Recently China came under the spotlight with its demands that PC manufacturers include surveillance software on all desktops and notebooks shipped into the country. While seemingly intrusive, the Chinese government assured protesters that the software was merely a parental tool provided to filter out pornographic material, and that consumers were not obligated to use the free product. However, the software is only a small part of a larger attempt to crackdown on the loads of foreign pornographic material infiltrating the country through the Internet--a heavy crackdown that began back in January.
Google, one of China's major targets, suffered a few slaps on the wrist last week after the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC) accused Google of violating the country's Internet regulations and laws by "disseminating pornographic and vulgar information." The CIIRC previously warned Google twice over the last four months in reference to the pornographic search results, and now some Google-based Chinese-language search results are blocked as well as its associated word-search services have been suspended since Friday.
Google responded to the country's lashings by speaking with government officials in reference to its Google.cn service. "We are undertaking a thorough review of our service and taking all necessary steps to fix any problems with our results," said Google's communications director, John Pinette, in a statement. According to the company, it has already addressed the large majority of the problematic results.
Although Google is working to correct the link problem, the CIIRC said that further actions would be taken if the California-based Internet searching company did not fully comply. According to the organization, 1001 websites were blocked while an additional 4,000 websites were actually closed due to "distributing porn and other lewd material." Currently there are more Internet surfers in China than in the United States.
