China cracks down on Google porn
China has ordered Google to disable several key functions on the local edition of the search engine after accusing it of failing to control access to pornographic sites. But it appears Google is only partially complying with the demands.
According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Google has been told to remove links to any site based outside of China. That follows criticism yesterday by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center that Google was not following national laws requiring it to filter offensive material and was “disseminating pornography and vulgar information.”
At the time of writing, Google appeared not to have followed this demand, with foreign sites still available through search engines. It’s possible the firm has tweaked the system to remove the links for users searching from a Chinese IP address, but there are no reports from the country that this is the case.
However, it does appear Google has followed orders to switch off the feature by which typing a term brings up suggested keywords. This follows Chinese news reports which showed that this could lead to innocent searches bringing up suggestions of more explicit terms. Reporters demonstrated that searching for “erzi”, the Chinese term for “boy”, brought up a suggested search term which roughly translates as “illicit mother-son relations”.
Google has not made any reference to the changes on its official blog. It’s not officially confirmed receiving any demands to block searches, but does say it met with officials yesterday. In an e-mail to PCWorld the firm said it was reviewing its services in the country and carrying out a “substantial engineering effort.”
Google was among 19 firms condemned by the Chinese government in January for not blocking links to adult content on overseas websites. Chinese websites are already barred from carrying suggestive content.
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