China is really cracking down on pornography. I had no idea it was even considered a problem in the country. An AP story shows some valuable insight on how the country is dealing with what they see as a growing problem.

 

The Ministry of Public Security says the anti-pornography campaign will target cyber strip shows and sexually explicit images, stories and audio and video clips, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

"The boom of pornographic content on the Internet has contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds," Zhang Xinfeng, a deputy public security minister, was quoted as saying Thursday.

 

I suppose the country will easily be able to crack down on domestic porn sites but they will obviously not be able to stop sites outside the country. They can however block these sites. China is well-known to block access to many sites already -- adding porn to the list shouldn’t be so difficult.

 

Certainly by the standards of the west a recent sentence of life in prison for operating a pornography site seems rather harsh. It will be interesting to see if this country is ever really able to eradicate porn on its citizen’s computers.

 

Web users will likely always find a way to access online images and videos… The question is whether the punishment for viewing porn will ever be as severe as hosting it.