On porn and technology - the WTO column

(Tomorrow at Chinabiz)

Shanghai - When the official newswire Xinhua announced that China would use the latest technology in its ongoing People’s War against Pornography, I woke up from my little summer nap behind my computer.
The war is mostly raging online, since traditionally porn has been worldwide the most used service and has been from the very beginning the only only financial viable business model. Why should the Chinese be different than the rest of the world?
More than 700 websites deemed pornographic have been closed, over three hundred people have been arrested, and one woman has been sentenced for earning a 30,000 renminbi by running a member-based webcam event. That is considerably more arrests than all the political cyber dissidents together, and this in just one campaign. The foreign organizations that are normally up in arms when free speech is involved stayed remarkably quiet this time, they obviously shied away from condemning this infringement of free speech.
My principle about free speech is that you do not have to like what is being said, to be in favor of free speech. But for pornography and the hundreds of people waiting in jail for their trial we apply double standards.
In a deadly blow to the evil of the flesh the censors also dusted off their internet filters, I discovered while I was preparing for my inspection tour of the first sex toy exhibition in Shanghai. When I used Google to look op ‘sex toy China’, my screen turned blank. When I changed my search into ‘adult toy China’, a wealth of useful information slipped onto my screen – potentially shocking for the inaugurated.
This high-tech devise also blocked searches for ‘sex education’ and of course also closely related subjects like ‘sextant’, but ‘fellatio’ and other more exotic words were not banned. It is all a matter of drawing the line and that is no easy task.
The outside world is rather concerned when China uses its internet filters and even the founders of Google had to deal with questions from the magazine Playboy last Friday about their dealings with the Chinese censor. They denied there were any dealings. I believe them: Google would have done a better job.
I’m not going to say here that the People’s War against Pornography was a failure; that might be too early. But in terms of technology the exercise was rather primitive. According to the Chinese media the most effective instrument being used was the telephone as thousands of concerned citizens called the authorities with information on pornographic sites.
Now, that is what I call effective, but not very sophisticated, a telephone. Last week China signed a deal with Zimbabwe, offering the government in this African country assistance in filtering the internet. Zimbabwe will get a big black box that will make noises and do nothing. And they will get a phone to accept calls from concerned citizens.
The internet has been shaped by engineers who tell me every time they can solve every problem. They should become more modest: technology is not a panacea for every problem. In the case of internet I believe only education can help, every technical barrier will be circumvented.

Fons Tuinstra