The Internet is a wild place- on here you can do and say just about anything you want to. There are a few rules coming into play, like the recent disclosure law stating that bloggers and related online posters need to disclose if they have been compensated by companies or products they are writing about. And of course there are rules where you have to pay for the provider to get the Internet to your house or laptop or whatever- but in general, once you are on there, you can say or post whatever you’d like.

And a lot of people do, especially with porn. Easily one of the most lucrative online businesses, porn has been expanding since the ‘90s and now accounts for 12% of all websites and recorded  
$200 billion in 2008 online retail sales. Wow. 

But in China, porn is not ok. (Other things that are not ok there are Youtube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, and Chinese versions of all of these types of content sharing web destinations.)

In 2009 Chinese police arrested thousands of people as part of an on-going and deep assault on the porn industry there. China argues that banned pornography is overwhelming their Internet and, according to Reuters, “threatening the emotional health of children.”

It’s wild to hear the Chinese objection to pornography is that it is bad for kids to look at. After arresting 5,394 people in 2009 (4x the number of people arrested in 2008), the Ministry of Public Security says that they will do even more in 2010!

The Ministry called on Chinese Internet providers to: "Strengthen monitoring of information. Press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology."

There are 360 million Internet users in China (wow!)

Of course, you have to wonder how far something like this will go. Will China start blocking or arresting people for creating sites that are contrary to their government? How far are they willing to go with this attack and what will the punishments be for, say, illegal porn on the web?  The Communist Party in power in China is afraid of the power of the Internet, and afraid that their own ability to control the media that people consume. A fair thing to be afraid of, I would say, when you run things the way the Chinese government does.

It will be interesting to see if the uptick in arrests for porn-related crimes correlates to a drop in the amount of porn on the Chinese Internet- admittedly a tough thing to figure out. Or is it similar to the drug trade in an inner-city? As in, when one guy gets arrested or put in jail, somebody else just steps in and starts doing what he was doing. Will arrests do anything at all?

And then there’s just the bottom line that China is not going to win this battle. You can’t keep everything undesirable out of the hands of children, or off the visuals on the Internet. And you can’t arrest everybody, China.

Photo Credit: flickadoi (via Flicker under CDL)