Chinese Take Down 13,000+ Porn Sites; Phone Porn Endures
by Kathee Brewer
YNOT – Since Dec. 9, when the Chinese government began offering bounties of as much as 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) to citizens who report pornographic websites, authorities have removed from the Chinese web 13,175 sites containing “obscene” adult content, according to the official news service Xinhua. Of those, 3,015 were reported by surfers; the remaining 10,160 were uncovered by screening efforts headed by the China Internet Network Information Center, Xinhua reported Tuesday.
Most of the now-banned domains were located outside the country's designated domain, dot-cn, the registry for which is administered by the People's Republic. The CNNIC continues to scan about 13 million dot-cn domains. So far, 2,618 dot-cn websites have been removed from the web for harboring pornographic content, Xinhua reported.
The government’s efforts to clean up the mobile airwaves have not been quite as successful, according to China Central Television. After a one-month crackdown aimed at “purifying the environment” by eradicating porn from high-speed 3G mobile data networks, phone porn remains available with shocking ease, the official television network reported.
Part of the problem lies with the carriers themselves. A CCTV investigation determined the portals operated by China Unicom and China Telecom — the country’s second- and third-largest carriers, respectively — are not registered with CNNIC, as required by law.
“No registration means, according to our regulation, these websites should be shut down,” Beijing Bureau of Telecom Management Director of Market Supervision Zhang Xingyun told CCTV. “This is exactly what our supervision bodies are cracking down on. According to regulation, these are illegal commercial operations.”
Authorities believe China’s three licensed mobile carriers may be dragging their feet about compliance with applicable law, especially registration, because the sale of “unapproved” content helps bolster sagging revenues. China Telecom’s third quarter 2009 revenues reportedly slid by almost half, to 3 billion yuan from 5.6 billion yuan during the same period last year. China Unicom’s profits during the first three quarters of 2009 reportedly were only 60 percent of the profits the company earned during the first three quarters of 2008.
China Mobile, the country’s largest carrier, saw its profits grow, but only by 1.8 percent, according to published reports.
Kathee Brewer is an award-winning news, feature and opinion writer, editor and photojournalist. She has participated in and covered the development of the Web since 1995.
