How to Identify a Sex Addict

Sex addiction can involve many different sexual antics; it may be a strong desire to have sex, masturbate, watch porn or flirt. A person is defined as a sex addict when his behavior gets out of control and starts to have a negative impact on his life. These feelings and behaviors cause a great deal of shame, hopelessness and confusion for the sex addict. These feelings are also normally accompanied by denial, despite it being an unmanageable problem in the sex addict's life.

Sexual addiction takes up a great deal of energy, and you know you’re in trouble when your behavior causes relationship breakdowns, job problems, legal issues, and a loss of interest in anything non-sexual. If you suspect you have a problem, read on for some signs that you might be a sex addict.

Note: Understand that there is a big difference between a creep and a bona fide sex addict, so being a general pervert or filth monger doesn’t qualify you as a sex addict. Being a sex addict means your sexual desires are significantly impinging on your life in a negative way -- which does not include being unable to pick up, by the way.

You’re leading a double life
Do you have an extra girlfriend or mistress? Do you regularly cheat on your partner? Do you keep your sex life a secret from those around you? Leading a double life for sexual gain can be a sign you’re a sex addict. It is true that many people (men and women alike) cheat on their partners, but a compulsion to do so is abnormal. Keeping your sex life a secret may also point to a problem: Why don’t you want to reveal your activities? When you know that what you are doing is wrong but you can’t seem to help yourself, you have a problem.

You frequently seek out sexual material
A preoccupation with all things sex can lead to a very narrow existence. When you constantly and consistently only seek out media that is sex-related, this might be a sign you’re a sex addict. We are not referring to the average guy who enjoys watching the occasional porn, looking at photographs or reading sex articles; it refers to the guy who is always seeking out sexually related material to the exclusion of most other things. It could also include a preoccupation with things like adult dating sites; perhaps you are not being very productive at work because you are desperately seeking Susan/Sarah/Savannah.

You’re compromising your personal relationships
This sign you’re a sex addict refers to compromising your relationship with your girlfriend or wife, but it can easily extend to social and work circles as well. You may cheat, be deceptive or be untrue to yourself and your partner in a variety of ways. Being unfaithful doesn’t just mean having sexual contact with another person; it can be demonstrated in other ways like regularly visiting strip clubs or X-rated movie theaters without your partner's knowledge.

You seek out explicit sexual adventures
If you can’t get excitement out of sex with the same person, you might desire or attempt to seek out more exciting encounters. This could lead you down a dangerous trail of constantly needing different stimuli to gain satisfaction and relief. If you’re never satisfied with a standard lovemaking session with your partner every now and again, your sexuality is suffering. Frequently seeking out sexual variety is often indicative of an out-of-control sexual problem.

You get into trouble with the law
You may be engaging in many activities that are illegal in most places, such as sex with prostitutes, sex with minors or exhibitionism. Some activities might not be criminal offenses, but they are offensive nonetheless: voyeurism, indecent phone calls, etc. If your sex life is getting you into trouble, this might be a sign you’re a sex addict. Sex should not get you into trouble, especially legal trouble; this could lead not only to a breakdown of a relationship, but embarrassment as your face and name are spread all over the local media.

You have negative feelings about your behavior
If you have intense negative feelings about yourself because of your behavior, it’s time to get help. Everyone has a say in their lives, but sometimes we lose it and fall into a pit of despair. Feeling suicidal, guilty, remorseful or shameful can devastate your sense of self and lead to denial. Sex addiction is like other addictions; it is characterized by one’s life becoming unmanageable as a direct result of the addictive behavior. When we do things because we are compelled to do them, and then hate ourselves for giving in to the urge, we create a nasty pattern of behavior that destroys our lives.

x-rated addiction
Sex addiction sounds like it could be fun, but it isn't. Sex addicts are in a cycle of destructive behavior that won’t stop without help. Many people are classified as sex addicts, but it’s not a title to give to just anyone who is obsessed with sex. It is a type of behavior that can be changed with self-knowledge, self-love and a good therapist.

