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China Declares War on Internet Pornography
segphault writes "The Chinese government has shut down nearly 600 pornographic web sites, and arrested over 200 people for distributing "obscene" content. The Chinese government has also started performing covert surveillance of mobile phone text messages in order to crack down on banking fraud and prostitution organized and perpetrated with text messages. Ars Technica has the story: 'With more than 100 million Internet users, China has the second largest population of web content consumers after the United States. Although the Chinese government promotes web use for business, education, and government activity, the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority, or distribute content that the government considers to be detrimental to society'"
...has shut down nearly 600 pornographic web sites
The jedys are going to feel this one.
checking content for the Chinese government and censor it accordingly.
Watching P0rn from 9 to 5 at work... hm wait, that's not that different to my current job...
What's that? Like 0.0001% of all pornsites out there?
How much liberty and freedom would you sacrifice to remove goatse and tubgirl from the net?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'm taking all bets on which war is going to be won first.
The War on Drugs
or The War on Porn
Place your bets now...
Clearly, the Chinese government has misunderstood the very purpose of the Internet .
Such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet is, and was intended to be used will result in the Chinese people using the Internet for less desirable purposes such as dissent, subversion, and spreading dangerous ideas such as freedom of thought and expression.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Someone thought of the kittens!
Cynicism, like dogmatism, can be an excuse for intellectual laziness. - Susan Shirk
Oh, you're just all high and mighty because you can drink your tap water and aren't in the early stages of cadmium poisoning.
My list of multiplayer
it is one of the God Given Rights given to all men
you insensitive clod.... they are also given to women... you sexist bastard..
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
As I sit here, the comment count is only at 212. Come on folks, where's the outrage? The righteous indignation of people being oppressed?
One this is for sure: if this article were about the United States clamping down, there'd be 900 comments thus far, with 899 of them calling the U.S. everything but Satan himself. But since it's China, nobody says (much of) anything. Just goes to prove once again that everybody's eager to call the U.S. the #1 enemy of...well, just about everything, but when real oppression happens outside U.S. borders, they're given a free pass.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky