China Censors 60,000 Porn Sites, 5,000 Arrested
lothos writes with news that China has arrested thousands more people and shuttered 60,000 websites in an ongoing anti-pornography crackdown.
"Wang Chen, director of the Information Office of the State Council, said at a news conference that some 350 million pieces of pornographic and indecent internet content were eliminated, according to the Xinhua report. The government launched a special campaign a year ago to rid the internet of pornographic and vulgar content, Xinhua reported. Overall, the campaign included 2,197 criminal cases involving 4,965 people who violated Chinese law by disseminating pornography via the internet or mobile phones, the news agency said. Of those, 58 people received prison sentences exceeding five years."
where government officials can openly keep harems but citizens can't even watch porn.
...about some Italian detective/cop, and suddenly the young daughter walks into the room, topless, and sits there for five minutes. Nobody reacted.
Now, I am not reacting to say that this is harmful or degrading or whatever. But seriously, that is tacky, just plain tacky. They know that that scene was not gripping, so they put in a contrived pair of tits to keep the average punters interested. Honestly, in European films I have seen, particularly Italian, gratuitous nudity does coincide with a lull in the pacing that needed something to fill it, where Michael Bay would make a helicopter explode. Nice side effect of censorship is that it forces film-makers to try something new, rather than the tried and true chestnuts of violence, sex and obscenity that always work if you just use a little more than last time. Not that a bit of violence, sex and obscenity isn't good, but it is good to create legal and social forces to encourage other, more difficult things to be tried.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Not that a bit of violence, sex and obscenity isn't good, but it is good to create legal and social forces to encourage other, more difficult things to be tried.
Why do we as a people need legal or social "forces" to change what we want to see? If the world's culture wants to be about tits and explosions, then it's not up to some pompous prude in an office to dictate that this is somehow "wrong". Let people do what they darned well please.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain