Google vows to fight porn in China after govt rebuke

Internet giant Google promised to work harder to eliminate pornography from its Chinese Web pages as state media reported authorities had shut down some of its search services.

"Google has continually taken measures against vulgar content, particularly material that is harmful to children, on the Internet in China," a statement by the company said.

"Google is currently stepping up its efforts in this regard."

Xinhua news agency reported that the government had already "stopped some of Google China's searching businesses and asked it to clear up its lewd content."

"Google China was ordered to suspend its overseas web-page searching services and associated word-search services," Xinhua said.

The report gave no other details.

Neither Google officials nor authorities that handle Internet supervision could immediately be reached to confirm the report.

A nonprofit group devoted to "traditional American values" on Friday followed in China's footsteps, calling on Google to be more vigilant about limiting access to online porn.

The Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute released a self-conducted study to back a demand for Google-owned YouTube to be more "family friendly."

The study indicated that YouTube searches turned up pornography, crude commentary, and videos that serve as teasers for sex websites.

"There's sexual material, including soft-core porn, all over the site," Matthew Philbin and Dan Gainor wrote in report findings.

Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III and institute vice president Dan Gainor signed a letter asking Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to personally look into the group's concerns.

The letter asked Google to explain what further actions it will take to "make objectionable material inaccessible to children."

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre (CIIRC) slammed Google China on Thursday, saying the US-based portal was continuing to facilitate searches for pornographic material.

"Google China's website has not installed filters to block pornography in accordance with the laws and regulations of our nation," the centre had said in a statement.

It said the centre "strongly condemns Google China and demands that it thoroughly clean up the pornographic and vulgar content on its sites."

"CIIRC calls on concerned departments in charge of implementing the law to punish (Google China) in accordance with the law," Thursday's statement added.

China has vowed to crack down on Internet content that it deems unhealthy, which has included pornography and information critical of authorities.

Computer makers were notified by the government recently that all personal computers sold from July 1 must be shipped with anti-pornography software, a move that has led to widespread censorship fears both inside and outside China.

China has the world's largest online population at nearly 300 million web users.

Authorities have a history of blocking websites they deem politically unacceptable or offensive, a censorship system that has been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".

Google's statement said the company "strictly abides by all rules and regulations in China and will work to eliminate vulgar content."

Google was among 19 large Internet portals that the government named in January as continuing to provide links to pornography, ordering them to clean up.

At the time, Google was singled out as having failed to take action on government complaints that its search engine results contained a "massive number of links to pornographic web sites."

Xinhua reported separately on Friday that Beijing plans to recruit an "army of tens of thousands of volunteers" to scour the Internet for porn and report back to authorities in the capital.

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New net timer could save sea turtles from drowning

Fishery managers trying to protect rare sea turtles from dying in fishing nets have tapped a Cape Cod company to build a device they think can help balance turtle protection with profitable fishing.

The "tow-time logger" is a 7-inch, silver cylinder that attaches to fishing nets and records how long the net stays underwater.

That time is crucial if a turtle gets snared in the nets dragged behind fishing trawlers. Federal research indicates the vast majority of sea turtles survive entanglement — but only if the net is pulled up in less than 50 minutes.

With the logger, regulators can avoid other, potentially more onerous, restrictions on perpetually struggling fishermen — such as shutting down fishing areas or requiring turtle-saving gear that doesn't work well in all nets. In fisheries where they decide time limits would work best, they wouldn't have to depend on an honor system to make sure nets are pulled up in time.

"Turtles have also been around since the time of the dinosaurs," said Elizabeth Griffin of the environmental group, Oceana. "They're cool animals that I think most people want to see continue to exist."

The logger was built under a $25,000 federal contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Onset Computer Corp., a Bourne-based supplier of data loggers for energy and environmental monitoring. It starts recording water depth every 30 seconds once the net drops below two meters. If the net stays under beyond a preset time limit, the logger records it, and the infraction can be discovered when regulators download its data.

The device's early tests at sea have been successful, and work is ongoing to toughen it for the real-life rigors, such as being banged on fishing boat decks. The company expects it to cost between $600 and $800, an expense that would fall to fishermen.

Even when the logger is perfected, regulators know limiting how long the nets stay underwater is no cure-all as they devise rules, which they hope to propose for public comment by 2010, to meet a new federal requirement to protect sea turtles from trawler fishing nets.

Some environmentalists say turtles shouldn't be kept underwater at all because even relatively short times of being trapped underwater without oxygen hurt them.

Griffin says there's also not enough data on how trapped turtles fare in colder waters, so no one really knows how long they can be kept under and survive.

The data logger at least makes briefer tow times a feasible way to protect turtles, if researchers can sort out what's safe, she said.

Fishermen are skeptical. They say short tows aren't practical in most fisheries, such as those in deeper waters, where a worthwhile catch is impossible if the nets must constantly be pulled up.

"It's a bad idea," said James Fletcher, a veteran fisherman and now head of the North Carolina-based United National Fisherman's Association.

"Nobody's going to love the idea," acknowledged Henry Milliken, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of NOAA. But he added fishermen might prefer limits on how long the net can be underwater to harsher alternatives, such as closing fishing areas.

"The idea is that we're looking at providing options to the managers in the future," Milliken said.

As the NMFS tries to determine which steps will or won't work, it's held public meetings this spring from New York to Georgia.

The turtle most frequently caught in trawl nets in the Atlantic is the loggerhead, the threatened 250-pound giants named for their relatively large heads. In U.S. waters, every sea turtle is listed as either endangered or threatened, so any turtle deaths in fishing nets hit the populations hard.

The most common way to protect turtles right now is the Turtle Excluder Device, often a circular, barred frame attached near the front of fishing nets. The bars are big enough for fish and other sea life to slip through, but too narrow for turtles, which bounce out of the net before they get caught.

The excluder devices have had success in some fisheries, including the Southeast's shrimp trawl fishery, but bigger species, such as horseshoe crab, monkfish and flounder, can bounce out along with the turtles and make the nets far too inefficient.

Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Seafood Association, a New Jersey trade group, said since the new rules will apply to fisheries from Cape Cod to Florida — where the turtles swim — whatever shakes out is bound to be felt industry-wide. That includes "huge negative impacts on some fisheries," he said.

But with regulations coming, DiDomenico said his best hope is that regulators don't broadly force a turtle-protecting solution, including the time logger being developed, on a diverse fleet.

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