China Takes Action On Thousands Of Websites For 'Harmful', Obscene Content (reuters.com)

China has shut down or "dealt with" thousands of websites for sharing "harmful" erotic or obscene content since April, the state's office for combating pornography and illegal publications announced on Thursday. From a report on Reuters: The office said 2,500 websites were prosecuted or shut down and more than 3 million "harmful" posts were deleted in eight months up to December during a drive to "purify" the internet in China and protect youth, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The government has tightening its grip on Chinese cyberspace in recent months, in particular placing new restrictions on the fast-growing live-streaming industry. The state has a zero-tolerance approach to what it considers lewd, smutty or illegal content and has in past crackdowns removed tens of thousands of websites in a single year.

Comments

Purity is such an impure word

[Visarga]

Purity is such an impure word - it means repression, persecution and lack of liberty. It's been abused since time immemorial, the main tool in the ideological toolbox.

Not censorship

[tietokone-olmi]

China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship. Even if it were, it's being enacted by the comms operators, which some will say makes it not matter since the first amdemnenenent only impacts the government.

So there. Please to be removink your insultink title. China stronk laa.

Re:Not censorship

[SeaFox]

China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship.

Nice try. Censorship is simply defined as the act by an official of regulating access or editing content that is deemed objectionable or sensitive. Whether content meets these criteria is based only on a judgement call, there is nothing in the definition that says it has to be legally based.

Even if it were, it's being enacted by the comms operators, which some will say makes it not matter since the first amdemnenenent only impacts the government.

Likewise, the "official" is simply the individual who is tasked with carrying out this action, anyone can be in this role, not just government agents. So that would make an employee of the provider just as much an "official". Same with volunteer moderators on any internet message board. If they have the power and are sanctioned to use it for that purpose by the people in charge, they are officials.

Also, big oops on your part: China's telecom companies are state-owned. That technically means all the provider employees are government employees.

Re:Not censorship

[Khashishi]

I had no idea censorship was defined by the first amendment.

Re:Not censorship

[tietokone-olmi]

Well, I did say amdemnenenent.

Re:Not censorship

[Capsaicin]

China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship.

This may seem like a bit of a fine distinction to you. It is censorship, but since China does not have the equivalent of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, Chinese nationals enjoy no constitutional protection from state, or indeed corporate, censorship.

You will understand, of course, that since this is being done to protect the purity of the young, only those who for whatever perverse reasons want minors corrupted could possibly object. Ahem.

Re:Not censorship

[Capsaicin]

'Freedom of speech' and 'Freedom of thought' should be basic human rights, not something to be granted or taken away, and any government

On the legal positivist view: A right is that which you can get it enforced in your favour in a court of law. Only those "rights" which have been granted, say by inclusion in a Bill of Rights, are actually rights (as opposed to aspirations). Freedom of speech is indeed a universal aspiration, but it is a right only where either in the course of devising government (i.e. via a Constitution), or statutorily by being enacted by Parliament, that right has been granted.

Alternatively on a natural law view: Chinese citizens have a right of free speech, they simply risk being executed if the exercise it.

Re:Not censorship

[Maritz]

China doesn't have a first amendment, so it's not censorship.

You don't know what the word 'censorship' means.

Please to be removink your insultink title. China stronk laa.

What accent is that supposed to be? Kinda weird to see a 'bad accent' in text form. You look like you've hit eastern europe there.

Re:Not censorship

[tietokone-olmi]

>(...) only those who for whatever perverse reasons want minors corrupted could possibly object.

What if I want minors corrupted, and also censorship? We shouldn't allow wholesome ideas to cross the eye-brain barrier after all.

Re:Or call it treason

[Hognoxious]

The key difference is that when governments do it it's repression, but when corporations do it it's legitimate protection of shareholder value.

Re:IRS

[Tablizer]

You are 6,500 years too late to complain about taxes.

But, if we find some DNA, maybe we can bring dinosaurs back. Make Dino's Great Again!

Re:Life without porn

[Oswald McWeany]

People would wonder why you still have a Sears Catalog and why the women's underwear section was so worn.

Purify the internet.

[SuricouRaven]

Chairman Canute's initiative, I assume?

