Garfield And Ham Not Too Sexy For Japan But Too Sexy For China!
Updated : Jul 1, 2009
A new government-mandated internet filter in China has rated some pictures of Johnny Depp, Garfield, Paris Hilton and, wait for it, roast pork as bad for your moral health.
Beijing has ordered all personal computers sold in China from July 1 to be preinstalled with the Green Dam software, which it says is designed to block pornographic and violent images.
When the software is installed, and an image scanner activated, it blocks even harmless images of a film poster for cartoon cat Garfield, dishes of flesh-colour cooked pork and on one search engine a close-up of film star Johnny Depp's face.
With the image filter off, even though searches with words like "nude" are blocked, a hunt for adult websites throws up links to soft and hardcore pornography sites.
Green Dam has not detailed how it scans images for obscene content, but computer experts have said it likely uses colour and form recognition to zoom in on potential expanses of naked flesh.
The interpretation of obscene is apparently generous enough to include the orange hue of Garfield's fur and, on the highest security settings, prevent viewers clicking through to any illustrated story on one English language news website.
VeryHappyPig says forget about too sexy for Japan, new York and Milan because in China too sexy is in fact ham?
VeryHappyPig also wonders how xrated a picture of Garfield eating ham would be.
