of Violence James W. Prescott relates the tendency towards violence to general sexual opression. It's worth a read.
(James W. Prescott was employed at the US Public Health Department and layed off five years after he published this document (in 1980), because he wanted to conduct more studies in the area of child abuse and neglect.)
I don't get it.
Stuff like KRGKGE.com or 3495ww43.com, etc.
Once the site is up and functioning, I contact a "citizen" in China, who reports the site to the authorities. We split the difference. I keep him fed with pr0n sites, and he sends me money for "finding" them.
Stupid fucking commie bastards. I could set up 50 sites a day. At $125 per, that's a nice piece of green...
RS
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Here's a reality check just a few weeks before we have possibly our last chance to keep our republic from descending into an unsustainable empire. Bush has actually lied us into war, through the recession, into the Patriot Act, the Medicare Prescription Drug Industry Welfare Act, the destruction of the environment through oil, coal, nuclear and every other lucrative pollution, has divided the nation more than since the Civil War... the list just goes on and on. And in every case, he has lied throughout - from his 2000 campaign, through his continuous spin, through his coverups, rigging investigations, and even through the debates. Kerry has been telling the hard truth, and has even risked alienating millions of denial addicts with his truth.
Bush Sr had a lot of faults, including backing Saddam in the 1980s, and apparently (to Saddam, at least) giving Saddam the go-ahead for invading Kuwait without resistance in 1990. But he at least understood that if we crushed Saddam's regime in 1991, we'd have to keep that frankencountry (created to be unstable by the retreating British) under control, a task so far manageable only under Saddam's intolerable tyranny. Bush was loathe to upset the Turks by backing Kurds in a revolt that would have not only created a federal Iraqi state full of Shi'ites ripe for annexation by Iran, but also a momentum towards greater Kurdistan. Including not only SE Turkey, but also eastern Syria and NW Iran, guaranteeing war in the region on shifting fronts much like the "Vietnam" war through Southeast Asia, which consumed Laos and Cambodia (and several million people), without even the threat of nuclear war from neighboring Israel and Iran, to say nothing of the oil, gas and pipelines. Bush Sr chickened out, leaving that unsolvable puzzle for someone else. Perhaps someone might have unraveled it, but now Bush Jr has burned every bridge, and is burning out every chance at any stability at all. We'll need years, decades, generations, just to get back to equilibrium, let alone justice or democracy.
As for JFK, his refusal to cut a deal with the Soviets has been shown, in 20/20 hindsight, to have been the right call. If only some of these Republicans could gamble with the same steel balls as the most famous liberal Democrat of the 20th Century.
Vote for Kerry. Don't let the past 4 years of fearmongering and devastation extinguish your capacity for hope. One step at a time, starting with removing the malignant cancer from the White House. Then, if you're still unhappy with Kerry, at least you'll have a chance to choose something else. With Bush, democracy itself is on the outsource list.
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make install -not war
Part of our system of voting requires us to think about the candidates that we think has a chance. It is a clear side-effect of a first-past-the-post voting system. As explained there:
...
First-past-the-post encourages the tactical voting technique known as "compromising": voters are encouraged to vote for one of the two options most likely to win, even if it is not their most preferred option.
If enough voters vote using this tactic, the first-past-the-post system becomes a form of runoff voting where the first round is held in the court of public opinion. This can give substantial power to the media as voters will tend to believe their viewpoint on who the leading contenders are likely to be in the election and use that viewpoint to decide where a "tactical" vote would be (in the voter's opinion) best used. This can also become a system promoting votes against more so than votes for.
If you go on and read about tactical voting, you'll see it says that "Duverger's law suggests that, for this reason, first-past-the-post election systems will lead to two party systems in most cases." Quite discouraging if you ask me; I'd love to see more parties involved.
I just read some of these articles yesterday trying to learn about the British election system. It's very interesting stuff. Sometimes I wish I was a political science major...
The space unintentionally left unblank.
If you go on and read about tactical voting, you'll see it says that "Duverger's law suggests that, for this reason, first-past-the-post election systems will lead to two party systems in most cases." Quite discouraging if you ask me; I'd love to see more parties involved.
