[x-pubpol] China's Internet Society backs online censorship

[Joly MacFie]

* I already submitted a comment differentiating ISC and ISOC

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/09/internet_society_china_rumour/

Non-governmental organisation the Internet Society has decided to wade into
the murky waters of Chinese online censorship by calling on firms to
increase scrutiny of the content on their sites, as the fall out from
recent coup rumours continues.

In a fairly transparent piece of government propaganda, state-run news
agency Xinhua reported<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-04/08/c_122944898.htm>
that
the Internet Society of China has called on web companies to self-censor
more rigorously in a bid to prevent the spread of harmful rumours.

Web giants Tencent and Sina wereboth
punished<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/02/china_sina_tencent_comments/>
while
16 other sites were closed down by the authorities after they were found
guilty of allowing a rumour about a high level political
coup<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/china_coup_censor_weibo/>
within
the upper ranks of the Communist Party to spread online last month.

Twitter-like services Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo were forced to close the
comment function on their sites for four days in order to purge them of any
references to the rumour.

The Xinhua report said that over 1,000 people have now been arrested as
part of the online crack down and over 200,000 ‘harmful’ messages deleted.

Echoing government sentiments, the Internet Society reportedly claimed that
online rumours can endanger national security and social stability, in
complete disregard for the fact that censoring certain keywords and topics
sometimes actively encourages speculation and misplaced rumour.

As part of its online crack down, the government has reportedly
closed<http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-04-06/news/31300102_1_websites-great-firewall-postings>
several
left-leaning pro-Mao web sites, including Red Flag and Utopia.

Deposed Politburo member Bo Xilai, who was at the centre of speculation
surrounding a coup in Beijing, built his political reputation around a
return to flag-waving, song singing nationalism inspired by the Mao era.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/x-pubpol-isoc-ny.org/attachments/20120410/374bb399/attachment-0001.htm>