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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.
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!!!!
...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.
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.
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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
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.
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 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.
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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.
A good philosophical way to look at the difference between murder and pornography is to think about them in terms of self-regarding and other-regarding actions. Murder is clearly an other-regarding action, and one that we can reasonably assume one of the two parties did not want to take part in. Put another way, a murderer imposes certain conditions on the murderee against their will (it's reasonable enough to assume that most people aren't looking to get murdered).
On the other hand, the choice to view pornography or to not view it is a choice that I as an adult can make for myself, and as long as it's done in the privacy of my own home, my actions do not affect any others (this is not exactly true in all cases, but most people try to make sure no one will walk in on them, etc). So pornography is a self-regarding action that happens between consenting adults (the consenting and adult parts are why child pornography is illegal).
The theory is that as long as something is a self-regarding action, an adult in their right mind should be free to choose what they want to do. This is what most people are talking about when they talk about "moral" legislation. In effect, it defines what adult citizens should consider moral and not. Many people (surprise!) believe that an adult has the right to choose their own "rules to live by" without interference from 2nd parties.
I hope that helps things.
Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?
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.
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.
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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