A short while back a friend of mine traveled to China to perform with her (Chinese American) musical group, and she sent me a message while on the road that Tiny Nibbles is indeed blocked in China. But I’ve been watching China’s latest porn crackdown in Orwellian horror, and I’m wondering just who’s going to fold to China’s demands, and how much big companies are going to censor (or how) to try and get Chinese revenue. Revenue that I think now is extremely questionable to associate with. I mean, just think what would have happened if Yahoo had had the balls to stand up to China and say “fuck you” — not turning over pro-democracy bloggers/journalists as they did, and actually taking a stand to represent the values of free speech our country is founded on.
Imagine if one person at Yahoo had stood up and said, no. This is wrong.
Get caught up — if it happens with American companies in China, just think of how we can be affected by this (optimism of the new government changes notwthstanding). China’s government says they’re saving “young minds” but they’re simultaneously performing a social “cleansing” on adults — who have a right to Google “Tienanmen Square” and get an accurate historical result *just* as much as they deserve accurate sex information — and sexual pleasure, which is a fundamental human right. Read China online porn crackdown: 91 sites down, thousands to go. Snip:
China’s war on porn has taken down nearly a hundred websites so far, and there’s no sign of stopping anytime soon. Ninety-one websites have been taken offline for hosting or pointing to pornographic and “vulgar” content since last Thursday, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua, and authorities are continuing to crack down on sites that the government doesn’t feel is appropriate for young people.
Pornography has been and is still illegal in China, but it’s not difficult to get, thanks to technology and the Internet. China attempts to block access to porn through its infamous Great Firewall, but even that has its flaws and determined users can still seek out the uh, “relief” they need without much searching.
The Chinese government has repeatedly condemned Internet pornography for “perverting China’s young minds,” which has led to its newest initiative to “purify the Internet.” Two of the sites shut down over the weekend include www.789b.com and www.678tp.cn, neither of which have been accessible since Sunday, and there are more on the way. “Authorities have vowed to beef up crackdown efforts in the following days and urged law-breakers to voluntarily turn themselves in to local public security departments,” noted Xinhua.
Now, not only is China looking at sites that host vulgar content, it also has search engines like Baidu and Google in its crosshairs for not doing enough to block links to porn in an “efficient” manner. In fact, authorities named some 33 sites for merely linking to porn in an attempt to shame them into complying.(…read more, arstechnica.com)
See also: Online giants unveil new code of conduct for Net censorship