If you think you may have a problem with sex addiction, help is available. Online forums and sites are good starting points. Remember: The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

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The Challenges in Curbing Porn Addiction

Before the internet was ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives, porn addiction was for the creepy lifelong bachelor or the lonely guy with mommy issues. However, now that we depend on the World Wide Web for much of our information and entertainment, the condition is seeping into parts of the population previously unaffected. Seemingly normal men from all walks of life, including actor David Duchovny and an Australian preacher who faked having cancer to cover up a 16-year porn addiction, are claiming that pornography has taken over their lives.

Identifying an addict
While porn addiction is not yet listed in the DSM-IV as an official mental disorder like drug or gambling addictions, therapists are starting to take the condition seriously. The criteria for determining whether or not a patient is addicted to porn are much the same as the ones used to identify other addictions, revolving mainly around the dependence on pornography at the expense of other aspects of life. If viewing, reading, watching or thinking about pornography is interfering with your work, your relationship, your family life or your social interactions, it is a problem. Some porn addicts cannot perform sexually without the stimulation of pornography. Porn addiction may be a part of a more extensive sex addiction.

Availability and early starts
It is now easier to get your hands on porn than ever before. A man doesn’t even have to work up the nerve to walk into an adult video store anymore, but can instead in the privacy of his own home simply download to his heart’s content a dizzying array of pornographic content. The internet is definitely the main culprit behind the explosion of porn addiction. A study published in the journal Pediatrics stated that 42% of internet users aged 10 to 17 have been exposed to pornography. By the time these children reach adulthood, pornography can be a pervasive part of their lives and, for some, this can lead to serious problems, such as porn addiction.

Tolerance build-up
Like an alcoholic needs increasingly larger amounts of alcohol as his tolerance builds up, so will a porn addict need more extreme, unusual or deviant forms of pornography as his addiction develops. Some experts believe that viewing this material can lead to enacting unhealthy fantasies in real life. It is possible that deviant sexual behavior could be inspired by pornographic content. However, in the majority of cases, porn addiction remains an intensely private condition that does not extend to sexual interaction with others. It will, however, likely interfere with healthy sexual experiences of any kind.

The group dynamic
Support groups and 12-step programs for recovering pornography addicts are popping up all over the internet. As illogical as it might seem to turn to the net for help with a problem that most likely started there, many addicts have found comfort and healing through sharing their stories and talking to others with the same condition.

Not unsurprisingly, the majority of groups created to help porn addicts in recovery are religious in nature. Most organized religions take a general disapproving stance on any sexual activity not related to making babies between two married, consenting adults, so it’s not hard to see why the church would have an interest in healing those addicted to pornography. For a religious person, this approach may work, but for someone who is confused and struggling with his sexuality, the guilt piled on by religious support groups may not be helpful at all when dealing with porn addiction.

Therapy
The best way to deal with any kind of addiction is to seek the help of a qualified therapist. Neither sex addiction nor porn addiction is considered an official mental disorder, but they are compulsions that can have serious effects on one’s sexuality and can be detrimental to social functioning. Any decent therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist will recognize this and be able to provide you with tools to reduce your dependency on pornography.

Filtering temptation
There is a variety of software available that can filter out certain content from the internet before it gets to your computer. These filters are usually used to prevent explicit content, including pornography, from reaching the innocent eyes of children, but they can have applications for the porn addict too. Of course, it’s easy to disable your own filters, but simply having them in place may provide enough of a deterrent when you’re craving a porn fix. There is also keylogger software that will track every move you make on the internet and even accountability software that will not only track your internet activity, but will also send a weekly report to your “accountability partner” to keep them up to speed on the sites you’re visiting.

put away the porn
For most of us, viewing pornography is an occasional guilty pleasure. But for those who are driven to use porn constantly, it can represent a genuine mental, emotional and physical trap. With a combination of therapy, internet filters, affirmations, accountability, and research, it can be overcome.

