Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Ban Internet Rumors
dptalia writes "Chongqing province in southwest China has just passed a law fining people who post malicious rumors online. An individual can face fines of 1,000 to 5,000 yuan ($630) and an organization can be fined between 3,000 and 15,000 yuan."
Little do you know.... the black bicycles have been dispatched and are closing in on your location. I for one welcome our rumor-policing web-filtering overlords.
Duke Nukem Forever is going gold next week.
Oops, that one is going to cost me a lot of yuan.
Are we sure this isn't just a rumor???
Great Intellect...
A good friend of mine who use to be a journalist in China talked about a few months about how the freedom of speech isn't as abridged as we'd like to think of it in the west. He had mentioned the biggest part was that you can't talk about people from a perspective that can ruin their reputation because it is a big part of their culture (as it is in many parts of Asia).
Most of the time, this rule is the one invoked when censoring something...talk bad about the gov't, you are implicitly impugning someone. Its horribly implemented with no safe guards (especially since employers can be fined and employees can be jailed), but I can see why the sentiment is good.
I've had my name slandered several times in the past over the internet. I don't know why the slashdot crowd gets up in arms when someone patents something by appending On The Internet, but if you state this in terms of other non-rights they get upset. I'm not stealing if I'm Stealing On The Internet. It isn't slander if I lie about someone and defame their family ON THE INTERNET.
Most of the time, if speech like I've had to endure were put up in a newspaper, my rivals would have lost a house over libel. If they would have done it at a public gathering, it would have been slander. (and if they merely mention it to a neighbor, well, thats an out and out lie that I can handle on my own). People don't see the value of reputation anymore in the west. People are too selfcentered and care nothing about anyone else -- until it happens to them (for my part, I've never said anything online or in public that wasn't backed up by non-ambigious documentation and even then, I've tried to talk to the other party personally before I have done so).
So I'm all for China stringing up anyone that ruins someone elses reputation through rumor. The US just passed the 300 Million mark this weekend. China has 1.5 Billion. Personally, I think we have enough idiots on this planet and wouldn't shed a tear about the few that want to throw unsubstantiated lies about others online. Have solid backing evidence...I'm all for it...Publish what you got. Pure out and out rumor...you need to leave.
For China, this is especially worrisome, because not only is the social order hurt, but the government as well. They're mostly worried that a particularly outrageous false rumor might force the government to change in some way. Note that this was done by a single provincial government - the lower ranks of government are particularly threatened. The Chinese government isn't a single monolith - the different ranks of government can be quite independent of each other. This article should have been titled "Chongqingnese ban internet rumors". But, after living in China for a while, I no longer expect the news that I read to be accurate in any way, nor do I expect that people who give me the news to care that they are not accurate.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!