Mobile phones used to get past China’s Internet censors

June19

CNN reports that the mobile web in China has loopholes where content could go under the radar of government censors, analysts say.

“It could be anything else the government normally frowns upon or does not consider healthy, which could be political content to pornographic content,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, a market research and strategy consultant firm.

Mobile phones in China have not escaped government control. Last December, nine Chinese ministries initiated a campaign, which ended in March, to crackdown on pornography transmitted via mobile networks.

Mobile carriers also began monitoring text messages for pornographic and other “illegal” content, blocking phone services to subscribers found to have sent such messages, state media reported in January.

However there are signs that the mobile Web has holes, which some say could grow bigger as more people buy smart phones and third-generation networks become stronger. Out of China’s 346 million netizens, as the country’s Web users are known, 233 million use mobiles to access the Internet, according to government statistics.

“It’s not because the government does not want to regulate the mobile Web, it’s because the system and the situation makes it much harder to regulate the mobile Web than the real Web,” said Li Qiang, a researcher with the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Technically, for the moment, the mobile Web is less regulated than the real Web.”

The country’s three mobile phone operators — China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom — shoulder responsibility for monitoring content flowing through their networks.

Access the full article online at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/17/china.mobile.phone.web/index.html

One Comment to

“Mobile phones used to get past China’s Internet censors”

  1. On June 19th, 2010 at 11:32 am Mobile phones used to get past China's Internet censors | Parental … Says:

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