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Business News Digital Legal
China to step up net censorship
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 6 January 2009
The Chinese government is seemingly preparing to step up its internet censorship activities amid their increasing fears the growing popularity of the net in the country could reduce the government’s ability to control the flow of information to the people.
Officials are reportedly particularly nervous that, with the economy slowing and the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre upcoming, dissidents in the country will be even more motivated to use the internet to promote their political causes.
Officially China’s Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies yesterday announced a campaign “to clean up a vulgar current on the internet and name and expose a large number of [websites] violating public morality and harming the physical and mental health of youth and young people”.
It named 19 internet operators, including popular search engines Baidu and Google, which it said had failed to “swiftly purge vulgar content and ignored warnings from censors”. Official censors are expected to get more power and resources to aid their fight against such content and companies, with threats that persistent offenders will face closure being hinted.
While officially designed to combat “vulgar” content on the net, it is widely thought officials will be able to use their increased power to step up political censorship.
Alas, for the record and movie companies in the West more bothered about the rampant internet piracy in the country – aided by Baidu and Google search engines which specifically link to illegal content sources – the country’s net regulators seem less concerned about violations in that domain.
