Dear China: It's Not Google That Is Producing Or Hosting Porn
from the understanding-how-the-internet-works-is-useful dept
We've noted in the past that the Great Firewall of China basically works via a threat model. Basically, the government tells ISPs that if they fail to block "undesirable" content, then they'll get in trouble. Then, they may get notes about what type of content is "undesirable" but for the most part it's left up to them to figure it out, but if any "bad stuff" gets through, they know they can get in trouble, so they tend to overblock. Earlier this year, China warned various search engines that they too needed to comply with such rules, and that it was upset that people could find "bad stuff" via those search engines.Apparently Google didn't pay enough attention, because the Chinese gov't has "disabled" parts of Google in China because (they claim) people can still access pornographic content (and other "undesirable" content, one imagines). However, what's interesting is the assumption that links on Google represent content Google has control over. As one of our readers, Ben, points out, it appears that the Chinese gov't regularly implies that Google "owns" the content that it links to:
The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, had criticized the search engine for its erotic content and threatened punishment from the government. The group had said that Google had already been warned twice, in January and April, about its content.And there you have the problem. The content isn't Google's and it makes no sense to claim that it is or to punish Google's spiders for finding and indexing it.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, search engines
Companies: google
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there is plenty of porn directly on google - see google groups, example or on google videos (search for porn... dirty cartoon from playboy is first on the list).
Google also caches all the pages - so they have plenty of porn on hand.
Just as importantly, and this is where this matches up with things like torrent sites, Google makes it easy for people to find porn who otherwise wouldn't know where to look. They could type random domain names and hope, or they can go to google and type "hardcore porn" and get what they are looking for.
No, google doesn't have that much porn directly on their site, but they are a great way to find it. Remove that, and porn is already that much more scarce.
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not everywhere works with US laws
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It would just be easier to give these Chinese "Filtering" organizations the ability to remove things from the Google.cn indexes and keep it from being reindexed, that way people can still find the good without Google being blocked for the bad.
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Google is teh pron, bad bad bad
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See, now if you guys actually would read... *sigh*
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Child porn sites
Surely, if they can do that with child porn to satisfy the American sense of sensibility and law of the land, they could find a way to deal with pornography in general which would satisfy the sensibilities and law of the land that the Chinese government has.
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Re: Child porn sites
While I do think that Google probably has some mechanism of dealing with child porn, I wouldn't attribute the complete lack of it on Google hits to this filtering at all. There are ways of preventing your stuff from appearing on Google, and I guarantee you that child pornographers DO NOT want to be found so easily.
Run-of-mill porn, however, is a LOT more plentiful and it has no qualms about being found (at least not by adults). Filtering that deluge is a lot more difficult.
By the way, the anti-porn sensibilities are clearly not those of the Chinese. Just those of their repressive, controlling, totalitarian government.
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Do you think Chinese has less morality than your decent American citizens?
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Re: Child porn sites
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They probably assume Google operates on the same "back room" principle that they do (and maybe Google does). Baidu has 75% of the Chinese market and Google is likely to write a few filters to make sure they can stay in the game.
Somebody short Baidu stock so I can live vicariously through you and rejoice when it plummets (its inevitable).
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Censorship
Porn, Hate Speach, Comontary, Family Photos, from anyones point of view anything can become offensive.. China is just attempting once again to control freedom in the country by being so over the top protective they are breeding fear globaly.. anyone who wants something bad enough can get it it will be the majority of people who are not going to be aloud to enjoy there freedoms and will pay for China's fears... If you don't like it and don't want it filter your self, make the choice your self, don't let other tell you what you can do or not because then you will just end up with nothing.. no freedom, no choice, no life,
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I wonder how much porn is made by the results of human trafficing (enslaved women) vs prostitution?
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Search engines should be held responsible for content.
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Search engines should be held responsible for content.
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China should be held responsible for suppressing freedom.
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Facebook Developers
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Porn is made in china
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In China, there are even more, except they call them biao ge.
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China
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