Crackdown on fake sex health sites
- Source: Global Times
- [07:48 June 25 2009]
- Comments
The Ministry of Health yesterday moved to stop sexual health websites being used as fronts for pornography.
“The ministry will strengthen its management and supervision of sex health websites in the country to guarantee scientific and accurate information and prevent lewd content in disguise,” Deng Haihua, head of the ministry’s information office, told the Xinhua News Agency.
Websites have to attribute sources using watermarks or text for any visual and textual sexual health content, according to the Measures for Control over Healthcare Information on the Internet released by the ministry Tuesday.
The measures, which will take effect Wednesday, specify that healthcare websites cannot pick up content from illegal publications and must take full responsibility for their content, including information linked to from their sites.
Fines of up to 30,000 yuan ($4,400) can be levied for distributing obscene content under the guise of conducting sex research.
Also, only legal healthcare organizations can apply to provincial-level government’s health administration and management departments to set up health-themed websites.
However, general websites are not allowed to set up a sex section, while sexology-themed sites must limit the access to specialists working in that field.
China began a high-profile crackdown on Internet porn in January, targeting popular online portals and search engines such as Google and Baidu.
Xinhua