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Chinese Bloggers Encouraged to Register Contact Info

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Aug 23, 2007 02:44 PM
from the and-where-can-we-arrest-you dept.
Privacy The Internet
Raver32 writes "Blog service providers in China are "encouraged" to register users with their real names and contact information, according to a new government document that tones down an earlier proposal banning anonymous online blogging. At least 10 major Chinese blog service providers have agreed to sign the "self-discipline pledge" issued by the Internet Society of China, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported."
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  • My contact info (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joaz Banbeck (1105839) on Thursday August 23 2007, @02:46PM (#20334749)
    dou.zanz.ded@tienamensquare
  • It is good for society when you take responsibility for the things The Party tells you to take responsibility for.

    Why don't these antics from communist China surprise me? These agreements don't mean much since Chinese courts do whatever the hell they feel like anyways.
    • It is good for society when you take responsibility for the things The Party tells you to take responsibility for.

      Why don't these antics from communist China surprise me? These agreements don't mean much since Chinese courts do whatever the hell they feel like anyways.
       
      You're right, cause here in the USA our courts respect the Constit....oh wait...
      • Liberal BS. I'll ignore it.

        Why don't you explore outside your own country and examine other systems of government before you decide the US is the great satan.
        • Liberal BS. I'll ignore it.

          Why don't you explore outside your own country and examine other systems of government before you decide the US is the great satan.

          Whos a liberal? The freedom of the individual is paramount, and that unfortunately is neither a liberal or conservative idea. Neither party fully support the Constitution. I believe in the Constitution as its written. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, the commerce clause, especially. Who has a better system of goverment than our constitution as written?
          • Yes it's all a big conspiracy. Nobody can get a fair trial anymore, especially if you're a minority. All judges are bought off by corporate interests.

            It's fine to dislike flaws in the US judicial system, and seek to correct them. But the liberal BS is when you compared the US to other systems and ignore when the US is more fair just because you take issue with a relatively minor problem.

            You have blinders on if you think when I am critical of Chinese courts that I am holding up US courts as perfect and unass
              • Yea, I guess I'm just not smoking enough cannabis to understand your point of view.

                Sorry for all the insults, but I felt it was necessary to fight stupid with stupid. Perhaps liberalism is a mental disorder [amazon.com], who knows.
                  • What does Bill O'Reilly have to do with Michael Savage? I fail to see the connection. Howard Stern has a radio show too, let's include him in the discussion as well.

                    Your stupidity has nothing to do with your being a Libertarian. I myself am a small-l lbertarian (and read publications of groups like the Cato Institute regularly). And one of my favourite books is by Milton Friedman. All of which is irrelevant to the discussion.

                    Just because you don't think you're one of those nancy boy far left card carrying d
                    • I thought you said you were a big-L Libertarian, I'm sure you can come up with plenty of conspiracy theories without my help.
          • I just don't like those that trample the Constitution, and those that allow it to happen (the courts).

            But that's the job of the courts. This is the legacy of the idiotic British Common Law system. In Common Law countries, laws as written by legislatures really aren't very important; what's ultimately binding is what some weasely lawyer can convince a jury of morons of in a court. Then, whatever idiocy this decision is, becomes law through something called "legal precendent".

            A lot of people seem to compla

  • They should what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by make dev (1004307) on Thursday August 23 2007, @02:51PM (#20334829)

    "Blog providers should monitor and manage comments ... and delete illegal and bad information in a timely manner,"

    Delete "Bad" information? Is that the one with the evil bit turned on?

  • There's a logical reason for recording addresses.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 8127972 (73495) on Thursday August 23 2007, @02:59PM (#20334921)
    .... When the government decides to execute you for dissident activities, they can send your family an invoice for the bullet.

    • When the government decides to execute you for dissident activities, they can send your family an invoice for the bullet.

      You misunderstand the communist system.
      There is no private property, hence bullets are distributed free of charge.
      In fact, they will probably distribute bullets to your family as well - *Gratis*.
      It's really a wonderful system.

  • Does anyone know (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Conspiracy_Of_Doves (236787) on Thursday August 23 2007, @03:06PM (#20334985)
    Is it common knowledge in China how much the government restricts freedom? Or is it something that barely anyone inside the country is aware of?

    • Is it common knowledge in the USA just how much the government / mainstream media warps people's view of the world through carefully constructed propaganda?

      Your reaction to that statement is probably about the same as the way a Chinese person of similar political awareness would react to your statement. Actually, if anything, the big difference between a Chinese and American person is acceptance vs. denial.

      • Re:Does anyone know (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Conspiracy_Of_Doves (236787) on Thursday August 23 2007, @06:08PM (#20337261)
        Is it common knowledge in the USA just how much the government / mainstream media warps people's view of the world through carefully constructed propaganda?

        Honestly? I have no idea. I know that I know that the government and media warp everything, and my friends are aware of it too. But I have no idea how much the average person is aware of it.

