Latest Business Model For Record Labels: Get Paid For Giving Consumers Rights They Already Have

China Plans To Purify, Not 'Censor,' The Internet

from the one-way-to-do-things dept

Wed, Jan 24th 2007 3:07pm — Mike Masnick

Despite tons of evidence that China censors the internet with a huge bureaucracy of folks watching out over the internet, country officials still insist that no censorship takes place. Technically, they might be accurate, because while they don't specifically ban sites, they threaten ISPs that don't ban anything "bad" (without clearly defining what "bad" is) and then let the ISPs act as censors for them. The latest, though, is that China's Communist Party Chief is saying that the country needs to "purify" the internet, which apparently is different than censorship. Hu Jintao is apparently upset that the large and rapidly growing Chinese internet population is "often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons." If purifying the internet means filling it with Marxist lessons and getting rid of salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal, he's got quite a challenge ahead of him.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

misanthropic humanist, 24 Jan 2007 @ 4:11pm

censorship is censorship
We have private companies doing the censoring, they have a more organised command and control structure. I fail to see the difference.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jatopian, 24 Jan 2007 @ 4:17pm

Why purify that?
What's wrong with the Chinese viewing salacious pictures? They'll soon have a massive excess of males, and legal porn is far better than sex crime. And bloodthirsty games are an outlet for frustration that the leadership will surely inspire.
These questions are rhetorical, of course. It's common knowledge that the Chinese leadership is fucknuts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2007 @ 4:34pm
  
  Re: Why purify that?
  FUCK YOU ASIAN HATER YOU BIIIITCH!! BURN
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sohrab, 24 Jan 2007 @ 7:54pm

damn and I thought The Internet was for Porn
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2007 @ 9:04pm

What I suggest, since the usa likes blowing things up anyways, is that 2 million cruise missiles are sent to all Chinese government facilities and government official homes. Do it sneakily though and get ready to emp some nukes/planes carrying nukes. That would take care of that hole china government issue. Might as well take out Korea too though, never know they might use it as an excuse to nuke up the us of a. The only reason that would be bad is there would be a lot of riots and Canada might get a lot of the fall out. The plan is ready, guess somebody just needs to convince Bush, I'm sure all it'd take is a little bush he seems pretty easily amused after all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ipanema, 24 Jan 2007 @ 9:59pm

Ha! Time to review the red book again! Move over porn!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Louis, 25 Jan 2007 @ 3:59am

Marx
I always get Karl Marx confused with one of the three stooges. I believe the problem with China is that not enough people are toking the herb there. If more were people were toking they´d chill and appreciate the humour of Karl Rove I mean Karl Marx.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Kazi, 6 Jun 2007 @ 10:58pm

tooking china Lingoes
Speak china Lingoes
[ link to this | view in chronology ]