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China Bans Physical Punishment For Net Addicts

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Nov 06, 2009 06:17 PM
from the no-more-actually-kicking-the-habit dept.
gimmebeer writes to tell us that months after a teen was beaten to death in an Internet boot camp, China has banned the use of physical punishment to help teens kick their net addiction. "The death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan, just hours after he checked into an Internet bootcamp in the southwestern Guangxi region in early August, caused a media storm in China. Days later, another teenager, Pu Liang, was taken to hospital with water in the lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in Sichuan Province. The government in July had already banned electroshock therapy as a treatment for Internet addiction, after media reports about a controversial psychiatrist who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. The latest guidelines suggest officials in Beijing do not think that those with unhealthy Internet habits should be forced offline permanently."
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  • by pclminion (145572) on Friday November 06, @06:21PM (#30011096)
    Wow, so you banned beatings for ONE class of prisoners. What a step forward China.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Wow, so you banned beatings for ONE class of prisoners. What a step forward China.

      Nice spin. What this is, is regulations on treatments requested by parents, akin to Outward Bound in the US.

      • by Darkness404 (1287218) on Friday November 06, @06:41PM (#30011230)
        A prisoner is defined as:

        a person who is confined; especially a prisoner of war

        lets see here, the kids A) Didn't choose to come on their free will B) Can't leave when they choose C) Are mentally stable and can make their own decisions and D) are being held against their will. I would call them prisoners.

          • by schon (31600) on Friday November 06, @09:25PM (#30012040) Homepage

            A) Didn't choose to come on their free will B) Can't leave when they choose C) Are mentally stable and can make their own decisions and D) are being held against their will.

            By your intrepretation a toddler put in a crib is also a prisoner.

            Methinks you skipped some of the criteria there.

          • by Mr. Freeman (933986) on Friday November 06, @10:21PM (#30012220)
            "By your interpretation a toddler put in a crib is also a prisoner. "

            NO! They're not. You clearly didn't bother to actually didn't read his post, did you?
            You missed the first line of his post: "C) Are mentally stable and can make their own decisions"
            Toddlers are not mentally stable and can't make their own rational decisions, which is exactly what he was referring to.
      • Im not quite sure that i would call Outward Bound "treatment", or that i would compare it to electroshock therapy.
    • The parent should not be modded "flamebait." If this is how people who have been determined to suffer from an addiction to the Internet are treated, imagine what must be happening to those diagnosed with more "serious" addictions to other vices. Add in gross human rights violations against those accused of actual crimes, and the situation begins to look very grim.
      • Not to mention violations against those wrongfully convicted...
      • by Snaller (147050) on Friday November 06, @08:06PM (#30011686) Journal

        After all the only way to "win" the "war" on drugs - is to start punishing those who DO drugs - not the ones selling it.

        • Prison rape is absolutely nothing to laugh at, nor did my response include any verbiage saying that.

          Your reply is a commonly used and rather disingenuous ploy to misdirect attention from the topic being discussed. I could easily rephrase it as "but bad things happen in other parts of the world, so this doesn't matter!" Such silly attacks on the U.S. contribute nothing to attempts at addressing the matter at hand.

          Try living in China for a year. Try living in the United States for a year. While the U.S. certainly has its own problems, I'd love to hear your report on how awful things are here compared to China.
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              I'll believe what you're saying as soon as I can verify it with independent media reports from a free press in China. I'm not holding my breath.
                • I have several friends from China, and have heard first-hand accounts of the oppression at play there. Visiting China does not give an accurate impression of what it's like to live under the thumb of a regime that doesn't respect free spech, freedom of the press, etc. Foreign nationals who "make trouble" for the Chinese government are routinely asked politely to leave. Of those who decide not to comply, they are removed by force, also known as being escorted out by armed agents. In some cases, they are arrested and confined until their home country can arrange for a quiet release.

                  I am quite familiar with the methods employed by the Chinese government to paint a pretty picture of the nation for tourists, and I'm not fooled. Let's have a look at the number of people emigrating to the U.S. from China, and contrast it with the number of people moving in the opposite direction.
                    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                      If Americans were REALLY interested in the welfare of Chinese people, they'd allow free trade with China. Oh wait, oops, this will cause American manufacturing to completely collapse. Can't do that then.

                      The US doesn't have free trade with China? What planet do you live on? We definitely have our trade disputes and protectionism, but that runs both ways and is in no way specific to China. We have had similar tariff and trade disputes with every other country that is a major trading partner (easy exampl

            • Life in china is fine.

