Chinese Gov't Scolds Baidu For Not Doing The Impossible
from the you-must-block-all-of-these-pictures dept
Over the last few weeks, there's been a big scandal in Hong Kong concerning photos of certain celebrities caught in various states of undress and various "adult" activities. The police in Hong Kong have had some trouble dealing with this, apparently first claiming that anyone possessing these images was breaking the law and then bungling an investigation into who leaked the images. Now, to top that off, the Chinese government is "censuring" the popular search engine Baidu for allowing people to find these controversial images. It's not entirely clear how the government expects Baidu to simply know that these pictures are illegal and to stop people from finding them, but as we've seen, that's the method by which the Chinese government enforces its censorship -- not by explicitly stating what needs to be banned, but by telling search engines and ISPs that they'll get in trouble if they allow anything "bad" to get through. That leads to aggressively blocking anything that the ISPs or search engines feel might get them in trouble. Of course, to make that work, the government occasionally does need to publicly scold some of the firms for failing, even in doing the impossible, as that gives increased motivation for everyone else to just keep on blocking stuff.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.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, hong kong, sex scandal
Companies: baidu
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I mean come on, there going to see a naked body someday.
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Re:
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enough with chinese stupidity
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naked body is not the problem
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Shameless Censorship
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Good Luck
We can discuss politics all you like, but those are the rules the Chinese government put down.
@ Heidi... you are assuming that they should be so lucky.
@ Johnkad freedom of expression isn't that free at all, the Chinese are just honest about it.
@james you might have a point there.
Good luck to anyone that tries to work the Chinese market. I believe that Baidu have done an amazing job so far. However, the extent of their enforced censorship should be concern for us all because I have no doubt that the rest of the governments will be sure to start enforcing them in the near future - for our own protection ofcourse!
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Morons
It's like when someone may or may not be 100% delighted with the oppressive regime in Russia. They get murdered by the government. If you don't snitch, you get murdered by the government, too. It's like those countries that kill you for not being Muslim, or for not being Muslim enough if you are Muslim. It's crazy that these ego-maniacs don't get assassinated within a few days of starting these unbelievable regimes. They should all have their malibu kens taken away until they learn to play nice. Silly little boys.
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Chinese Gov.
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