(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Having migrated their sites to foreign servers to hide their activity from police, Chinese porn site owners are being detained or arrested as China continues to heavy-handedly regulate the Internet within its borders.
According to an IDG News article, conservative officials see pornography, which is illegal in China, as an assault on cultural values, and the latest government action has been the boldest of recent measures to combat online porn, which have included arresting mobile porn sites owners, and a proposed mandate to install porn-filtering software on all new PCs.
State-run media agency Xinhua reported late Sunday that police busted two Chinese porn sites hosted on US servers, run by proxy through an encrypted virtual private network. They also located two suspects who sold US-based proxy services to other Chinese porno operations.
In order to circumvent the government, Chinese Internet users often use VPNs and overseas proxy servers to access forbidden content by masking their online identity with a foreign IP address.
China has already closed thousands of sites and arrested dozens in its campaign against online porn this year, which may be intended to clean the Internet of offensive material before this fall when the People’s Republic of China will celebrate its 60th year.
