Pornography and Freedom of Speech

This is a followup to my earlier posting about Internet Filtering. Promoters (i.e. sellers) of pornographic material have long argued that banning or restricting pornography is in violation of their freedom of speech/freedom of press. However, it has been my experience that the pornography industry has gone out of their way to push pornographic content into the faces of people who would very much rather not see it. If cigarette companies put nicotine in our drinking water, we'd be furious. People have a right to choose whether they want to smoke cigarettes, and we wouldn't put up with such underhanded tactics to addict the masses.

The fact is, pornography is an addictive substance, which addicts people by sight, rather than having to be taken into their bodies. By making it appear on non-pornographic websites, the pornography industry is seeking to addict people who did not want to get involved with pornography in the first place. Rather than promoting our choice to seek their wares, they are trying to take away our choice not to. They are not respecting our rights, and cannot rightly pretend that they care about us. I see no reason to respect their "freedom of expression" if they cannot respect others' freedom from repression.

Now that I've said that, I feel it is important to point out how China is seeking to use the battle against pornography as a front for really restricting freedom of the press. Seemingly out of nowhere, they've suddenly ramped up a supposed anti-pornography campaign recently.

According to an article in the New York Times:

The same public security agencies charged with fighting pornography are responsible for suppressing illegal political activity, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch. The government’s statistics for seizures of illegal publications tend to include both pornographic and political documents, he noted.

Stealing code from U.S. companies, they threw together a slipshod piece of internet filtering software, announcing that the software would have to be added to all computers sold in China starting July 1.

Then they started a smear campaign to make it look like Google is spreading smut across their glorious nation. Someone in Beijing arranged to enter the search term "abnormal relationship between son and mother" a whole lot starting just a few days ago, in order to make it a popular term. That way, when they typed "son" into the search engine during a television broadcast, guess what appeared in the suggested search terms? (In China, the government owns all of the television stations).

By painting Google as a public menace, China is preparing to block Google, in order to limit their citizens' access to information about whatever they're planning to do next. What are they planning to do next? I don't know. But good money says that it won't be the "popular" or the "right" thing by our standards. Again according to the New York Times:

Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s best-known dissidents, was formally arrested Tuesday on suspicion of subversion, six months after he was detained for joining other intellectuals in signing a document calling for democracy. Earlier this month, the authorities refused to renew the licenses of more than a dozen lawyers after they agreed to represent clients in human rights cases.

I don't know what we as American citizens can do about this, but the first step is to recognize that there is a problem. Spread the word. Make sure people aren't fooled by this sudden anti-pornography mask that China's government has donned. I still maintain that this campaign will hurt China in the long run, and hurting China will hurt the United States as well. The last thing the world needs is a nation the size of China with the leadership style of North Korea.