Shocking China ‘Net addict’ cure
p2pnet.net news:- A p2pnet spoof once suggested SunnComm, whose DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control efforts are synonymous with the Sony BMGH rootkit spyware debacle, “had produced a truly shocking and extremely loud DRM product”.
When an iPod (or other) user wearing the new audio devices plays an iTunes track not sanctioned by Organized Music (EMI Group, Vivendi Uiversal, Warner Music), “Fair Play feedback ‘instructs’ the buds to emit a piercing, high-pitched scream in stereo at 250 decibels,” we posted and unbelievably, SunnComm subsequently issued an international press release on Yahoo saying the story wasn’t true.
However, reports that China has taken to using electric shock therapy for people who become ‘addicted to the Net’ are true.
The caption to a pic from an Associated Press photograph, reads:
A 12-year-old boy receives electric shock treatment for his Internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital in Beijing Friday June 17, 2005. The boy, a new patient, had become so addicted that he spent four straight days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping. The clinic, the country’s first government-approved facility geared toward curing Internet addicts, has treated more than 300 addicts since opening last October.
In the main story, “There’s a global controversy over whether heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder, with some psychologists, including a handful in the United States, arguing that it should be,” says AP, going on, “Backers of the notion say the addiction can be crippling, leading people to neglect work, school and social lives.
“But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction. To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China’s broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies like Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China’s demands.”
However, “Guo Tiejun, a school headmaster turned psychologist who runs an Internet-addiction research center in Shanghai, said the military-run clinic goes too far in treating Internet addicts like alcohol and drug addicts,” says AP.
He’s treated several former patients of the clinic and believes the, “root of the problem is loneliness and that the most effective treatment is not to give teenagers electric shocks, but to treat them ‘like friends’.”
Also See:
p2pnet spoof – Apple, Microsoft p2p collaboration, November 5, 2005
international press release – SunnComm falls for p2pnet spoof, November 5, 2005
Associated Press – China treats Internet ‘addicts’ sternly, February 22, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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