BEIJING – With all the legislative talk about porn being a “public health crisis,” some who work within the adult entertainment industry (and some who enjoy the products made by the industry, as well) are understandably nervous about the prospect of a government crackdown on porn, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of the Meese Report and the Reagan Administration’s numerous federal obscenity prosecutions.

If there’s one thing on which pornographers and anti-porn activists would agree, however, it’s that the world of porn has changed substantially since the ’80s — and nothing has changed it more than the advent of the internet as porn’s primary distribution channel.

Even if one believes banning porn or severely limiting access to it is a good idea, the state of modern technology raises an important question: Is it remotely possible to ban porn in the internet age?

Even in countries which have nothing like the First Amendment presiding over their code of law, squelching the distribution of porn is a severe challenge.

Take China, for instance: Despite the country’s much-ballyhooed “Great Firewall,” the government’s efforts to block porn repeatedly have been circumvented. No matter how many platforms, websites, studios and companies the Chinese authorities shut down and lock up, Chinese citizens determined to consume porn continue to find a way to do so.

“Censors have closed down many services in recent years, but in a constant game of cat and mouse, providers and users have found other ways to share adult content, whether it’s self-made or pirated from the likes of Japan’s 1pondo Studio,” Zheping Huang wrote in a recent piece for Quartz. “Indeed, the development of the nation’s online porn industry mirrors the overall development of China’s ‘intranet,’ as its tightly controlled internet is often jokingly called.”

If you’re a porn producer, or someone who works for one, and you’ve ever tried to rein in illicit online distribution of your company’s work, then you already have a sense of what the Chinese government is up against in its effort to stamp out porn: An endless game of whack-a-mole, in which the “mole” has a distinct advantage by way of the easily replicated and effortlessly redistributed nature of digital content.

Of course, for those who do get caught up in the Chinese government’s porn crackdown, the ease of someone else picking up where they left off probably isn’t too comforting, considering the severity of the punishments they face.

“In October 2006 authorities shut down Erotica Juneday, which charged its VIP members 3,999 yuan (then around $490) a year,” Huang observed, “and sentenced founder Chen Hui to life in prison.”

While the potential punishments for obscenity crimes in the U.S. are harsh, it’s highly unlikely anyone running a porn forum will ever receive a life sentence for doing so, assuming the content they distribute doesn’t involve minors.

If the Chinese government hoped the sentence given to Chen Hui would serve as a major deterrent to other would-be porn entrepreneurs in the country, the 11 years since the shutdown of Erotica Juneday must have been a source of significant disappointment.

“In a little over two years, livestreaming apps have grown into a $4.3 billion industry in China, thanks in no small part to erotically charged content,” noted Huang.  “Every day and night, thousands of young Chinese women appear on-camera to sing, dance, slurp soup and flirt with a predominantly male audience. Viewers pay to give these ‘anchors’ virtual gifts, with the platforms getting a share of the revenue.”

Predictably, the Chinese government has extended its game of erotic whack-a-mole to livestreaming platforms, establishing laws requiring the streaming services to monitor their content and prosecuting livestream anchors who fail to comply with regulations. According to Huang, the government has already taken punitive action against more than 30,000 anchors and opened criminal investigations into several platforms since the start of the year.

Equally predictably, the continued crackdown has not brought an end to the conduct the government is trying to stamp out.

“Daring female anchors are known to flash their nipples and ask viewers to friend them on WeChat and QQ, where they can offer one-on-one video calls — for a small fee, of course, paid through WeChat Wallet,” Huang wrote.

If the Chinese government, unfettered by constitutional guarantees of free speech (not to mention similar guarantees of substantive due process and protections against cruel and unusual punishment) can’t rid its already heavily censored internet of porn, does anyone really think the American government could achieve the same?

Of course, the impossibility of achieving a desired end state through Draconian legislation and overzealous law enforcement has never stopped a government from trying to get there — and causing all sorts of unnecessary and unwarranted carnage along the way.

This is the real risk of the ongoing campaign to label porn a public health crisis — not that it will lead to an effective ban on porn, but the prospect of creating another ill-conceived, unintended-consequence-laden “war” of the sort we’ve already fought far too long, at a cost far too high.

Image © Uros Ravbar.