You could say Perot cost Bush the election, or that Nader's votes came right out of a Gore's pocket - that's hard to refute if you look at how those voters would otherwise have leaned. But would we have been that much worse off, in either case, had it gone the other way between the two leading candidates?
I suspect the tactical voting phenomenon becomes less certain to prevail as the two leading candiates become less distinguishable from each other. It seems to me that with every passing election, the "middle" becomes more clearly defined by those two.
This relieves voters from worrying if tweedle-dee|dum will "accidentally" win if they "waste" their vote.
Because sometimes good ideas pop up in unexpected places, perhaps? If Hitler himself were to utter words of wisdom (actually good wisdom), would you turn away just to spite him? How very foolish.
You cannot legislate morality: morality, honor, ethics, and law are distinct. Legislation is law: it is a list of punishments for actions. The rest are things you can try to teach people in your home, school, or church. Law is about changing the cost/benefit ratio associated with an action; the rest are about changing your motivations, your conscience, appealing to your wish to "belong", etc. Law may punish that which your morality believes to be wrong, morality/ethics/honor may inform the legislative body, but you cannot legislate morality itself.
Seems to me that that's what many politicians are working towards in the US. When they complain about China, are they perhaps just jealous that the Chinese leadership has achieved what they haven't (yet)?
1) Put up a porn site,
2) Report it to Chinese officials,
3) Profit!
Before Bush, trucks were a small part of the American fleet, so their emissions exemptions weren't as big a problem for the environment. Under Bush, their use has exploded, helped by the tax deduction of their purchase, as well as the extremely low interest on Federal loans to car companies that they pass on to consumers buying them. All these issues are questions of management as conditions change. Bush is a miserable manager, who sticks to his guns when conditions change. We can blame him for not rebalancing the finance and pollution systems when SUV pollution started to become a problem on his watch. But of course we're not surprised that he protects double the gas consumption per mile while oil costs twice as much per gallon, because he's a Texas oil baron cowboy. Lack of surprise doesn't excuse his mismanagement, it underscores it.
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make install -not war
You're talking about two different classes of "immoral" behavior.
The parent's example of "porn, drugs, prostitution, and fireworks" are all "victimless crimes" -- they are the actions of consenting people. Their actions might be dangerous to themselves, but they don't directly harm anyone else. There is no violation of basic human rights.
You tried to compare this to murder, rape, robbery, and assault which directly harm someone who didn't consent. In other words, an innocent person's basic rights are being violated.
See the difference? When you make laws against murder, etc. you are protecting innocents. But when you make laws against consentual sex or drugs, you are "protecting" a person against their will -- a violation of their liberty!
So, it's about protecting people's rights vs. violating their rights, but you argue that they're the same. Maybe this is why almost everyone agrees that murder is wrong, but a significant percentage of people disagree wrt. drugs and such. Have you considered the possibility that the ones who support these laws are oppressing the ones they proport to protect? I say the laws themselves are immoral, not the behavior they prohibit!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
[Grandparent Message]: "Morality" has always been an important aspect of Chinese culture
[Parent Message]: Wow, what a fat lot you know about China and the CCP. I think what you say is mostly bullshit. Morality is actually important to most Chinese
Can I point out the bleeding obvious, which is that this is what he actually said?
Anyway, in response to the rest of your message: I didn't see Autopr0n extol the virtues of Christianity in his post.
In addition, I should point out that most fanatical (relatively speaking) Christians would support the censorship and supression of porn (whilst probably jerking off to it in private); you seem to have made the mistake of assuming Autopr0n shared the views of all fellow Americans, and (to some extent) that all Americans shared his views.
(*) IIRC Autopr0n *seemed* to be American, but I wouldn't bet my life on this.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This sort of thinking was exposed during the whole Janet Jackson thing, anyway. People claimed that free speech was threatened, but it's fairly obvious that that sort of thing has never been acceptable. Despite that we've maintained a thriving democracy with some of the best free speech protection in the world for more than 300 years nevertheless.
Only on slashdot could a story about the chinese communists cracking down on porn turn into a condemnation of american democracy.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone