A group of 13 Chinese government departments are clamping down on pornographic content on the internet and mobile phones, in a nationwide campaign which will last until after the Beijing Olympicsare finished in September.

The 13 departments, including the Ministry of Public Security, the Propaganda Department, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and the Ministry of Culture, among others, held a national teleconference to announce the anti-porn campaign.

It was announced that the campaign has already resulted in China shutting down 44,000 domestic web-sites and homepages and arresting 868 people while investigating 524 criminal cases.

The campaign also covers online gambling, promotion of illegal products and unauthorised film and TV clips. The main target areas of the campaign are TV and radio programmes, blogs, podcast web-sites or video sharing web-sites, cartoon web-sites and mobile phone web-sites.

The nationwide campaign is seen as part of alarger attempt by Chinese authorities to regulate the internet. Last month, the government announced that only state-owned firms would be able to offer internet video services.

And earlier this month, SARFT decided to punish the producers of the film Lost In Beijing for allegedly spreading unapproved clips of the film on the internet.

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