China retreats on Net registration
p2pnet.net news:- China has abandoned its efforts to rigidly enforce a new law requiring all Chinese blog service providers to ask their users for verifiable personal details before they can go online.
Instead, “Next month, Beijing is expected to rally industry players to sign a arepact and promote the use of real-name registration,” says The Wall Street Journal, quoting Yang Junzuo, who heads a committee with the Internet Society of China, “a think tank affiliated with the ministry that has been gathering industry reactions to the intended policy.
With the ministry’s backing, the Internet Society of China will lead an attempt to get blogging companies to support and implement the real-name system on their sites, the story has Yang stating.
“In 2005, Microsoft Corp., pressured by the authorities, shut down a popular blog written by Chinese journalist Zhao Jing, who was critical of the government,” says the WSJ, continuing:
Yahoo Inc. also has been accused of abetting the Chinese authorities. In April, a human-rights group filed a suit against the company alleging that it had released data that had helped the Chinese government identify and arrest several Chinese pro-democracy writers.
But analysts say the Chinese government is quickly discovering that compliance by fiat doesn’t work, especially now that it also is increasingly aware of the need to balance politics with the business interests.
A case-in-point: For the past two years, the government has been thinking about passing a real-name registration law for the hundreds of millions of Chinese cellphone users who buy prepaid cards that allow them to hold multiple accounts anonymously. The government has blamed prepaid cards for emboldening the transmission of spam.
No such regulation, or even a draft of it, has emerged, because the government has realized the impact of such a policy on the revenue of cellphone operators. “If you have real-name regulation, the number of users for these operators will decline, and that will impact their stock performance,” said Liu Bin, an analyst with market research firm BDA China.
Meanwhile, whether or not the Internet Society of China’s proposed solution will succeed, “depends largely on whether the country’s leading tech companies sign on,” says the story, adding, “So far, few plan to support it as they have millions of registered users who may not be willing to convert to the new system, and may quit if forced to switch.”
Also See:
The Wall Street Journal – Why China Relaxed Blogger Crackdown, May 17, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by goverment restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (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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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
