Archive for the ‘China’ Category

Antidote for Internet Censorship: The Free Market

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

The use of proxy servers by web surfers to facilitate anonymous unrestricted internet access is becoming a growth industry.

Busnessweek reports on one such service, called AnchorFree.

David Gorodyansky started AnchorFree in 2005 to help make Web surfing free and private in coffee shops, airports, and other places with wireless hotspots. He never predicted that five years later his company’s biggest growth area would be people seeking ways to skirt government censors in China.

If the war on consensual “crimes” has taught us anything, it’s that it is almost impossible to eradicate an industry that is in high demand.  Governments will go bankrupt before they will ever eliminate the sex, drug, or gambling industries.  Likewise, the thirst for information is unquenchable.  The free market is powerful and it always delivers eventually.

AnchorFree, based in Mountain View, Calif., runs a free, ad-supported proxy service called Hotspot Shield. Users download an application from AnchorFree’s website that connects them to the Internet via a virtual private network, or VPN, similar to what telecommuters use to log onto an office network. Most computers connected to the Internet are assigned a unique number, or IP address, to route users quickly to the right destination. AnchorFree’s software assigns an anonymous address that can be traced back only to the company and not to the user, according to Gorodyansky. “We send you on a virtual trip outside China,” he says.

The fact that the servers are located in the U.S. certainly puts them out of reach of the Chinese government, but it doesn’t make for a warm fuzzy feeling among U.S. web surfers given the government’s boundless enthusiasm for monitoring  telecommunications traffic through legal and extra legal strategies.  As internet censorship spreads in western democracies, foreign proxy servers will undoubtedly take on a more significant role in defeating governmental efforts to control information.

Posted in Big Brother is Watching You, Censorship, China, United States | Comments Off

Sex workers in China protest prostitution laws

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

According to the Guardian:

A crackdown on China’s fast-growing sex industry has prompted a backlash, with sex workers demonstrating for the legalisation of prostitution and an outcry about the treatment of women suspects.

The protest in Wuhan, central Hubei province, is thought to have been the first of its kind in the country. The small group of women asked onlookers to sign a petition calling for an end to discrimination against sex workers and the scrapping of anti-prostitution laws.

Of course, we don’t see activists campaigning for the legalization of prostitution in “the land of the free” where government regulation of sex between consenting adults is a foregone conclusion.

So how big is the prostitution industry in China? No one knows for sure, but there’s no end to those  willing to pull a wild guess out of their ass:

The World Health Organisation has estimated the country has 4 million sex workers, but academics have suggested the figure is higher.

Moralists and do-gooders who crusade to stamp out sex work commonly cloak their efforts in the guise of saving sex workers from the ravages of the industry.  But, even the most cursory examination shows their reckless disregard for those very people, forcing them into the shadows occupied by the criminal drug pushing underground where violence and risky behavior are a way of life.

[Activist Ye Haiyan], who tweets and blogs under the name Hooligan Sparrow, said the police campaign was harming the health of workers. She launched the Chinese Women’s Rights Workshop, distributing condoms and Aids-prevention pamphlets to brothels in Wuhan. But she said that sex workers were now reluctant to use condoms for fear they would be used as evidence of prostitution.

Well, that certainly sounds familiar.  Condoms can be considered probable cause for arrest in some major U.S. cities as well.

Let’s face it, the U.S. should make at least some minimal effort to actually be free or it should drop that line from the national anthem.  Or perhaps just change it to “the land of the hypocrites“.

Posted in China, Prostitution, United States | Comments Off

Japanese porn star defeats Chinese censorship

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Japanese porn star, Sora Aoi is a favorite with Chinese men even though her movies are banned there.

I found this article in wizbangpop.com interesting because it seems to suggest that the First Amendment doesn’t include an exception for obscenity, which is such a rare event that it deserves mention.  The concept that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment is an invention of the U.S. Supreme court, but it is largely accepted by the American public without challenge.

The article further explains the Christian religious connection to censorship laws in both the U.S. and Japan.

But, in both the United States and Japan, it was an attempt to use law to enforce religious values that was the main force behind efforts to control adult oriented entertainment. General Douglas MacArthur felt that forcing Christian religious values on the Japanese would make them less warlike, although the history of religion in the world has been largely a very violent history. The current war with terrorism around the world is largely a war by some Muslim religious extremists to force their religious views on the Christian world. And Catholics and Protestants continue to have icy relations in Northern Ireland. Rather than offering freedom to mankind, religion largely has become another tool of repression and fueled wars and conflicts. Instead of beliefs in myths and legends fueling hope for many persons, religion often ruined their lives instead and allowed the powerful to rule over the weak.

If any thing is plain to the casual observer, it’s the fact that religion has established a tradition of opposing free expression and they are certainly a powerful force in suppressing pornography.  Any  freedom of expression that exists in the United States owes much to the porn industry which has always been active in the front lines opposing those whose goal it is to suppress ideas they don’t like.

