The Chinese Route To a Web Free of Porn 420
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."
Re:So That Takes Care of Wikipedia Then? (Score:3, Informative)
China did block Wikipedia before. I can see them doing it again, and maybe this time permanently. Unless Wikipedia makes a China-friendly version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_by_the_People's_Republic_of_China [wikipedia.org]
http://shanghaiist.com/archives/2005/10/20/you_bastards_wi.php [shanghaiist.com]
http://www.itworld.com/040614wikipedia [itworld.com]
http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/china_blocks_wikipedia_again.htm [blog-city.com]
Re:So That Takes Care of Wikipedia Then? (Score:3, Informative)
You have been able to buy magazines of artsy nude photos legitimately for about three years now. Anything more explicit than that is illegal. That doesn't mean you can't get it, though - pr0n DVDs are very easy to find.
Re:Conspiracy, or just idiocy? (Score:5, Informative)
The illegal prostitutes do a roaring trade. It's a huge industry.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Informative)
chinese news [chinatimes.com]
google.ca translate [google.ca]
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a reference:
http://www.admin5.com/article/20091221/199510.shtml [admin5.com]
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.admin5.com%2Farticle%2F20091221%2F199510.shtml&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8 [google.com]
I can't find an English language source.
The Internet as "default-deny" (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Your sig (Score:4, Informative)
And you didn't even notice that it begins "For all intensive purposes..."
Re:Conspiracy, or just idiocy? (Score:3, Informative)
First off, there are no prostitution parlours in China, there are a multitude of Massage parlours and Karaoke bars instead.
Secondly, the Chinese Army, the PLA as in the organisation would own nothing of the sort however the individual officers, mostly the higher ranking colonels and generals would own them personally. The Army as an organisation would have no stake in it what so ever. Now in most of Asia being an officer in the army is a relatively rich career, thus there is a lot of nepotism, there's also a lot of graft^H^H^H^H^H Tea Money paid to these officers (of course there is no graft in China). Thus people in high positions tend to own parts of successful, well earning businesses such as Massage parlours and Karaoke bars.
The same goes for politicians and police officers.
Re:Your sig (Score:2, Informative)
The "for all intensive purposes" clearly refers to the main point
Whoosh.
Re:Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know any law in the US that states that it is illegal to be homosexual.
Well, technically it isn't illegal to be a pedophile either, but your life options would be severely restricted in comparison to a heterosexual citizen.
I do believe there are many religions who frown upon homosexuality.
Depends on the religion, culture and historical period. Anal sex, whether between a man and woman, or man and man, is considered unclean in Buddhism, but actual homosexual love isn't. Strict Islam is pretty much against homosexuality, but historically Islam was quite liberal and homosexuals were open and accepted in the past. There is a Muslim gay bar in Amsterdam so obviously there is a cultural dimension in addition to the religious one. There are accounts of European explorers who were shocked to see openly gay men on the streets of Middle Eastern towns when being gay was a crime punished by death in much of Europe:
Elsewhere in Islamic culture, however, the evidence is strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes were more accepting than in Christendom, and European visitors were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians, who seemed to find nothing unnatural in love between men and boys. Behind this important cultural difference lies a vein of romanticism that runs deep through medieval Arab treatises on love. For Islamic writers, emotional intoxication might spring not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of males. Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton [amazon.com]
The death sentence in European nations was logically derived from the Bible:
If a man lie with mankind as he lieth with awoman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20: 13, reinforcing the earlier prohibition in 18:22). From this dire injunction, which applies to male homosexuals only, stem all later Western laws prescribing the death penalty for sodomy. Canon Law [williamapercy.com]
Re:Poll please! (Score:3, Informative)
Nah. That's what Silicon Valley is like. All that frustrated sexual energy goes into technical progress.
Re:Yea Right, it's all about "Porn." (Score:1, Informative)
Um. As far as I can tell this is completely new. A default blacklist with whitelist for approved sites.
They haven't done that before, and using porn seems a convenient justification for measures which are much more unpleasant for the population.
Rather than having to say. "We're blocking 98% of the internet purely to maintain our hold on power" they can say "We're blocking 98% of the internet for the children... and maintaining our hold on power is a nice side effect"
And yes, obviously they will probably not approve sites they don't agree with.