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Chinese Authorities Shut Down 44,000 Porn Sites In 2007

China shut down 44,000 Web sites and homepages and arrested 868 people last year in a campaign against Internet porn which will continue until the end of this year's Beijing Olympics.

China launched a crackdown on online pornography and "unhealthy" Web content after Chinese President Hu Jintao said the country's sprawling Internet posed a threat to social stability.

Rights groups have said the campaign has been used as a thinly veiled pretext to crack down on dissent and round up online dissidents ahead of the Olympics.

Authorities had also investigated 524 criminal cases involving online porn and "penalized" another 1,911 people.

Some 440,000 "pornographic messages" had also been deleted, the agency said.

China has attempted to stifle online criticism of the ruling Communist Party and discussion related to sensitive topics such as Tibet and Taiwan by ordering Web sites to register with authorities.

Authorities registered 199,000 Web sites last year, but refused 14,000 for failing to get official registration or to apply for official approval.

China employs tens of thousands of human Internet censors and a vast network of filters to control online information.

The anti-pornography campaign would continue until September, "after the Beijing Olympic Games end".

China last month said it would crack down on video-sharing Web sites, and allow only state-controlled sites to post video content online in new restrictions effective from January 31.

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Vietnamese Authorities Approves Pornographic Pictures For Exhibition

Vietnamese authorities have given permission for the first ever exhibition of nude photographs in the conservative communist country, state media and the photographer said this week.

Photographer Thai Phien said he got the go ahead to exhibit 48 of his nude photos in Hanoi between November 24 and 27.

"I was the first photographer in Vietnam that received a licence to open this type of exhibition," he said.

Phien said he had to submit his photos to the censors, adding "it's lucky that the authorities accepted them."

He also expects a collection of about 70 of his nude pictures will be published prior to the exhibition.

The Thanh Nien newspaper said "Nude photos have gone on display in Vietnam before, but never has an exhibition consisted solely of nudes."

The daily said censors in the southern commercial centre of Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year refused to allow a similar exhibition by a female artist because "they were not in accordance with Vietnamese customs and morality".

Vietnam Photographers' Association head Chu Chi Thanh was quoted as saying authorities were always cautious because it was difficult to distinguish the boundary between erotic and artistic photos.

Phien agreed it was hard to draw a line.

"The boundaries between pornographic and artistic photos are very slim. It depends a lot on personal impression," he said.

Vietnam, whose 84 million people are mostly Buddhist, is a socially conservative country.

Films, books, photos and artistic works are often censored and those on sensitive topics such as sex are usually banned.

Earlier this month an amateur sex video featuring the popular teenage host of a TV morality show sparked public outrage, with four students arrested for allegedly posting the clip on the Internet.

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Isreali Porn Site Unifying The Middle East

An Israeli porn site is proving surprisingly popular with Web surfers in a number of Arab countries, some of which don't have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Ratuv, Hebrew for "wet," specializes in producing skinflicks with topical political themes, typically featuring scenes involving female soldiers, Mossad agents and members of the military.

After installing software that could detect where users are logging on, managers of the site found they were receiving thousands of hits a week from folks in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, even though the Israeli net domain .il is blocked from some of these countries.

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"We were amazed to find a huge amount of our users from these countries," says Nir Shahar, who manages the site. "We cannot accept money from many of these countries, so they can't download the films. They can only look at the pictures."

To make up for the lack of local download access in those countries, Shahar decided to translate the entire site into Arabic, with detailed descriptions of each scene and plenty more pics. Traffic went up tenfold, with the site receiving up to 100,000 hits a week from Arab auds.

The most popular movie on the site is "Code Name: Deep Investigation," an X-rated parody of the arrest of dissident Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, who spilled the beans on Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. He was eventually caught by Mossad agents, who sent a beautiful female agent to trap him.
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"Arab people usually see female Israeli soldiers in a bad situation, so there's a lot of curiosity to see what Israeli girls look like without any uniforms," says Shahar. "We don't make regular porn films. Our films parody the situation in Israel, so we look at issues like the elections here and Mossad. There is a lot of relevance to the Arab-Israeli situation."