I do not get it

[gweihir]

China has an overpopulation problem. Why ever would they clamp down on pornography? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Re:I do not get it

[AHuxley]

re It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever..
Western brands trying to sell into China are always happy to report users for short term market share.
China wants its staff to be Party members, in the mil or doing great things for China and be seen to get top rankings vs other nations.
Study, self improvement, supporting the Party is been side tracked and eroded by outside influences.
Say a mil officer from China gets sent to the West to study and bring back another nations emerging academic concepts.
They see students and staff exchanging ideas, enjoying media, books, movies, musics, online culture without been reported.
No restrictive uniforms, the freedom to say what you want in a staff meeting about funding, gov cut backs or needed new equipment or waste, incompetence or party political interference.
Back in China they remember that freedom, the internet, the friends who did not report people, helpful staff, the freedom to find housing, the lack of a uniform everyday, the creativity, the ability to buy a book, any book. To go see any movie.
The fear of China is that material will flood in from Japan, the West that will attractive to its workers and its best Party members.
Ideas that support individuality, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to advance without needing the Party. Not having to denounce or report your friends, neighbours, colleagues or been asked why your not reporting more people.
MI6, the CIA and Japan see an opening with faith based material, science fiction, anime, music, movies, art, cults to flood China. Easy to consume addictive material with distractions that weaken China's educational systems and wider Party control. The individual drifts away from the mil, Party to their own freedoms, hobbies, cult, faith, anime, music. Distracted, solitary, sedentary, addicted and lazy or finds dedication in helping cults, separatist movements, NGO's or democratic politics.
China knows a free person can escape Communism totally and has to do everything it can to stop that. So it follows the best practice of censorship and control.

Re:I do not get it

[Rick Schumann]

Why ever would they clamp down on pornography?

Here's my take on that: If you're a single adult, or two married single adults, you don't have as much to lose if you feel strongly enough about something to speak up or do something active about it. However if you have children, now you have innocent lives to protect who can't do anything to protect themselves. So now the government can, in one sense or another, hold them hostage, to force you to do what they want you to do. Consider also how little regard, apparently, the Chinese government has for human life; if you accept that as fact, then it makes the above all the more plausible.

Re:I do not get it

[rtb61]

Basically the censorship has nothing what so ever to do with porn and everything to do with politics. Nearly every country on the globe is trying to go down this exact censorship route. The camouflage of "we need to protect children from internet porn" when what they really mean is, we need to censor all non government approved internet political speech.

The reality is, yes children do need to be protected from the adult internet and this can only be done by running a parrallel, encrypted and secured internet protocol, monitored and secured to ensure only approved content get on the the child safe internet, that hooks up schools and other education facilities to provide quality sound content, Adults allowed on are all specifically registered (play on the child safe internet as an adult and you will pay in prison as an adult) and minors log in via their student ID card and their internet experience is tailored to their age, what is fit for 16 year olds is not fit for 6 year olds. Of course the greedy shit heads do not want this because no political censorship for adults possible and most importantly no free access to minors by adults to sell the junk food and manipulate them to scam them out of their pocket money (literally billionaires stealing children's pocket money, the psychopathic greed just mind boggling).

Re:Only if you believe in double-speak.

[Hognoxious]

Why do you hate freedom? Are you one of them thar cormanusts?

Re:Life without porn

[John Allsup]

The fundamentalist Islamic states give a good picture of where the 'shield people from sexual immorality' approach ends up. To ensure 'male sexual morality' you have to make women invisible. To ensure 'female sexual morality', you have to make women silent, and the property of their owners, either their fathers or their husbands. That is where the religious nutcases of this world wish to push us.

If we don't want to go down that route, then there must be a means to keep our basic human sexual nature fed, exercised and happy, so as not to seek satisfaction 'at all costs'. By trying to 'lock it in a box and starve it into submission', we do not achieve this, but rather strengthen our sexual appetites, and promote the 'something is better than nothing' attitude which leads top guys wanking off to the underwear sections of clothing catalogues, or to weathergirls, or whatever. Having a world where every basic need is met, but where people's sexual drives are basically starved, is a recipe for disaster. But that is exactly what many 'mindless moralist' campaigners think is what we need.

Re:IRS

[Grishnakh]

We need to use genetic engineering to bring back the dinosaurs, this time with much bigger brains. Maybe they can run things better than we can.

Re:IRS

[Tablizer]

We are already giving a Trumposaurus a shot.

Re:IRS

[Grishnakh]

Hey, that's not funny. That's extremely insulting to dinosaurs.

Coming soon

[ThatsNotPudding]

Coming soon to a puritanical former democracy near you.

UK, Australia...

[CanEHdian]

So now China is the 'bad guy' for blocking websites? The UK has been doing this for years and Australia is now following suit. Except it's not the Chinese government but the Hollywood Government that's behind it. More European countries now do the same thing. Soon you'll see first Canada, then the US do the same thing ("bla bla Internation standard bla bla").