China Lets Porn Through Great Firewall

Get nasty, China: Beijing’s internet censors appear to have loosened up on pornography. Though there’s been no official word of a change in porn policy, Chinese blogs and Twitter accounts have been buzzing over the sudden availability of smut, the AP reports. It’s been eight weeks since the first excited posts spread word of the change, and nothing has been done to correct it.

There's nothing but speculation as to whether it's an official change in policy, a technical glitch or some sort of test by the usually disapproving Chinese Internet police—regardless, it’s an especially strange development because China had been in the midst of a highly-publicized pornography crackdown. “This has never been done with the (Chinese) Internet before,” said one Beijing-based analyst. “Maybe they are thinking that if Internet users have some porn to look at, then they won’t pay so much attention to political matters.” (More China stories.)