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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 Chinese Route to Web of Free Porn?
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!
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.
I only use the internet to spread dissonant lies about my government and to look at porn.
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Might as well remove all the salt in the ocean while they're at it.
*DrugCheese rants*
Pornography may be naked people having sex, or it may be sites critical of the government.
Oh no, this is actually about pornography. The government of China already openly and unabashedly censors political content it doesn't approve of.
Fresh start today. Hundreds of fresh young....
never mind
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This is a terrible mistake on the Chinese government's part. Just because every ruling party member likely looked at pornography as a child and became terrible people does not mean that every person who sees pornography in their childhood will grow up to be just as cold, calculating, and authoritarian.
So China institutes a one-child-per-family policy. Due to social and traditional reasons, male children are far preferred. As a result, the population is already skewed male, and continuing to trend that way.
Now China's blocking the porn? How do they plan on dealing with the ah, excess males? Send them off to war?
Afer a thorough review, being very careful to make sure that there is absolutely no sexual connotation whatsoever, we have determined that all but the following are prohibited:
Binary 1. No. Dammit. OK. Zero. Dammit!!! Nevermind.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The person who brought this story up is an idiot if they believe this is all about "porn." Yes, in the Tianamen Square incident a lot of people got screwed, but I would not call it "porn." Anyone want to take bets about how many sites concerning that particular obscenity will get blocked by these new initiatives? "Porn" my ass. It is about control. Plain and simple. Control to let the evil murdering bastards that run that country continue to do so. period.
Glad I live in Australia, where freedom of speech rules and the population wouldn't put up with this bullshit. Oh wait ...
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!
In six years, this will be the whole internet, everywhere. They'll probably just stick it into ACTA.
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.
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'.
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Honestly, I've heard this argument so many times and there always seems to be something wrong with it. What you are doing here is comparing two entities with the direct knowledge that it is theoretically impossible for any of them to be perfect. You then use this as a basis for your attack, essentially stating that since none can be perfect, that they must all be the exact same. What you are missing is degrees. Do you honestly believe that a system founded under the notion of absolute power is essentially the same as one where at least some running it believe in limitations? Where in one people discuss ways to prevent abuses of power, and in the other they take it for granted? No system will ever be perfect, but some are trying harder than others.
I'm fairly sure that if they took all the porn off the Internet, there'd only be 1 website left and it would be called "Bring Back The Porn"
internet porn can get really really dark
[citation needed]
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Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom for homo-sexuals. Tell me again in wich nation the people voted to make homosexuals 2nd class citizens?
Sometimes you got to think a little bit clearer before you comment. And China is pretty open about homosexual rights because they are not christians and as such do not have the WESTERN view that it is a sin.
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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.
Sorry, the rule that foreign e-commerce web sites have to register with the Chinese authorities and hosting porn is illegal has been around for many years. It was part of the law when I lived there over 5 years ago, and the "porn" excuse was well known cover for cracking down on politically sensitive issues. Nothing that I can see is new or interesting in this report that was not just as true 5 years ago.
Moderators are letting a lot of crap slip through these days.
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