Hey moms, keep an eye on your sons!
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Imagine the situation of a mother wanting to report her child's activities to authorities.
The awkward "mother vs. son" scenario may happen next year as the city's Internet watchdog urges local mothers to help fight pornography and "vulgar" information online.
Determined to start the campaign from a grassroots level, the authorities said they will select a group of mothers to form a special censorship panel and help the authorities monitor websites and WAP content in the mothers' spare time, according to the government-funded Beijing Association of Online Media, which runs an illegal Internet information reporting hotline.
The concerned mothers will also determine which content is "harmful". "Throughout the campaign, parents, especially mother netizens, tend to be more sensitive to Internet vulgarism, so their opinions should be important reference," the Xinhua News Agency quoted an unnamed official from the association at the meeting.
Authorities nationwide launched a carpet sweep last month against online pornography, violent and political sensitive information.
National television network CCTV reported the widespread pornography in cyber space has been "an imminent curse" for school children.
Internet watchdogs closed down thousands of websites with obscene content banned by the authorities. And police have arrested their founders in the campaign.
Chen Hua, director of the city's Internet administration office under the municipal publicity department, also said at the meeting Beijing's fight with online pornography is "a long-term battle" which will last for another year.
"Related institutions should be ready for a long battle with the campaign against mobile phone pornography. They must come up with new mechanisms to eliminate such content completely," Chen said.
The Beijing Communications Administration, along with related government agencies, has shut down more than 3,100 websites with obscene and vulgar content and removed 300,000 illegal posts so far this year.
The national Internet authorities this month also promised up to 10,000 yuan awards for informers of vulgar online content.
Li Zhen, a Beijing mother of a 14-year-old junior student, said she will not go so far as reporting her teenage son who may be exposed to online pornography. But she said she will provide related information to the authorities.
"Most boys at my sons' age are pretty sure about what they should see online and what they should not," said the 39-year-old mother.
"I guess most mothers know how to keep their children at a suitable distance from the adult world," she said.
Beijing now has 4.5 million broadband users and nearly 18 million mobile phone users with the potential to surf online through WAP services.
Phones at the Beijing Internet illegal information report center went unanswered yesterday.