Given that Israeli law precludes Shahar from accepting credit card payment from some Arab countries, he plans to set up a site registered in either Europe or the U.S.

"We are also interested in making films with Arabs and Israelis in them," Shahar says. "It's something we can do to speak about the connection between the two people, but its not going to be easy."

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Serbian Men Make Porn For 50 Euros ($68) Per Film

When it comes to porn movies, the situation in Serbia is progressively getting worse. Times were better in the days of Milosevic testifies the famous screenwriter Mladen Djordjevic.

While making the documentary Made in Serbia, which was screened at this year's Zagreb Film Festival (ZFF), he once again delved into the world of the social conditions in which Serbian porn actors live and work. By using the pornography metaphor, he showed a realistic picture of a society without hope or goal and the struggle to endure in raw survival conditions.

"People who decide to act in porn movies [in Serbia] are people on the verge of social existence, they live from one day to the next. Still, they have nothing to be ashamed of," Djordjevic adds.

The young director has depicted the fates of the several most attractive Serbian porn stars. They live in misery and poverty and often make movies precisely because they can earn the most money in this way. In Serbia, where the average salary amounts to 150 euros [per month], the money that they get from a single movie is far more lucrative to actors than, for instance, farming an agricultural tract of land.

The 50 euro Serbian Stud

No one wants to watch domestic movies anymore - Djordjevic reveals to us.

"Those are exceptionally low quality movies, even though the actors try. Anyone would sooner rent a foreign porn movie and even the numbers here are - laughable. Men get 50 euros for the whole film and women get 100. Djordjevic is worried by the fact that the situation has remained unchanged for years, so Serbian porn actors are looking for a break abroad, for instance - in Budapest," he says.

In Hungary, for example, the average price per scene is 500 euros + 20 percent for the agency that books the model. Therefore, as the people we have talked to tell us, a producer will pay as much as 600 euros for one good girl if she is an established name. In Serbia, the price depends on the appearance, the series of scenes that are filmed, and their variety (several diverse scenes - bigger price) and, naturally, on the way the scenes are acted.

Low Quality Productions

We looked to the master of the Serbian porn scene for an answer to this question. Slobodan Stankovic is the self-declared emperor of the Serbian porn industry, the owner of the magazine Striptiz and probably the most influential porn producer.

"It is hard to have a good producer who is ready to invest money and not to have good models. It is easy when I have both one and the other, but those are really rare situations," says Stankovic, who collaborated with Djordjevic on the documentary feature Made in Serbia and presented himself to the audience in an autobiographical role in the film.

It seems that, after the film had been made and screened at the festival, there was a difference of opinion. To clarify, Djordjevic and Stankovic are not on speaking terms today. They do, however, agree on one thing. The Serbian market is in urgent need of investments in order to recover.

Serbs more open than Croats and Slovenians?

"We produce the biggest number of movies and have the biggest number of magazines [that deal with] those themes. There seem to be several reasons at play: the first one is the citizens' mentality, I think that Serbs are more open than Croats or Slovenians. The second reason is definitely the influence of religion, since Catholics live 'more virtuously.' The third is that Serbia has been though a difficult political period, so sex served as an outlet for the problems to people. As the final reason behind the expansion of porn in Serbia, Stankovic mentions the 'general beauty of citizens.' Owing to the good looking guys and girls on the streets of Belgrade, it is not difficult to gather a crew and make a good project," Stankovic points out.

Of course Stankovic's view of his Muslim Croat neighbors is a bit shortsighted when it comes to piety, faith and acceptance of adult material

Croats in the porn business

The Belgrade porn company Balkan Exotic, with Slobodan Stankovic at the helm, regrets that there are not more Croats in the business.

"Ira Tigerman once tried to do something in the area, but she asked us how we find so many models," Stankovic confides.

Serbs are not bashful and they are in dire need of money, so they prefer to make movies. Since the domestic film Kozjak, which has been banned and caused a huge stir on the Croatian porn circuit, nothing has happened that had any major differance in the industry. "It is a pity because Croats are certainly a good looking people too, we do not have any doubts that the actors would be top notch," concludes Stankovic.

