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China Bans Running Your Own Email Server
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:39 AM
from the too-many-of-those-around-anyway dept.
from the too-many-of-those-around-anyway dept.
Erwin_D writes "Under the guise of banning spam, China has ruled that running your own e-mail server has been banned, unless you have a license. To qualify for such a license, an 'e-mail service provider' must abide by some chilling rules: all e-mail must be stored for two months, and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted. While the rules contains all the good measures we would all like to see to combat spam, such as prohibiting open relays and outlawing zombie network, the law is also geared toward controlling free speech. From the article: 'I believe that the intent to have an antispam regulation was a good one ... Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme.'"
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That's the way it is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think what happened at Tiananman Square was a tragedy, but now imagine what would happen if you were to stop a US tank.. Even cops could shoot you if you didn't "freeze" right away.
Well, I guess I'm not so jaded yet that I think the US military would actually run over a single unarmed man after all the craziness had mostly died down.
I'd say that tank man was a troll while the camera man was just waiting to catch the pictures.
That's really hard to believe. The camera man was a western journalist filming i
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Informative)
No, I didn't vote for him.
So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you consider "news" as a revenue source, then "yes", the "surprisier" the better.
If you consider news to be news, then they do not have to.
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yell at them for their policy all you want, but get out of the cold war era and blame them correctly. I will use one of my favorite quotes from an American president:
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Parent
Laugh or cry? (Score:3, Informative)
Let's take Marx - he lived in an era where belonging to the working class meant that you were desperately poor, and where the middle and upper classes believed that different classes were almost different species; rich
Marx and Business (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary theme of Das Kapital was the various ways in which the market undermines itself. A large number of business books have picked up on this theme and essentially teach business leaders that their goal is to undermine the market (or bust). In the dotcom market, you saw a large number of dotbombs play this game. To dominate the ma
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
China =is= a communist dictatorship. And I could care less about the communism, keyword is
This isn't a troll, it just happens to be true.
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Informative)
since China nowadays allows foreign privately owned corporations to operate in the country, it is a modern globalized capitalist dictatorship
That just makes it a fascist dictatorship!
The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe somebody could clarify US and UK law for me.
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
generally: people tend to be more critical when other ("worse") countries do things.
China: now store email for 2 months
USA: (see next-but-one story) already store email for 2 months but now making it indefinite
China: no emails about bypassing security
USA: no talk of bypassing security in any form
Parent
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:2, Insightful)
if China didn't have driving licenses or passports and introduced them tomorrow, the headline on
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Informative)
I've only seen ISP's keep short term backups. ie, mail server storage method completely dies and then backups are restored. I'm not wholly sure how long the rest of the industry keeps these, but I never kept them past a few weeks.
Mail logs are generally kept for much longer...
Now, I think you are refering to the regulations that were pending/passed/speculated regarding business mail for large companies. This is taken from the company rather then the ISP. I believe there were some regula
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
> Maybe somebody could clarify US and UK law for me.
UK: Alpha test site. It's a "Voluntary Code of Practice on Data Retention" [wikipedia.org], for values of "voluntary" approaching the sort of stat
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't most ISPs in the western world have similar government imposed retention and intrusion legislation that they have to abide by?
I don't know about other governemnts, but there's certainly no data retention laws for ISPs in the United States. I'm not certain if email has been ruled to be covered by privacy laws, but I'd certainly hope so.
There's some requirements about email for publically traded companies through a new law called Sarbanes-Oxley. Even that I'm not sure if there's specific requirements
Still no difference. (Score:3, Informative)
For the vast majority of US households lucky enough to have better than dial up, the ISP forbids running "servers" of any kind. So there's no difference on that front except the penalties. In China, you will be put under then jail and your organs sold to the highest bidder for running anything like a press. In the US, right now, you will simply lose your connection to the network.
And... (Score:3, Informative)
Translation please (Score:2, Flamebait)
what's next? (Score:2)
before we know it, they would start banning sending snail mail, sending faxes, using phones - all in the name of quality control and eliminating spam.
