Internet giants bow to China’s porn pressure
14 January 2009, 02:50PM
Bloggers and web users in China were in almost equal parts thrilled and taking advantage of the increased freedoms whilst others were equally as enthusiastic in their complaints about international meddling and insisting things were just fine in China. But… that’s the internet, and that’s freedom of expression I want to see.
Amnesty International’s site was amongst those that became available and remained so throughout the latter part of 2008. A friend of mine recently returned to Beijing and used his usual ISP - he was locked out of both the Amnesty International Australia and Amnesty International websites. Read more about his trip to Beijing.
We have seen reports in recent days that China is ‘cracking down on online pornography’. I agree that child pornography should not be permitted and those involved in it should be justly punished. However, this cannot be used by the Chinese, or any other Government, as an excuse for blanket censorship of the internet. And in any case, the Chinese Government is not even talking about child pornography - they are expressing their dissatisfaction with ‘explicit pornographic materials’. So the adult web users of China are not permitted to select or avoid material of their choosing, even if it’s not of any politically sensitive nature, or add their own household based technology to limit access to such material.
This week the Chinese Government issued a directive to internet service providers that they must do more to remove ‘explicit material’ or risk being shut down. The two largest providers in China, Baidu and Google were included in the targeted list.
A Google spokesperson stated "Google has clear policies to protect freedom of expression while not allowing illegal content on our sites in China and elsewhere around the world. As a search engine, Google does not control the content of the billions of pages in our index."
Later in the week Google was more apologetic about the situation. Reports stating that the company is “willing to be a law abiding citizen in China” and removing links to “vulgar material”.
With the Olympic media village closed down and relatively few foreign journalists in China, it seems the internet crackdowns are creeping back and companies are being pressured into compliance. The international community must remain vigilant and we must support the voices of those in China who want to experience their human right to freedom of expression and opinion. The purpose of the internet is to share information, communicate, break down barriers, not to be another method of Government control. We would not tolerate censorship by these companies here in Australia, why is it ok for them to operate in this way in China?
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Jesse
20 January 2009, 01:11PM
“We would not tolerate censorship by these companies here in Australia, why is it ok for them to operate in this way in China?”
There is currently a plan by the Rudd government to employ an internet filter here in Australia. This has been pushed through under the guise of protecting us from illegal pornography, however it has been indicated that some legal sites such as ones on euthanasia and anorexia are to be added to a blacklist. Here in Australia we are looking at a very similar scenario to China’s.
For more information look for “Mandatory Internet Filtering” and “No Clean Feed”
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