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Saudi Teenagers' Mobile Phones, World Class Pornography Receptacle

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers' mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.

The same researcher also found that 88% of girls say they have been victims of harassment using Bluetooth technology.

Saudi Arabia has toughened penalties for misuse of mobile phones which challenge its strict social traditions.

"The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence," said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.

He presented his study at a seminar organised by the King Fahd Security Academy, Arab News reports.

Public social contact between genders is banned in public in Saudi Arabia, which enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law and morality.

But the spread of Bluetooth technology, allowing wireless connection between mobile phones, has allowed for increased opportunities of communication as well as abuse by predatory young men.

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Chinese Turn To Japanese For Online Porn

Justin Mitchell

Much ado has been made over China's constant efforts to protect its citizens from the nefarious influence of free flowing Internet information. Falun Gong, Wikipedia, Reporters Without Borders, BBC News, any reference to June 4, 1989, Taiwan independence or a free Tibet are no-nos, of course. Selected blog sites, such as the popular Blogspot, also are often blocked but then unblocked and blocked again in an unpredictable cycle that defies logic.

Lured by all those eyeballs, western companies have enabled the crackdown in their desire to get a share of the rapidly expanding China market. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems were widely criticized in 2005 for their complicity in what the conservative American pundit David Kopel called, "China's stranglehold on information." Although, complicit or not, the overwhelming mass of Chinese Internet users continue to favor the country's leading search engine, Baidu - not Yahoo or Google - for their online needs.

But to be honest, it's not the real low-down on Tiananmen Square, updates on imprisoned intellectuals or the aspirations of the people of Tibet that lead to yearning for a breach in the Great Firewall.

It's porn. Pure and simple. The quest for online porn satisfies the same itch in Beijing as it does in Boston, Manchester or Melbourne. In China, though, finding it online it isn't as simple as typing in "Jenna Jameson," "Bang Bus" or "Japanese Race Queens." Official scrutiny of naughty net sites is arguably more focused than that of content championed by western democracy advocates, though access to pirated Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, vintage American and European porn on DVD is usually as easy as a running to the corner shop for a couple bottles of Tsing Tao and some sesame chips.

Quietly, however, in mid-March Baidu, the monster NASDAQ-listed portal, did a favor for China's smut seekers when it launched a US$15 million Japanese version called Baidu.jp. With its server based in Japan, it allows users from China to access pages otherwise banned by Beijing - images included. "It's just a test version at an early stage, so we don't want to make a fuss about it in the press," Baidu spokesman Xu Jiye, told Shanghai Daily.

I know what you're looking forOn its corporate Website, Baidu explains the company's mission in lofty terms. "Baidu was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles," the company says. "Hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood."

For those who have found the Japanese site, and the numbers appear to be growing, Baidu has revealed what they want to see. Baidu.jp placed 908th in terms of overall traffic in Japan last week, according to the ranking site Alexa.com. But nearly 60 percent of those searching were from China. Despite friction over still-festering World War II issues such as the Nanjing Massacre, sex slaves, the Yasukuni War Shrine and unexploded chemical weapons, Chinese Internet users have put aside any antipathy. They like what they're seeing: Japanese adult video stars in their mostly R-rated glory

Here's what a few bloggers had to say shortly after Baidu.jp's modest debut:

Someone calling himself Lu Xinxin trumpeted the announcement at www.lvxinxin.com: "Baidu Japan is good stuff! (Girls, don't click, neither should anyone under 18!)"

"Baidu Japan is finally online! Liu Xinxin said it's good stuff. It is, it is! All the search results pop up easily!"

"Is this legal in Japan?" wrote "Kereal" in seeming astonishment.

"I'm sweating!" confessed "Aether."

"You can put in a few words and come up with this astonishing stuff," wrote an anonymous poster. "You can tell how good it is by noticing how the female comrades here react to it. It is really very good, but nothing stunning for other countries, especially Japan which has a large, specialized pornography industry. Still this is huge for China!"

