China: Have Porn SMS, Will Travel — To Jail

from the bad-boys-bad-boys-whatcha-gonna-do dept

Several months ago, Chinese officials said they’d begin blocking text messages that weren’t socially beneficial. Now, they’re prepared to go a step further, tossing people that send sexually explicit messages in jail for nine days and fining them about $60. Hopefully all those Cyrano SMS services are keeping things clean — although putting people that forward stupid spam in jail might not be such a bad idea.


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Comments on “China: Have Porn SMS, Will Travel — To Jail”

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8 Comments
Posterlogo says:

hmm

Your commentary highlights an interesting conundrum. People complain about spam, but when China tries to block it…and goes a little bit further, everyone is up in arms. I am always for erring on the side of freedom. There are ways to prosecute spam without outlawing “bad” messages. And if that prosecution is not that efficient, so be it. Spam exists only because people click on it.

Ben McNelly (user link) says:

No Subject Given

The above post has been flagged as spam by TDbotAdmin….

But seriously, this is not a “spam” issue, although its directly related as far as we are concerned. For people in China its just the norm for the government to decide that a offence will decrease if jailtime is associated with it. If your RTA you can see that apparently there are quite a few things including peeping toms and “football Hooligans” that will get your rear placed in jail.

Clair Ching (user link) says:

China, SMS, private lives

This is just going too far, I think.

I am all for decency and propriety but people have to learn how to govern themselves. And there has to be freedom of speech. I think that repressive laws such as this might make the people rebel and just plain hate how things work.

Then again, if it’s a kind of discipline they want to enforce, I think that making policies like that is just too extreme. How would they draw the lines? That is one of the things I am concerned with.

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