According to this AP report, Chinese officials are now encouraging the entire population to rat each other out to stamp out online porn.
“Some 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 Web sites shut down with the help of public tips since July,” the story notes. The Ministry of Public Security gives people rewards of $60 to $240 for becoming good little servants of the state and infomring on their fellow citizens.
It’s all quite sad, but also somewhat silly. How far can this approach really take them? As many authors noted in the last book I co-edited, Who Rules the Net? Internet Governance and Jurisdiction, these geographic-based cyber-regulatory regimes are doomed to fail in the long-run. Barring a government mandate requiring all Net traffic to flow through centralized state servers (which is the approach Saudia Arabia has adopted), there’s no way to entirely bottle up the free flow of information (especially porn!) As wireless & satellite technologies proliferate, this will certainly be the case. But even in a predominately wireline world, the censors will have their hands full.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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