Sensationalizing at its best (Score:5, Interesting)
"China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', "
From the regulation [isc.org.cn] that the article links to
taking advantage of emails to engage in activities which are detrimental to network and information security is strictly prohibited in accordance with related laws.
There is a big difference between "engaging in activities that are detrimental to information security" and "discussing information security"
But with a title like "China Outlaws Outlook" are you really surprised that they are sensationalizing it.
Come again? (Score:3, Funny)
What you say? China set us up the bomb?
Seriously though, is this a big surprise. No doubt it's a sad day for liberty in China, but with the Chicoms' history when it comes to the Internet, we had to see stuff like this coming.
Nothing new here...move along... (Score:4, Insightful)
Atleast they know they're being monitored... (Score:3, Insightful)
and yet we still buy "Made in China" (Score:3, Insightful)
hijacked? (Score:3, Funny)
2 points for them trying to combat spam.
Damn rice farmers... (Score:4, Funny)
It's entirely possible that this is
[ ] Incorrect news
[ ] Making the wrong conclusions
[X] Jumping to conclusions
[X] Flamebait
[X] Copying another post, sorry I had to
Personally I look forward to getting back to Canada and out of the USA so I can get the icky feeling off myself.
Because Canada
[ ] Is so much better
[ ] Has less immigrants
[X] Doesn't have Bush
[X] Can tolerate more than one point of view
[ ] A nation which enjoys equal protection under the law
[ ] Has quality politicians
[ ] Has Effective journalism
[X] Has poutine
Tom
Creeping freedoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a sign of the increasing freedoms that politicians argue(d) liberalised trade with China would bring about?
Same law in Denmark (Score:3, Interesting)
except here it is part of an "anti-terrorism" law package.
Workaround (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The final solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... In that case, don't you think the cure seems to be worse than the disease? Reminds me of the New Hampshire license plates... "Live Free or Die".
S
Re:The final solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Right?
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
End Of Times!!
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
The more they tighten their grip, the more (email) systems will slip through their fingers.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail, whose parent companies have a presence in China and are more than willing to comply with China's censorship regime and turn people in?
If you want free speech in China, you do not use an American company to do it with.
Parent
By the way (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:spam is free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:spam is free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam isn't a free speech issue. Spam forces the burden of the cost onto the receiver, rather than the sender. It is exactly analagous to junk faxes, which cost very little to send but a great deal to receive.
Marketers are welcome to send emails to those people that have given their permission. Spamme
Re:spam is free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
That's stupid and dangerous. You've clearly never run a mail server of any real size. There is a very real and quantifiable cost to spam filtering. For an organization of any significant size (we're talking at least tens of thousands of email addresses), spam and virus filtering needs its own infrastructure. A lot of companies outsource to someone (e.g. Postini). That costs thousands (I know this, I am not talking out of my ass) of dollars every month. Even if the infrastructure is kept in-house, there is a significant up-front investment in hardware, plus the cost of staff to administer the spam/virus filtering infrastructre (if the org is big enough, this could be close to a full-time job). Not to mention the extra bandwidth costs when four spammers do a simultaneous distributed spam run, etc. etc.
It's not enough to allow the "mailbox owner" (a term that dodges the fact that corporate email is owned by the corporation) to decide whether or not they want to use spam filtering. First of all, most end-users have no idea how to make it happen, second, the company has to pay for the disk to store the shit that users never clean out.
Spam is not first-amendment-protected speech. If someone is standing on a soapbox yammering about their religion or hawking viagra or whatever, I can choose not to listen, and it doesn't cost me anything either way. Spam, on the other hand, does cost businesses a lot of money, and it costs the spammer virtually nothing. If spammers had to pay per recipient the way direct (postal) mailing marketers do, spam wouldn't be a problem.
It's 2006. Why are we having this conversation? This was all debated and decided in the late 90s. Did you miss the memo?
Parent
Re:Americans often forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forget Email, use IM! (Score:3, Informative)
If the US Government [unesco.org] can do it, I don't see why the Chinese can't monitor emails, IM, mobile phone calls, etc. I don't think anyone in China can believe that there's a safe medium for communication that the government won't tap.