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China Privacy The Internet

New Chinese Regulations Require Real Name On Internet 146

Posted by samzenpus from the real-names-only dept.
mpicpp sends word that starting March 1st, China will ban internet accounts that impersonate people or organizations, and will require that people use real names when registering accounts online. "As part of an effort to increase control over the Internet, China's government this week revealed new regulations that require Web users to register their real names. According to The Wall Street Journal, the rules apply to users of blogs, microblogs, instant messaging services, online discussion forums, news comment sections, and other related services. Beginning March 1, China will also ban Web accounts that impersonate people or organizations, Reuters said. That includes groups posing as government entities—the People's Daily state newspaper—and impersonations of foreign leaders, like President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin."
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New Chinese Regulations Require Real Name On Internet More

New Chinese Regulations Require Real Name On Internet

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  • officially change name (Score:3)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @05:42PM (#48984351)

    after every post

    • FCC (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sounds like what the FCC will do in the US eventually. Just give it some time until "for the children" or to fight "the terrorists" the FCC will require real names etc.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        Sounds like what the FCC will do in the US eventually. Just give it some time until "for the children" or to fight "the terrorists" the FCC will require real names etc.

        Yep, I was just about to say, that as much as we in the US bash China for lack of privacy and personal rights (including the right 'not to be seen')....there are a lot in the US government (fed and state) just salivating over ending anonymous access to the internet just as much as the Chinese.

        The internet really snuck in under the radar of

        • I can't figure out how they're going to do this. It's not like everyone has a unique name - quite the contrary.

        • Re:FCC (Score:4, Insightful)

          by grcumb ( 781340 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @10:29PM (#48986259) Homepage Journal

          Sounds like what the FCC will do in the US eventually. Just give it some time until "for the children" or to fight "the terrorists" the FCC will require real names etc.

          Yep, I was just about to say, that as much as we in the US bash China for lack of privacy and personal rights (including the right 'not to be seen')....there are a lot in the US government (fed and state) just salivating over ending anonymous access to the internet just as much as the Chinese.

          Have you not been paying attention? The 'real names' thing was invented here. Except it was started by the private sector, not government.

          Before you claim there's any difference between the two, I will direct you to The Dangers of Surveillance [ssrn.com], a paper that first appeared in the Harvard Law Review, and is required reading for anyone who's interested in the legal principles at play here. I too used to think, 'Yeah, but you can walk away from a business, but you can't walk away from government.' The paper makes an excellent point that real name policies, no matter where they originate, are detrimental to human liberty:

          [W]e must recognize that surveillance transcends the public-private divide. Even if we are ultimately more concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple with the complex relationships between government and corporate watchers.

          In a nutshell, if a corporation has your data, then by hook or by crook, the government can get it too, often voluntarily, often in circumvention of the law.

          • Have you not been paying attention? The 'real names' thing was invented here. Except it was started by the private sector, not government.

            Err...I've not been forced to give my real name to any website that I felt worthy of my joining to.

            Some have asked, and I just don't give them my business.

      • It's what private companies already do to us all over the web. :/
        I actually like anonymity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          Welcome to 1990, when we were telling people not to use their real name online.

          • Imagins all the SWATing increases when you have the person's real name rather than having to figure out who they are.

    • So are you allowed to rename yourself Anonymous Coward?

  • Required across Asia (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Russia does this, South Korea does this, and now China.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by grcumb ( 781340 )

      Russia does this, South Korea does this, and now China.

      South Korea's policy was struck down years ago [bbc.com] by the Constitutional Court, which ruled that it was unconstitutional and ineffective.

  • Luckily for me, my real name is... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    already A. Nonymous Coward.

  • How long before everybody does it? (Score:3)

    by Goose In Orbit ( 199293 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @05:46PM (#48984375)

    Cue the "if you don't use your real name - you must be a terrorist" angle from the politicians

  • Inigo Montoya. You should be familiar with the rest of this by now.
    *STAB!*

  • Man, how many million accounts can you create using a telephone database ....

    • ...which includes your home address, as does the IP address registration for your phone and home access.

      • ...which includes your home address, as does the IP address registration for your phone and home access.

        those can be forged. Even with IPv6. Just use an IoT bridge device.

  • Looks like the Chinese Govt has decided not to be evil. So they decided to follow example set by the role-model of dont-be-evil, Google+

    • Re:Give them some break, please. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chalnoth ( 1334923 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @06:20PM (#48984647)

      That would be nice, considering that Google has abandoned that policy entirely.

      Facebook, on the other hand, seems to be stepping up the enforcement of their real name policy.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Hmm, soon they tell me my cat can't have a facebook account. He is registered with his real name there, so it should be ok. Even the profile picture is a real one and not a fake. I do help him with typing and forming opinions, as he is a cat, and doesn't type so coherently. And his opinions mostly circle around chasing things, killing things, and dragging this he killed to me. And eating. And licking himself. And destroying furniture. He does follow IKEA, you know, to keep in touch with what kind of furnitu

    • Looks like the Chinese Govt has decided not to be evil. So they decided to follow example set by the role-model of dont-be-evil, Google+

      I hope it works as well as Google+'s variant. None of my Google+ accounts use the name on my driver's license.

    • Except that Google doesn't send it's goons to visit you at night to "check the gas meter" if you criticize the the US government and its policies.

