Preserving morality on the Web

gzlaser

Preserving morality on the Web

作者：HE GANG

THE national campaign to cleanse cyberspace of pornographic content has reached a new level. The Ministry of Public Security announced that \"flashing\" and \"secretly taped\" images and erotic literature will be removed from the Internet in a new campaign this year.

While this policy may not have had anything to do with the explosive \"sex photos\" scandal that has rocked the Hong Kong celebrity scene in recent weeks, the timing has certainly created some speculation. The case is an unfortunate example of how invasions of privacy on the Internet can hurt people. Hundreds of photos stolen from Hong Kong actor Edison Chen's computer and later published on the Internet caused great public outrage.

People may well debate the moral character of the actors and actresses involved, or how much privacy celebrities should expect, but the vicious distribution of these photos has done great damage to the people involved.

Many parents in Hong Kong have also complained that the publication of these photos could morally confuse their underage children. Hong Kong authorities have laid criminal charges against several people. From this perspective, the latest policy from Beijing makes a lot of sense – the government is seeking to remove such offensive content from the public domain, at least from the Internet.

But the plan may be too ambitious to be implemented properly. Unlike the country's major Web portals like Sina or Sohu, who would happily cooperate with the authorities, the thousands of small websites and online communities are much more difficult to regulate and monitor.

The \"real-name policy\" proposed in the latest campaign, I am afraid, has its limits. People with ill intent can easily obtain fake identities and get around barriers set by authorities. Therefore, the authorities may have underestimated the difficulty of removing offensive content from the Internet. In an information age, where there is a demand for it, bad content will find its way into the public domain one way or another.

Instead, maybe the government should focus more on trying to protect people, especially children, from such content. This could involve better regulation of public Internet cafes, helping parents spend more time with their children or more effective sexual education at school. Such a \"softer approach\" might actually prove a bigger challenge than simply sanitizing the Internet: officials would need to be much more patient, persistent and innovative.