    • Is it common knowledge in China how much the government restricts freedom

      It's fairly common knowledge among expats. A co-student in my Uni is the son of Chinese expatriate (the fellow came across the Pacific in a tugboat, no less) and he's quite aware of the brutalities of the PRC communists. Presumably they found out inside the PRC itself.

      Dissent is alive, though fiercely opposed by the Beijing politburo.

      PRC apologists here on slashdot (or anywhere) should talk to more geeks in the Chinese diaspora. They use google.tw more than google.cn for a reason.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I hear it's known to a lot. They're a large part of the global economy. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it. You'd get in trouble. You never know which friend would turn you in to look like a better citizen. It's just easier to ignore it and live on.

        This is true. I am close friends with 2 Chinese guys at my university and both of them are trying desperately to take as long as possible for their education so that they can get permanent resident status in Canada and not have to go back to China.

        Don't get me wrong, they love their country, but it's not the kind of place they want to raise a family in at its current state.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I hear it's known to a lot. They're a large part of the global economy. It's just that nobody wants to talk about it. You'd get in trouble.

        It's visible in interviews of chinese tourists as well. When a clueless journalists asks them if they support decision X in China, the chinese person always bursts out in nervous laughter, avoiding the question completely.
        They know it, and they do not talk about it, because what nobody talks about they can't be shot for.

        It's a pressure boiler and history tells us it's go
      • That's very interesting, thanks for taking the time to comment. Just curious, though, what it a "QQ number"?
        • QQ is like a clone of ICQ. As with ICQ, you also have a UNI (Unique Number Identifier) as your logon account.

          I'm not sure why they are horded, but my fiance' in Shanghai tells me that the Chinese love a form of numerology that plays a part in "luck". I suspect new accounts are always being opened in order to obtain a string of numbers in the right order.

          OTOH, it could be because they're getting spammed and need to open up a fresh non-tainted account.
  • I can't even imagine how many death threats I would have gotten by now for saying bad things about Ubuntu, if people had my real contact information.

  • Cue ... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cue the "Record Number of Chinese ISP Owners Commit Suicide" headlines in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
  • encouraged with what, beatings in nearest state penitiary ?
  • > Blog service providers in China are "encouraged" to register users with their real names and contact information,

    Or just use your Yahoo! account and they'll hand it (and you) over to the Communists for you.
  • Oh wait, MySpace is supposed to close and report accounts of sex offenders. How are they going to do this without getting their real names or make sure the information doesn't end up in government's hands for other reasons?
  • Well, they actually don't need everyone to publish their name in order to know where to find "abusers". I work for one of the biggest blogging service company in Russia. In the last 3 - 4 years maybe 15 people were brought to court over something they wrote in their blog and our company was _never_ asked to release some info about the blogger in question. They somehow manage to do without us.
    • And this is different from anywhere else how? Don't forget about the US government's electronic spying... At least China has the balls to tell it's people it's watching them...

      • Re:Oblig: In the Soviet ... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ReTay (164994) on Thursday August 23 2007, @02:59PM (#20334913)
        And this is different from anywhere else how? Don't forget about the US government's electronic spying... At least China has the balls to tell it's people it's watching them...

        Right and how many blogers are imprisoned because they don't like the government in the US?
        How many people that visit the democratic underground are getting arrested for posting there?
        Yeah really good comparison there.....
        Also taking steps to make sure that the governments "electronic spying" does not catch you is trivial at best.
        • Right and how many blogers are imprisoned because they don't like the government in the US?
          How many people that visit the democratic underground are getting arrested for posting there?

          So you know for a fact that 0 people are in gitmo for this, or in CIA secret prisons, or have been exported for torture for any of these actions? Oh, right they won't tell us who is in these places so we really don't know. They could disappear people for this stuff and we would never know.

          • Re:Oblig: In the Soviet ... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by OddThinking (1078509) on Thursday August 23 2007, @03:32PM (#20335251)
            And how many would have to disappear before someone wondered where their blogger went to?
            • And how many would have to disappear before someone wondered where their blogger went to?

              You know THAT is one of the best questions I have ever heard.
              And I don't think it could a number of people but rather how well know a blogger was that would start it.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by ReTay (164994)
            So you know for a fact that 0 people are in gitmo for this, or in CIA secret prisons, or have been exported for torture for any of these actions? Oh, right they won't tell us who is in these places so we really don't know. They could disappear people for this stuff and we would never know.

            Ok take off the tinfoil
            The difference is you are guessing. Second it is a known fact that people get imprisoned in China for speaking out about the government in a perceived incorrect manner. After all you are still post
            • Well Americans have been arrested for wearing the "wrong" shirt in a mall and for saying to dick cheney that the war in Iraq was morally reprehensible. Give it a little time and if we continue on this course people will be disappeared for free speech outside of a free speech zone.

          • Re:Oblig: In the Soviet ... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by edumacator (910819) on Thursday August 23 2007, @04:11PM (#20335739)

            The wonderful thing about believing in a government conspiracy is that no one can prove you wrong.

            Having no proof of the conspiracy just proves that it's a really good one, and therefore we should be more afraid.

