China is expanding its censorship programs and increasing emphasis on companies to do better in censoring their own platforms. As if they needed to do more than they are doing today, they have the most oppressive government censorship program of any in the world. Getting better just means getting even more intrusive. The downside to that is they are exporting this technology to places like Venezuela. The US could help by disrupting this technology since quite a bit of it originated here.
Reuters is carrying a story today on the sentencing of an author, identified only as Liu, to 10 years in prison for publishing in an area that shows “obscenely and in detail described gay male-male acts...” I don't read this kind of book anyway, but I do stand with authors who have difficulty (certainly understated in this case) because of something they write. It's fiction for heavens sake.
Book burning is always something that will wind up running against the government that does it. It draws more attention to a book than other types of actions, like undermining sales through the publisher, are much less conspicuous. This is a "message" sentence to other authors that this is not allowed and will bring a harsh and unjustified sentence because we can. That will be an underground book for as long as Liu is in prison, and then some. Banned books are sold in China more than they are elsewhere in the world. Banning something always helps sales - as to prison sentences- though they are a hell of a way to get an idea across to others.
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