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China Rebukes Google, Baidu for Not Filtering Pornographic Content

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:07:03 -0600

The Chinese government lambasted 19 Internet companies for not doing enough to curb pornography on the internet. It published the names of 19 companies, including Google and premier Chinese search engine Baidu, in an online statement on Monday. The Chinese government says that it wants a cleaner internet that can facilitate the proper development of minors.

The Chinese government also explained as to why each of the 19 companies figured in the list. For instance, Google is on the list as it hasn’t placed any filters to prevent pornographic content from appearing on its image search website.

Although Google had said in its riposte on Tuesday that the search engine enjoys no control over “the billions of pages in our index,” China’s Xinhua News Agency is reporting that all websites that were rebuked by the Chinese government, including Google and Baidu, have submitted their apologies.

Congressmen Rally behind Free, Porn-free Internet Proposal

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:02:28 -0500

Two Congressmen (Democrats) have come out in support of the proposed auction of spectrum in the Advanced Wireless Services 3 region. The spectrum can only be used for providing porn-free wireless broadband throughout the country sans any access fees, according to the proposal. The two Democrats, Edward Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) professed their support for the proposal in a letter they sent to Federal Communications Commission’s chairman Kevin Martin.

They admonished the detractors of the proposal for objecting to the AWS-3 spectrum auction. The two Congressmen don’t believe that the TDD technology that will be used for the Pan-American wireless broadband network will jeopardize services in the AWS-1 region. T-Mobile had objected to any auction in the 2155-2180 MHz spectrum range as it holds AWS-1 spectrum. The duo also supports the proposed auction as it is worried about U.S loosing the broadband-penetration wars to other countries.

Free Wireless broadband certainly seems a step in the right direction. However, the question is whether suppression of pornographic material would encroach upon the right to freedom of speech.

Image Credit: Katara

News in Porn Law

Erin Simon — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:09:01 -0500

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this week struck down a statute imposing strict record-keeping requirements on pornographers. The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2257, required producers and distributors of sexually explicit material to keep proof of the name and age of every person depicted therein (and even to note their aliases, nicknames, and maiden names!) and attach to every porn item a notice of where such information may be found. This was all ostensibly in the name of making it easier to catch and prosecute child pornography, but what it did was substantially burden legitimate smut-peddlers, especially websites that act as conduits for large volumes of porn produced by other people.

The Sixth Circuit therefore decided that the law was overly broad to reach its ostensible target of child pornography and intruded too far on the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. The First Amendment prohibits the government from regulating speech (read as: anything remotely communicative, including pictures of naked people) based on its content, which this law did. The court also held that porn participants have First Amendment rights to remain anonymous – good news for all of us on the internets, not just the adult performers.

The statute stays in force, however, everywhere outside the Sixth Circuit, which consists of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The internet and our federal court system being what they are, that means everyone online, whose porn can be seen outside those four states, will have to keep complying with the law until the Supreme Court has its say.

Thumbnail photo courtesy of hansol.