              As long as you haven't been imprisoned for being addicted to the internet.

            • I can run with that line of reasoning, and wholeheartedly agree that abusive behavior if frequently viewed as "funny" by people around the world. I should have added the observation that U.S. citizens aren't alone in making fun of really sad situations, and shouldn't be singled out as such.
        • Yes. In this case, one is government sanctioned, the other is illegal. One has no recourse, the other has (theoretically) the recourse of a criminal proceeding.

        • Prison rape is not sanctioned by the US National Institute of Corrections. We're talking about China's human rights violations that are 100% government sanctioned. Makes you wonder what happens between prisoners when they turn a blind eye.

          It's also painfully ironic that they punish "internet addicts" at all. With so much repression going on, who'd want to go outside?

    • It's better news than hearing that China decided to just shoot them in the head instead. It's true China is extremely bad when it comes to maintaining human rights but really this kind of "treatment" needed to be banned.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        It's better news than hearing that China decided to just shoot them in the head instead.

        The larger problem is the fact that efforts by journalists in China to report on such events typically results in said journalists being arrested or simply disappearing.

    • Wow, so you banned beatings for ONE class of prisoners. What a step forward China.

      Change takes time. If they keep the rate of one ban on beating certian types of prisoners, they won't have any more beatings in just three short years!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      They're not prisoners. These are not state run institutions. Parents send their kids to these institutions voluntarily. Now obviously there is a problem with violence in these 'camps' and the government has stepped in to regulate. How exactly is it that you manage to fault the government (I'm assuming when you say China you're not referring to the entire nation) for this?
  • Is that the translation of the euphemism they use in China for masturbation?

    So, the Chinese are banning beating off to porn or something?

    No, I haven' read the article yet. Why do you ask?

  • Isn't it common sense to most sane people that physical punishment is bad for most things except for perhaps hardened criminals? Especially for something as vague as "internet addiction" that might not even exist.
  • by freedomseven (967354) on Friday November 06, @06:27PM (#30011146)
    Progressive measures like this are the things that keep innovation down. They don't understand why you need to be on the internet so much so they decide you are sick, deamonize the "illness", and take steps to cure you. Thanks guys. We need you guys on the side line so that we can catch back up.
  • by GringoChapin (1663533) on Friday November 06, @06:30PM (#30011172)
    It's nice to see that China is slowly but surely entering the 18th century. You can do it guys!
  • by russ1337 (938915) on Friday November 06, @06:40PM (#30011226)
    "The death of 15-year-old Jake Simpson, just hours after he checked into an Copyright bootcamp in the southwestern Californian region in early August, caused a media storm in the USA. Days later, another teenager, Paul Schmitt, was taken to hospital with water in the lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in Seattle. The government in July had already banned electroshock therapy as a treatment for Copyright Infringers, after media reports about a controversial RIAA psychiatrist who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. The latest guidelines suggest officials in Washington do not think that those with unhealthy copyright habits should be forced offline permanently."
  • Wrong source? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoppreH (1520463) on Friday November 06, @06:45PM (#30011246)
    Electroshock therapy for Internet addiction? Are you sure this isn't from The Onion?
  • by HalAtWork (926717) on Friday November 06, @06:51PM (#30011294)
    Why don't they go all the way and ban physical punishment? Is there any good reason to punish someone that way? Does it even help rehabilitate those who "require punishment"? Physically restraining someone is required to make someone submit if they are acting violent themselves, but that's different than physical punishment.
    • by khallow (566160) on Friday November 06, @08:08PM (#30011704)
      Punishment isn't about rehabilitation. It is about making sure criminals suffer some publicly so that victims don't take the law into their own hands. It's not about revenge, but a ritual "paying of dues" so that victims are placated and actual revenge doesn't occur.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Punishment is about protection, reparations, rehabilitation, and vindication, yes, but it's not just about those. It's also about deterrence -- a show of power -- a show of force for both sides involved, plus anyone else who gets to see it or hear about it.
        • You're welcome. Thinking about this, punishment is really an ancient thing. I think it came about in early governments because everyone was coming from a clan/tribal system with some variant of clan-based revenge as the default law system. I suspect harsh, prompt punishment was considered the most important priority by those in power. It kept most people from disrupting the society. Fairness and consistency in the punishment rendered would have come later when hypocrisy and favoritism became serious enough
  • by Anonymous Coward

    As proposed earlier: Give gaming addicts a computer, where they can start whichever game they want, however where all the games only play themselves.

