What's this? Does this mean you have to register all your .CN addresses with China??
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/business/int/news/20051226p2g00m0bu032000c.html
China closes unregistered Web sites en masse before Christmas
SHANGHAI -- The Chinese government last week began closing down Web sites whose owners had not registered their personal information with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), government officials said.
"Unregistered Web sites were shut down as a warning. The government is not punishing anyone," Hu Yonglong, the Vice Director of the Shanghai Communications Administration (SCA), told Interfax Monday. The SCA is the local branch of the MII in Shanghai.
The closing of Web sites were carried out by local branches of the MII, which in March were ordered to compile databases of personal information for all individuals and companies that had registered Internet domain names in China. New regulations issued in March require all individuals who own domain names to register their legal names, citizen identification card numbers, telephone numbers, employers, and the location of the server on which their Web sites are hosted. The MII said in March that these new directories would help authorities shut down Web sites with pornographic, gambling, and other illegal content.
The original deadline for registering Web sites was June 15, but authorities decided to extend the cut-off date because so many Web sites had failed to register by June, Hu said.
"But by the end of this year, there were still too many Web sites not registered, so we began shutting them down," Hu said.
An official with the Beijing Communications Administration said that similar campaigns to shut down unregistered websites hosted in Beijing and other Chinese cities had also taken place.
"This is a national campaign," the Beijing Communication Administration official, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
However, none of the officials were willing to say how many Web sites had been shut in the crackdown, nor were they clear about how Chinese authorities were executing the closing of the unregistered Web sites.
Server administrators though wrote on a number of Internet bulletin boards that Chinese authorities had sealed off ports on servers hosting Web sites that had not been registered with the government. But by sealing off server ports, each of which provides access to several Web sites hosted on a single server, authorities were not only shutting down services to unregistered Web sites, but also closing access to Web sites that had registered with the MII.
"If your Web site is closed, all you have to do is register it and it will be opened," Hu said.
In one example, Intel's
www.intel.com.cn domain named was blocked last week because the chipmaker failed to register its ownership of the address with the MII. But the chipmaker's Web site was back up and running just a day later, after the company registered the intel.com.cn domain name with authorities.
Unfortunately, this example does not apply to the vast majority of unregistered Web sites that have been shut down. The owner of one Web site that had been shut said he had no plans to register his Web site with the MII because it would allow authorities to find and prosecute him for illegal content.
Many of the Web sites that were shut during last week's crackdown were online bulletin board systems, which allow users to upload text, pictures, links, and other files to share with others. This uploaded content often contains pornographic and anti-government material, which Chinese authorities have been eager to stop. The Web site owner said that by registering his Web site, authorities would be able to fine him for illegal content that others had uploaded to his Web site.
"Its not worth it to register," the Web site owner said. "I'll either use a server in Hong Kong or the U.S., or I'll stop doing the Web site." (Interfax-China)
December 26, 2005
Interfax-China
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