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The Chinese Route To a Web Free of Porn

Posted by kdawson on from the regarding-babies-and-bathwater dept.

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."

6 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by rbcd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yet the breaking news for Monday is that the 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.

    Where does it say that? Citation needed!

  2. So That Takes Care of Wikipedia Then? by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NSFW warning on all following links!

    So that takes care of wikipedia.org or are they censoring en.wikipedia.org differently than zh.wikipedia.org? Because while an English versus Chinese article may be more "culturally sensitive," there's still some unavoidable images no matter how different they are from the original. If they've never had to deal with the artwork versus pornography issue, they're soon going to discover that banning National Geographic for images of unclothed peoples is just not educationally sound.

    Looks like we've got a new amusingly painful chapter ahead of us for Chinese internet users.

    As a side note, I don't know if we ended up covering this story but citizens apparently can't register domains anymore either.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:So That Takes Care of Wikipedia Then? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes. Go to any DVD shop and ask for "huang de DVD" (yellow DVD, in Chinese yellow means porno, think "blue movies"). They have them behind the counter. They're not that great, mostly Hong Kong and Taiwan actresses. Pretty generic scenes. Funny though, all the male pornstars have small cocks.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:So That Takes Care of Wikipedia Then? by plasticsquirrel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I live in China, and most of the time English Wikipedia works fine. However, there are occasional times when I will search for something, and the whole site will be unreachable for a few minutes. Today I went to this page: Maitreya, and before the page could fully load, my connection was mysteriously reset. I was frustrated, but eventually I could connect again and other Wikipedia pages were accessible. Just to check to make sure there really was something strange, I just tried accessing the page again after several hours of otherwise-functional Wikipedia access. Same thing, and now I can't reach Wikipedia again! And now after a few minutes, I'm reading about other things without a problem. But I still have not been able to access the Maitreya page.

      This leads me to believe that there is a proxy that uses dynamic filtering that watches web page contents. "Maitreya" is a really tame page, and it's just about a Buddhist figure, and I never have any other problems with normal religious pages. However, there have been several movements and cults throughout history where the member will claim to be Maitreya (the future Buddha). There is a section on the Maitreya page that covers this ugly / strange side, so I'm guessing that any talk about cults may have the clamp on it. The way pages are filtered is pretty strange here. For example, half of the Google Images results will typically be missing. This may be because the government tries to only block out image results, but Google constantly adds new servers to host them.

      You can forget about Blogger, YouTube, Facebook, etc. They are all blocked here, but nobody cares in China because they use different websites. It's more of a pain in the ass than anything -- it's not really going to comprehensively censor anything, but it certainly makes using the Web a more frustrating and needlessly-limiting experience for any foreigners.

      The big thing now being pushed by the government in China is morality, and I actually agree with that emphasis. That is, taking the high road of governance and focusing on culture rather than overt methods of control and regulation. This idea is totally in harmony with China's ancient humanistic culture and the original teachings of Confucianism and Daoism. However, contrived morality by means of censorship is not really encouraging people to be kinder, more caring, or otherwise more ethical. It is not going to help people to develop notions of justice or equality, or to nurture individual consciousness of one's own actions.

      --
      Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
  3. Re:The difference between China and the US by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Really, you'd rather live in China than the US?

    What drugs are you taking that make you think your country is vastly different than the US? It may be different, it may have some situations that are better, but it'll have some that are worse.

    'Freedom' in most of the 'free world' is roughly the same, just different benefits and restrictions, but overall the same.

    The problem I have with your post is you act like the US is horrible and that some other country is far better in this respect. Go ahead, pick a country, point out all the ways its 'better' and I'll turn around and point out an equal number of ways its worse.

    I'll start to believe America is horrible when people start leaving, which last I checked, was not one of America's 'problems'.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  4. Re:The difference between China and the US by wickerprints · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps you're right. I don't really know because I've lived in the US most of my life and I don't know what it's really like to live in China. But based on what I've been told by those who have lived there both by citizens and expatriates, the Western media has painted a rather distorted picture of daily life in China.

    But the reason why I am specifically responding to your post is that you are basically saying that intentions count, and I disagree with this, especially as it pertains to the individual. I don't care that the US likes to hold up a piece of paper and talk about lofty ideals. I care about what actually happens, and the eight years under Bush's reign has proven just how little intentions are really worth. Everything from the response to Katrina, the creation of TSA, warrantless wiretapping, no-bid contracts, the healthcare debacle...it is all utterly rotten to the core. Time and time again, the law is upheld for the rich. If you are of modest means, there is no justice for you because you can't afford it.

    The goal of the US system is not to uphold freedom. It has increasingly become a game played by the rich and powerful to see who can consolidate more power and influence under the pretense of freedom. Is that worse or better than the specter of a communist state? I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that I do not want either.