There are some forces that even government can’t control.  One could say that Sora Aoi is harness those forces against totalitarian China and, so far, she’s winning (and China is probably a better place for it).

Posted in Censorship, China, Japan, Obscenity, Pornography | Comments Off

Congress planning to fight internet censorship

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

In certain other countries, at least.  Expecting government to protect free speech is a bit like expecting the wolf to protect the hens.  The U.S. has invented numerous exceptions to the First Amendment over the years, so the idea that they can be the guardian of internet freedom worldwide is nothing short of preposterous.

All the lofty rhetoric is really just a disguise for U.S. attempts to interfere with the internal affairs of “unfriendly” countries and destabilize their governments by fomenting popular protest.     If the Obama administration were serious about supporting internet freedom, they would be also be voicing concerns over censorship initiatives in Australia and France (just to name two).

The U.S.  government is no friend to internet freedom. It supports censorship it approves of, such as that spreading through western democracies, and deplores censorship in places like China and Iran where stirring the pot in the name of freedom diverts popular attention from urgent crisis-level problems facing the government at home.

Regardless of their cheer leading, government is the most serious enemy of free speech citizens face because only government has the power to use the threat of force to prevent expression.  And all governments are motivated to support speech they approve of and suppress speech they disapprove of.  The truth of the matter is that they will suppress just as much speech as they can get away with.

Posted in Australia, Censorship, China, France, Iran | Comments Off

Capitol Hill Conference on Internet Censorship

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Hudson Institute to Host Capitol Hill Conference on ‘Tearing Down the Walls of Internet Censorship’

Who: Michael Horowitz, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow
Mark Palmer, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary
Mariam Memarsadeghi, Iranian human rights activist
Yang Jianli, founder of Initiatives for China

Perhaps they should invite someone from Australia and France, since those democracies seem hellbent on following in the steps of Iran and China (except France and Australia are doing it to “save the children”, so it’s ok).

Posted in Censorship, China, Iran, United States | Comments Off

Cyber attackers retaliate against proposed Australian censorship

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

A group known as “Anonymous” has launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Australian government websites this week in protest of government plans to censor porn content that features female ejaculation or small breasted women.

I’m starting to see a lot of stories from news sources worldwide that show an increasing concern that what is taking place in Australia will spread to Europe and the United States.    Clearly, Australia seems to be leading the way to a Western clampdown that is alarming to internet users who have become accustomed to an internet unburdened by government control.   Meanwhile more news items are simultaneously reporting that China’s internet restrictions are a result of their fears that free internet access could destabilize their government.  They will not risk another Tank Man episode occurring.

Controlling porn might be the pretense, but I think there’s no doubt that governments around the world, east and west, are eying the internet as a mechanism which, under the right conditions, could ignite explosive unrest on a national scale before they could do anything to stop it.

The global spread of the graphic footage of the death of Neda Soltani during the Iranian election protests of 2009 generated near instantaneous rabid international condemnation of the Iranian government.

Nothing gets a free pass with the public as much as a crusade to protect children, so you can bet that governments everywhere will leverage off of that fact.  The scourge of pornography will we be the one thing they will all agree needs to be suppressed and much of the world population will enthusiastically support it.

Posted in Australia, Censorship, Child Pornography, China, Iran, United States | Comments Off

Sunday Links

Sunday, January 10th, 2010
  • New York is paying $35,000 to a grandmother falsely charged with prostitution.  According to NYDailyNews.com, “The city – which has paid out $80,000 to settle four federal suits against Officer Sean Spencer – admitted he trumped up the case.”
  • Maybe we need a political party like this in the U.S.  After all, Republicans and Democrats are both fully vested in the business of sexual morality fear mongering.

  • I guess if any western country needs a rebellion against government censorship it’s Australia after a 2008 exhibit (pictures can be viewed here – NSFW) by photographer Bill Hensen was shut down and a panel of “experts” (consisting mostly of prosecutors and cops) determined that mere artistic merit was no longer sufficient justification for free expression.    This general topic deserves a more thorough discussion in a separate posting.
  • A Canadian study suggests women may have lower sex drive than men because of guilt.  I wonder if that’s related to the social attitudes that a women with multiple partners is labeled a slut (bad) while a male is considered a stud (good).  If so, shouldn’t women be really really pissed off about that?
  • A U.S. Justice Dept study revealed a “very high rate of staff sexual misconduct” against juvenile inmates in state prisons.  So I guess we should start seeing a flood of convictions of prison employees and subsequent growth in the respective sex offender registries, right? I think I’ll forgo holding my breath for that. (link stolen from theagitator.com)
  • You have to laugh at the notion that China, notorious for suppression freedom of expression, is having to resort to stealing censorship software from the U.S.

Posted in Art, Australia, Canada, Censorship, Child Molestation, Child Pornography, China, New York | Comments Off