Another "crackdown" in China: This time, it's Chinese censors declaring a new campaign against Internet "vulgarity." In the cross-hairs are search engines like Baidu (BIDU), Google (GOOG), and 17 other firms for linking to off-color content.
Chinese state TV showed officials hauling equipment out of an unnamed office. Offenders face "stern punishment," says China's "State Council Information Office" Cai Mingzhao. (That's the same Cai who made China's censorship policy plain to Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales in an October meeting.)
It remains to be seen whether the Chinese TV reports of equipment being seized amounts to anything significant, or if it's just stock footage to scare the companies involved. But an oddly reassuring feature of today's censorship raid is that China didn't pick any one company with poor political connections: The Chinese government seems to have targeted the entire sector with equal treatment.
That's progress!
See Also:
Reversing Policy, China Arrests Windows Pirates
Jimmy Wales Meets Up With China's Internet Censors, Doesn't Discuss Censorship
Microsoft: Piracy Makes China An Irrelevant Market
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
