China Cracks Down on Internet Porn

China's Ministry of Information, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the Information Office of the State Council, will set new regulations on text message services to punish those who spread pornographic information via text messages. China will improve its long-term mechanism to combat Internet pornography, according to a senior official of the Ministry of Information Industry here Thursday. Xi Guohua, vice-minister of the Ministry, said that it takes more than a day to create a green on-line world, and that the long-term supervision mechanism should be improved for "combating the Internet porn completely." Fourteen ministries, including the Ministry of Information Industry and the Ministry of Public Security, launched a nationwide campaign on July 16 to crack down on pornographic Web sites. Nearly 700 pornographic Web sites have been taken down in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing municipalities and Liaoning and Guangdong provinces. According to Xi, the Ministry will further its supervision on Internet information security in several areas. The first one is to improve the means of supervision. On one side, the ministry is preparing to set down new regulations to clarify who should be responsible for each ring and the punishment if anyone violates the laws and regulations. On the other hand, the Ministry is organizing experts to research an on-line auto-reporting system and improve the information database based on searching Internet Protocol (IP) addresses so as to fix the wanted information and the party responsible for them as soon as possible.