C.A. Yeung at Under the Jacaranda Tree posts news of a small battle won by Chinese netizens against the Chinese government’s ongoing anti-vulgarity campaign:
Netizens in China are becoming more and more innovative in their ways of protesting against censorship authorities’ arbitrary abuses of power in curtailing freedom of expression. Their tenacity is best demonstrated in the support they have given to Bullog International since its relaunch on 31 January 2009, despite continuous attempts of authorities to block the site. Conflicts between censorship authorities and netizens have taken a new turn in the past few days. Some netizens were so outraged by a decision to censor the content of their online photo albums that they staged an online protest. The protest is known as an anti-anti-vulgarity campaign. This is the first time the government’s anti-vulgarity Internet censorship campaign has met with such widespread opposition among Internet users in China. It is also the first time that authorities have given in to netizens’ demands.
It all happened when a blogger at a popular blog portal Douban.com received an email from the administrator.
Since certain Renaissance paintings have been censored in the anti-vulgarity campaign for displays of nudity, Douban members used Photoshop to clothe some of these famous figures and posted the images on their blogs.
Some of these manipulated photos:
