IP: China bans Star Wars and candy sites in Hong Kong

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 14:09:46 +0800
From: Gren Manuel <gren () scmp com>
To: declan () well com
Subject: politech


Dear McCullagh,


I am a reporter on the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, and receive
your politech emails. Many thanks for them.


Are you interested in the state of Internet censorship in the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China? Our site is


www.scmp.com
Cheers,
Gren
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Friday  March 13  1998


Why Smartie people are naughty people


GREN MANUEL
Smarties were slapped with a Government moral health warning yesterday as an
anti-porn crackdown went wide of the mark.
Striving to protect young minds from Internet porn, officials published Hong
Kong's first list of ''objectionable'' Web sites.
But far from only highlighting purveyors of cyber-smut, the list mistakenly
targets a wide range of innocent goodies like Smarties more likely to rot
young teeth than corrupt young minds.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority sent the list to
Internet companies which provide cut-rate services for students.
The authority stressed yesterday the list had been provided after some
Internet companies asked for the names of sites to block.
No provider would be forced to ban the sites, even those offering special
student deals.
But when Internet companies started to look at some of the sites, they
didn't get the smut they expected.
''I tried one, and it didn't work. So I tried another, and it didn't work
either,'' one firm's spokesman said.
Mixed in with the list were completely legitimate sites, including those of
three electronics firms, the largest Internet firm in Israel, Elle magazine,
several rock band sites, and many sites featuring women wearing all their
clothes one of which showed supermodels using mobile phones.
A South China Morning Post survey of 20 listed sites, selected at random,
found 10 disconnected, seven pornographic, two featuring pretty women with
all their clothes on and one redirected to a site promoting free speech on
the Internet.
Also on the authority's list is www.smarties.com the site for the
world-famous chocolate sweets, and www.candyland.com the site for Hasbro
Toys, maker of the Monopoly board game and Star Wars action figures.
French Chow Fat-man, senior executive officer of the authority's newspaper
registration section, admitted some links might not be quite up to date.
''We will continue to monitor the situation and keep the list up to date. We
know that some sites move on a regular basis,'' he said.






I tried one, and it didn't work. So I tried another, and it didn't work
either






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