Slashdot Mirror
The Chinese Route To a Web Free of Porn
An anonymous reader writes "Despite repeated 'for the children' campaigns, the Western Web as a whole has provided little or no isolation of pornography. This is why the Chinese are now attempting to march to a place where no country has been before: a Web without porn. Recent regulations have included closing down 'vulgar' mobile sites, disconnecting 'obscene' servers, and restricting domain registrations. Yet the breaking news for Monday is that China is planning to enforce a whitelist on foreign domains: in particular, any e-commerce will have to register locally and obey Chinese law before they get whitelisted. Domains will otherwise be 'irresolvable' to Chinese Internet users. Meanwhile, the government is promoting this campaign heavily, calling it a 'fresh start.' It seems the Chinese may have to do without the Internet, before they can rid it of porn."
The illegal prostitutes do a roaring trade. It's a huge industry.
Here is a reference:
http://www.admin5.com/article/20091221/199510.shtml
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.admin5.com%2Farticle%2F20091221%2F199510.shtml&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
I can't find an English language source.
China (and the rest of the world to a lesser extent) is slowly moving away from the "default accept" ideology of the free, open internet and towards a network where only approved devices can connect. Slashbots will rave and foam at the mouth about that "censorship is interpreted as damage" meme but it's sadly out of date. The Chinese can and will control what filth reaches their people. Sure, VPNs will be there...for a while at least...but the average Zhou won't bother with it.
It's hard for a lot of bicoastal Americans to understand - and even more difficult for transnational progressivist Europeans - but the Chinese people really do love their country. And their country has one government, which is the best government China has ever had. Ever since Deng Xiaoping ditched university Marxism and took the Communist Party on the capitalist road ("socialism is not poverty / to get rich is glorious") life has only gotten better in China. For all the bad press the Chinese government gets, they really are trying to do right, by their own standards. The problem arises when blinkered Westerners insist on judging China by "universal" standards. In fact, these "universal standards" have their roots in the Enlightenment...which China didn't have.
Aaah, kinda lost my point there. Anyhow, I'm no panda hugger but you simply have to put yourself in their shoes. A mere seventeen years ago socialism couldn't even provide clean drinking water and now China is the world's largest market for Rolls-Royce automobiles. This doesn't mean that the Communist Party of China will be relinquishing power anytime soon, though. They still maintain control over the economy via the allocation and issuance of business licenses and the denial of debilitating foreign influences, such as pornography.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
And you didn't even notice that it begins "For all intensive purposes..."
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.