    That should teach them, and after about a week of staring at the screen they might just start to do other things a slight bit at a time.

  • ...because in the eyes of the uneducated masses, that is still seen as "not real" and "just imaginary hurting". Despite modern neurology having proven, that the brain literally can't distinguish between those types of pains. (So a broken heart really actually hurts! And hurting you feelings creates real actual physical pain.)
    Also, it is much harder to heal a fucked up mind, that a fucked up body. (From what is seen as "equally bad".)

    But hey: It's invisible, so it can't be real. Any don't be a pussy anyway! Stop crying! He didn't beat you. It's just words. Right??

    Welcome to the dark ages. You never left them.

  • these camps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by euyis (1521257) on Friday November 06, @08:24PM (#30011792)
    The real nature of these camps:

    Parents take the children (not always children, at least in one case it's an adult - university student) to the camps, with force or deception, pay the camp owner money and leave. No questions asked - they don't care whether the "patients" are really "net addicted" or not. Then the victims are stuck here, beaten and drugged by the drillmasters every day. Most of them are runied forever when they leave (alive).

    So it's basically a way for the parents to get rid of their problematic children, without trying to solve the real problem behind - survey indicates that most "net-addicted" children's parents have bad habits, e.g. addiction to gambling, and don't care what does the child think.
    • In don't understand why parents would do that, given that each family is only going to have one child anyway.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Although the behavior of all people on Earth is superficially similar, many cultures such as the Asians have decidedly different attitudes toward children than we do in the US. In Asian cultures the family name comes before the individual's name, emphasizing the fact that the individual is less important than the family. Any member of a family that causes the family to "lose face", or become dishonored in the eyes of others, is seen as a liability to the family. Protecting the family name is often put befor

    • Even though the second bullet has pierced over halfway through your brain, you appreciate that its now exiting rapidly more than you do the first bullet that missed you entirely but is now (unfortunately?) motionless?
      • Re:Ironic (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mysidia (191772) on Friday November 06, @11:08PM (#30012394)

        Better analogy...

        China: You were shot in the head 20 years ago... every few years, the doctor is working on the bullet a little more, taking another piece out safely. You can't leave the bed until every bit is removed.

        The US: You haven't quite been shot yet.. you are strapped down to a table, fully restrained, the gun is above your head, at the other end of a tube also strapped to your head, the trigger was pulled 20 years ago.

        The bullet is inching down a few centimeters every year.

        It's only a matter of time before it hits you... one year was the Sonny Bono copyright extension act... next year was the DMCA... pirate act of 2004... next year was the broadcast flag......

        The bullet is coming towards you.. they've put you on just enough tranquilizers to keep you from moving, you're fully conscious of your fate, and there are lots of people in the room, but they've all got iPod earbuds or plugs in their ears, so they can't hear your screams..

        So which one's worse?

        • If you shoot someone in the head with a pistol round, the bullet doesn't make it all the way through ever.

          Really, a rifle round never makes it all the way through either, what's coming out the other side is usually just fragments and a lot of bloody pulp.

          • If you shoot someone in the head with a pistol round, the bullet doesn't make it all the way through ever.

            There are some very potent pistol rounds (.44 magnum,.45 ACP, .50 AE, .454 Casull, et al.) Usually, there's a much bigger hole going out than going in, regardless of fragment size.
            This could be a test for MythBusters.

    • by pclminion (145572) on Friday November 06, @06:26PM (#30011140)
      No. Fuck you. I speak out against this sort of torture and abuse no matter who commits it, or who it is committed against. Apparently, you think it's okay.
      • by FlyingSquidStudios (1031284) on Friday November 06, @06:41PM (#30011232) Homepage
        Apparently, some people still don't understand this whole 'representative democracy' thing. Many Americans- millions- never supported and never will support torture. We didn't vote for those who did, we didn't support their policies and some of us would even like to see them do prison time for them.
        • There is a difference between not supporting torture (maybe even tolerating it, since it is "just against the bad guys") and being against torture. You only describe the further.

          Also, the European understanding is that capital/corporal punishment is against the human rights. Which makes the US not necessarily shine (although not comparable to China of course). That is one major reason why Governor Schwarzenegger got huge criticism from the county where he was born (he adjusted to the US view and did not obj

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      I agree. Outsourcing is just plain wrong.