[LINK] China seeks identity of Web site operators

[Roger Clarke]

The PC and printers brought down the Soviet Union.  (In order to 
compete with the free world, the country needed to take advantage of 
the surge in creativity associated with PCs.  But every PC was a 
samizdat press.  The lies on which the regime was based couldn't 
survive the onslaught).

Will the Chinese people move towards their own revolution, and force 
the communist regime to either move towards much more opennes and 
less repression, or lose control of the country?

Successive Chinese regimes have harnessed Confucius (whose sayings 
can be used to support collectivism and submission to the greater 
whole), plus the wonderfully convenient myth of One China.

So the current regime says No, the Chinese people will submit.


At 12:40 AM +0000 25/2/10, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>China seeks identity of Web site operators
>
>by Elinor Mills, February 23, 2010.
><http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10458420-245.html>
>
>Web site operators will need to offer photographs of themselves and meet
>Internet service providers in person under new guidelines announced by
>the Chinese government this week, according to published reports.
>
>The 'trial regulations' were issued by China's Ministry of Industry and
>Information Technology under the auspices of an ongoing anti-porn
>campaign, but, they will also help the government create records of all
>sites in the country and could be used to block other types of online
>content, the IDG News Service reported Tuesday.
>
>The regulations, which were dated February 8 and posted on sites of the
>Chinese telcom regulator on Monday, require ISPs to meet people applying
>to register new Web sites and to collect photographs of them.
>
>They also require applicants to provide a description of the site's
>content, along with other information, the report said.
>
>Web sites without government records will lose their domain name
>resolution by the end of September, effectively pulling them off the
>Internet, the news service reported.
>
>More than 130,000 sites have been pulled offline recently for not having
>records with the government, according to the official Xinhua news
>agency.
>
>China is the largest Internet market, with more than 384 million users of
>the global network, Xinhua reports..
>
>--
>
>Cheers,
>Stephen
>_______________________________________________
>Link mailing list
>Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
>http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University