"I hope now Baidu.jp can develop a video search engine," wrote "Ivxnxn."

There were words of caution, too. "You're a bunch of idiots!" scolded "Gdgfd." "After you talk about it here it will probably be banned by the GFW (Great Fire Wall)."

You can also find banned politics on Baidu JapanRest easy, Gdgfd. Official oversight is capricious. For example, how does one explain China's official state news agency Xinhua, and its frequent postings of partially clad females - Chinese and foreign models and actresses alike - on its website under the guise of "art" or "culture," sometimes on the same page as a dictum/news release from the Party about the dangers of online titillation? Xinhua's predilection for saucy pics led one of China's leading foreign bloggers, Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei.org, to dub it "Skinhua." The nickname has stuck.

It's not all T&A, though, At Baidu.jp. Type in "6./4/89," "Tianamen 89" or variations of them in Chinese characters and the results roll in, albeit in Japanese and many appear to be academic or government documents related to the massacre. Included among the results, though, are graphic, bloody photographs not easily found even on western websites as well as a skillfully edited YouTube tribute that uses documentary footage, still photos and a banned-in-China song urging the world not to forget.

As for Baidu.jp's future in Japan, porn and politically sensitive topics aside, it faces substantial challenges. Yahoo Japan is the country's top pick, with about 86 percent of Japan's Internet users, according to JapanNet. The current version of Baidu.jp has no advertising and offers nothing more than a search engine minus its popular Baidu blogging service and news.

In vaguely addressing the issue, Baidu's chairman and CEO said in a press release that 'We believe that our proven strength in non-English language search, the high internet penetration in Japan, as well as similarities between the Chinese and Japanese languages make this market an ideal next step for Baidu.''

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A Pornographic Video Clip Tops Yahoo Korea

A pornographic video clip posted for about six hours on Yahoo Korea and soaring straight to the top of the most watched list on Sunday sent police into action. It was posted on Yahoo's pages for user-created content, which had been negligent in monitoring content. Experts, however, worry that similar incidents can happen any time since many sites lack an advance screening mechanism.

A scene from a one-minute porn video that was freely accessible on Yahoo Korea for five hours and 40 minutes until it was deleted at 11:40 pm on Sunday.

The one-minute clip was posted at around 6 pm on Yammy, Yahoo¡¦s UCC site, which does not require log-in or adult authentication from viewers, so children would have had unlimited access.

Presumed to have come from a Japanese adult site, the clip rapidly attracted some 25,000 viewers, sending it to the top of the automated "most popular video" list. Yahoo Korea did not find out about the clip, belatedly deleting it at 11:40 pm, five hours and 40 minutes after it was first posted, when the press had been alerted. Yahoo Korea apologized Monday and suspended the video posting function.

The Cyber Crime Investigation Division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police have tracked a suspect through the IP address and other data, who could face imprisonment of up to a year or a fine of up to W10 million (US$1=W944).

Helpless

A gang rape video posted on Naver in September 2006.

Porn clips are no rarity on UCC sites, but they are usually restricted or deleted by the site operators. But in reality, weak monitoring or hiding the clip with a disguised title make it possible for them to remain on the site for extended periods.

Last September, a clip showing a gang rape was accessible to the public for 18 days on Naver, the biggest portal site in Korea. An elementary student searching for "extraordinary ideas" for a homework assignment was referred to a blog showing the clip. 'Extraordinary ideas' was the ID of the blogger.

More commonly, porn videos are posted on UCC sites late at night, when monitoring is even more lax. A Naver staffer admitted that a large number of porn videos are hidden in the website, "but it's practically impossible to delete all of them."

Need for controls

A total of 260 staff monitor content on Naver, which has 16 million visitors a day. Since the staff work eight hours in three shifts, there are actually 90 people monitoring the site at any time. Yahoo Korea only has 50 people for the job. Yahoo Korea on Monday vowed to re-examine the UCC service. Experts say a fundamental solution is impossible without strengthening monitoring.

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