Yes, in addition to all the talk about the Green Dam net filter software debacle this week, whereby the government is attempting to mandate that every PC sold in China includes the program, now Google has been slapped around because you can access porn sites via the mega-search engine. Shocking, that.

China stepped up its war on Internet censorship Thursday, slamming Google China for allowing pornographic content to seep into the nation and threatening to punish the search engine.

“Google China’s website has not installed filters to block pornography in accordance with the laws and regulations of our nation,” the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre (CIIRC) said in a statement.

“A lot of overseas Internet pornographic information has spread into our nation by way of this website, seriously violating laws and regulations.” [AFP]

Yeah, that’s too bad. Unfortunately China’s implementation of Net porn rules are rather inelegant. Let’s face it, filters that deal with keywords like “sex” are pretty ineffective. As I’ve said many times before, this whole campaign in ineffective.

Lest you’ve forgotten why:

1. The Internet is the personal playground of teenage boys, who understand tech the best and know how to exploit network and site weaknesses. And porn is pretty much all they think about 24/7 — yes, even in their sleep (perhaps especially when they sleep).

2. A keyword filter designed to stop folks from accessing porn? It’s just laughable on its face. Keyword filters are stupid, in the sense that they are easily fooled. Kind of like the old joke about cops pursuing a fleeing suspect in a golf cart or Segway — all you gotta do if you are being pursued is hop up onto the curb.

3. Stopping porn is akin to stopping the entire Internet. My favorite reference to this concept comes from the U.S. sitcom Scrubs. The character played by John C. McGinley states that: “I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the Internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called “Bring Back the Porn!”

4. Following from #3, a search engine like Google is in the business of indexing the Net. The more comprehensive that index is, the better for Google. You take out all the porn, you could probably hire a couple of office temps to index the entire Net by hand over the weekend and list all sites on a 3 x 5 inch index card. Google’s business model would crack faster than a Gitmo prisoner being waterboarded.

5. Governments and religious organizations have been trying for thousands of years to discourage randy folks from engaging in various naughty acts (e.g., extra-marital affairs, coveting the neighbor’s wife, touching one’s private bits for non-medical/hygiene reasons). Doesn’t seem to be working all that well, even when the negative consequences of those acts is significant — just do a survey of the U.S. Senate for a list of various unnatural and, in some cases illegal, sexual activities. And now the government believes it can discourage the use of a technology that allows folks to indulge in their more prurient interests in an anonymous, no-harm-no-foul fashion?

This post will probably be inaccessible to most of my readers due to keyword filters. If you cannot access this post and therefore cannot read this message, please drop me an email and let me know.