            I think we should be vigilant about protecting our rights, but let's be careful about assuming things that are unsubstantiated.

        • The US Gov't doesn't need to tell anyone about who they spy on...that's Bush's warrent-less wiretapping scheme! No judge will ever find out, and the agencies doing the snooping are protected from testifying because it is a 'state secret'. You could be spied on, branded a "terrorist" with no paper trail and disappeared forever.

          I hope you are trolling, I really do. Especially since the pro-business concerns in the USA would LOVE to turn the clock back on environmental protections and consumer safety in ord

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by OddThinking (1078509)
            I may not be a fan of the current administration, but comparing the US to China in this instance is a bit much. If I disappear forever, someone is going to notice. How many bloggers have disappeared in the last 6 years. I mean truly disappeared, not just quit blogging. Wouldn't their family, friends, or readers go public with the information they could no longer be found (you know, like going to the police or something). How long would it take for the story to be known to a large number of people after
            • Just making a point that with the recent law changes, this scenario inches closer to possibility.

              I always found it amusing that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam was committing genocide and all of his human rights violations, but we bend over backwards for China. I think the same geniuses who thought Iraq would pull a 180 if they got democracy think that China will undergo a similar change once the people taste the fruits of capitalism.
        • If the government controlled the media, everyone who writes a letter to the editor of a newspaper would go to jail. They all complain about the government. Someone calls George Bush a "liar" on a daily basis.

          I'm sure there is some deep dark conspiracy that can explain the rationale behind this. Maybe they can explain it to the Chinese so that they can get it on the action.
          • Going from Chinese civil rights violations to nonsensical ranting about Microsoft in three steps isn't in itself remarkable. But doing it with an "In Soviet Russia..." post in the middle certainly is!

            • Re:Oblig: In the Soviet ... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Tackhead (54550) on Thursday August 23 2007, @04:09PM (#20335707)
              > Going from Chinese civil rights violations to nonsensical ranting about Microsoft in three steps isn't in itself remarkable. But doing it with an "In Soviet Russia..." post in the middle certainly is!

              Really?

              The original poster wasn't talking about China -- he was claiming that Post-9/11 America is a "freer" country than China, because relatively few Americans' rights had been abused.

              Programmers (application developers or operating systems designers) secure computer systems from malicious users by denying our programs the ability to escalate their own privileges.

              Pre-9/11 America was designed along the same principles: Governments, in order to secure the liberty of their citizens, limited their own powers.

              An operating system isn't secure "because it hasn't been hacked". It can only be deemed secure when userland processes can't be compromised by bad input, and if (that is, when) a userland process is compromised, the operating system denies the compromised process the ability to take over the rest of the machine. Segmentation fault: Core dumped.

              Likewise, a country isn't free "because no US bloggers have been imprisoned for criticizing the US government". A country can only be deemed free when a blogger can't be legally imprisoned for criticizing his or her government, and if (that is, when) some grandstanding politician manages to pass law like that, the law is immediately struck down as unconstitutional.

              You secure a system by making it hard to compromise. When the guy in Marketing wants software to be automatically installed when a user visits a web page "because everyone hates installing software", the only correct response is "NO."

              You secure a citizen's rights by making it hard for anyone, even yourself, to take them away. When the guy on the campaign trail wants to spy on everyone "because it's for the children", the correct response must again be "NO."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by burndive (855848)

      Really? So how did the USA wind up on the side that was against the fascists in the first place? Could it be because of deep philosophical differences, namely the principles of human rights? Naw, that would be too obvious.

      Also, the Nazis never attacked the USA, it was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor.

      And they even now talk bullshit nad close eyes on what happens in China

      What would you suggest? Economic sanctions? Open war?

      Freedom for Tibet and defending human rights end for the US when ther

      • Really? So how did the USA wind up on the side that was against the fascists in the first place? Could it be because of deep philosophical differences, namely the principles of human rights? Naw, that would be too obvious.

        The USA was for all intents and purposes dragged into WW2. They did not declare war on Germany; Germany declared war on them 4 days after the Japanese declaration (and that happened because such were the terms of alliance between Germany and Japan). This was December 1941, 2 years after W

          • If you cannot see why any decent human being would be involved in a war like that, you have a serious moral defect.

      • What would you suggest? Economic sanctions? Open war?

        Economic Sanctions would be a good start, but no one wants to part with his "Made in China" cellphone. It's so disgusting I could retch. Tibetans are being wiped out systematically here. It's not just tyranny or oppression, it's annihilation.

        If the people of Tibet really want to be free, they should stand up for their right to self-determination, or at least representation in government.

        That's a bit difficult to do when a totalitarian, oppressive and genocidal regime ties them to chairs and yanks out their nails with pliers until they beg for death... ... and hypocrites like some slashdotters act as apologists for said regime with bogus arguments lik

      • I know I have said a lot of smack on slashdot including trashing the president. And the FBI never showed up at my front door. That probably is the biggest difference between US and China.

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