Catching Porn in China
Posted on September 29, 2008
Filed Under Apparatchiks, China Internet, China Law |
Both Danwei and chinaSMACK reported on the the PSB’s investigation of a Nanyang man for downloading pornography.
As Danwei noted, the initial fine of RMB1900 was lifted and he was given a stern warning after considerable hubbub (or is hubba-hubba?) on the internet in China.
I’m interested in how the PSB knew he had a pornographic video on his computer. From what I can make out from the story links provided (via the google translate) the police took the PC in question, explaining that they were investigating the illegal dissemination of pornography. They came back two days later and caused Mr. Ren (the owner of the PC and admitted downloader) considerable embarrassment with the administrative fine.
Was Mr. Ren seeding the video via a P2P program and they tracked his IP address? Did they track client connections from the download site? Did they track outgoing connections from his IP address?
Maybe they just got, er, lucky while searching his computer for other reasons.
It’s clear that China attempts to control politically and socially objectionable material on the internet via the supply side; i.e. through the great firewall for external content and regulation for internal content.
But it’s a lot less clear what, if any, efforts are being made to control politically and socially objectionable material from the demand side. Technically it’s not too challenging, it just requires a massive amount of storage and a database to organize data and search through it.
Companies such as phorm work with ISPs in Europe providing exactly this kind of information, but for targeted advertising and marketing. Similar tools could be used in China to hold people responsible for what they see on the internet.
I have no idea what tools may or may not be in place, but this story got me wondering.
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I switched this to English and read a few others from Sina-> from what I saw they were attempting to first check on a workmates computer; Ren Chao Ji turned his in and they searched it and found it without too much extra effort. There was another article on Sina about a Wang Ba owner who got three years jail, and had his computers confiscated after they found porn spread around. I think the biggest objection Chinese had with the deal is that many people have porn on there computers, and the police at random decide to make examples out of people.
If you’ve tried to search for porn related materials on Chinese websites (I’ve never done it), what generally happens is that they are either simply blocked or inaccessible without some extra effort.
Hmmm, so the cops were just poking around. That’s a relief.
Thanks for the update. Do you write for chinaSMACK? Fantastic site.