  • Yeah, I can see that this could be a good thing. Easier to prosecute for copyright infringement. Chase Down "Evil Doers". But HOLY JESUS, does anyone think that this wont be absolutely, sordidly, abused?!?! Plus, sorry China, it really smacks of, "Where are you're papers?" and we all remember how swimingly that turned out. So. Moving along?

  • Fuk Yu and I have a twin sister named Fuk Mei

  • working very hard to make the rest of the world look so much more attractive and superior to the chinese approach to the internet

    1. people go overseas

    2. people use VPNs at workplaces with foreing interests that have carve outs from the anti-proxty, anti-VPN chinese efforts aimed at regular people

    3. people get access in new ways more nimble than chinese bureaucrats can whack-a-mole

    no one is fooled. everyone sees a degraded experience because of the insecurity of totalitarian assholes. disgust and hatred of t

  • haha - using your real name in China (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @06:37PM (#48984783)

    85 percent of the billion plus people populace uses one of a hundred surnames, and for common given names there's a couple dozen popular ones for male and for female........LOTS of people have the same name. "Hi I'm Tang Li!" "how about that, we've ten other ones in the class this year!"

    • ZhangWei278554

    • They do have a national ID in China. You probably have to give your phone number too, which is linked to a lot of other accounts, like your bank account. They will find you. And hey, it's China, where you're gonna run to? Vietnam? North Korea?

      • How does national ID help finding troll Lau Chen on the internet?

        As for "where you gonna run to?", Douglas Adams has the answer (well I only had to change one word)

        China is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to China.

        • people register with their ID - that's already common with many services in China
          It's like registering with Google+ with your passport, Social security number, etc.

          Did you really that registering with your real name in China means the same thing it did on Google+???

          - greetings from Shanghai

    • "haha" Yu so funy!

      Vote down, overrated. Obviously you haven't travelled abroad very much, or you'd realize not every country writes exclusively in English. "Tang Li" is pinyin, when you register for services online in China you don't/can't use pinyin - you use Hanzi. Hanzi is the character system of which, to use your stupid example, "tang" has very many iterations of different characters, and li has even more.

      If what you just wrote was said in a youtube video, you could expect mad hate for being an ignoran

      • oh cut the crap. Yes, I've traveled in asia, was married there. Guess what, all my in-laws are Chinese, I'll let you figure out what that means. Channels from CCTV often play in my house. There is the "Tang" in the 100 most common surnames that 85% use, that's the one I used as particular example (you should be happy now). And you should know which given name Li that Li I alude too is.

        Guess what, Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, no Hanzi for you!

        So all your supposed beefs and arguing points come cr

      • "haha" Yu so funy!

        Yu, not so much.

        So, so, so, so, sensitive we are today.

        I christen thee No Hu Ma.

        I went to a Karate class taught by Sensei Tiv. He was a mix of Asian and Yiddish.

        Finally, let's all hope Jesus brings the bacon soon.

        Lighten up - life is more fun that way. Too many people are turning into walking sacks of umbrage.

    • Don't give them ideas. Someone will come up with a hash based on DNA. Hash collisions will be much less than names collisions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Seems like either it is supposed to be like Google's now abandoned real name policy where the goal was to make people be nicer to each other, or they are planning to require other identifying information at the time of registration. Sure, people could lie but then they can charge you with breaking that very clear law, instead of trying to prove what you said meets the definition of subversive.

  • Not uncommon to have hundreds of peole sharing the same name pair.

  • Given Name or Official Name (Score:3)

    by ian_po ( 234542 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @06:58PM (#48984925) Journal

    People don't have "real" names. We are not born with a unique ID burned into our souls; there is no primary key for you in the CosmosDB. Names are what people refer to each other by. My name could as easily be Big Brother as Zheng Wu, both are just as valid. To be entirely too pedantic this OP should have used the term Official Name, i.e. the name the state uses to refer to you in governmental matters.

    • We are not born with a unique ID burned into our souls;

      We do, however, have a unique ID burned into our bodies. It goes something like GATTACA...

      (well, excepting twins, chimeras and a few other special cases).

  • While I realize that my FiberStore CS agent's name is not Jessica, it's preferable to Xing Huay Chiung for the sake of communication. This would be why they chose to use Jessica instead of real name. This is why I tell Starbucks employees my name is "A", when they ask.

  • OMG (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you outlaw names, then only terrorists will have names! ..wait a minute!

  • This is more of an expansion on the law rather than a new law. Microblog type services have required real ID registration for a long time -- you must provide a national ID in order to access, however, the display name did not (and still doesn't) have to be a real name.

    The news here is more about the affect on impersonations...which I don't entirely see as a negative. People should not be allowed to impersonate others or organisations online in any country, and I believe many countries have laws against this

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rick in China ( 2934527 )

      I'd also like to add the author is an idiot, and her article is pretty much full of speculation and garbage with copied stats to attempt to back it up, for example:

      "the CNNIC said microblog users dropped 7.1 percent to 249 million—unsurprising, as social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are blocked in China." - yes, first of all, "dropped 7.1%" - what? Does this person really think Twitter Facebook or Youtube accounted for, at any point in time, any significant user base in mainland Chi

  • I wonder (Score:3)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2015 @11:40PM (#48986581)
    How many people are ghoing to change their name to Phuc Yu?

    Oh wait, wrong country.

  • These regulations were sponsored by Jim Ardis. He was up all night working on this; amongst other things; and now has blood-shot eyes.

  • to a Police State near you (under the guise of Title II classification).

  • How many Wu's and Chen's can they keep track of?

    And will their tracking table burst?

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