The notion of trying to enforce a 'real name registration' system for Chinese bloggers has been floated by the powers-that-be for some time, but I don't know that anything has ever come of it. The picture above of eternal rebel Bart Simpson proudly displaying his 'Chinese blogger' card was created to pour sarcastic scorn on the idea. I think I picked it up on the Net at least a couple of years ago; and I can't even remember where it came from now (although I strongly suspect it was from, or at least via, the egregious davesgonemental).The government's latest engagingly bonkers scheme is to try to promote a 'code of conduct' for bloggers, which may include resurrecting the 'real name registration' ideal. I was alerted to this by a short item in last week's Asia Media round-up (the story was picked up from The South China Morning Post, but most of their website is available on subscription only). The scheme - still at the draft proposal stage (where it may, with any luck, languish forever) - is described as voluntary; although it is also suggested that service providers should uphold the scheme by refusing to register bloggers who will not agree to its terms - which sounds kind of 'compulsory' to me. The scheme is the brainchild of the Internet Society of China (one of those bizarre Chinese entities which is purportedly an NGO but is in fact nothing more than a government propaganda mouthpiece), and the article cites its main aim as being "to stop people who use blogs to spread socially distrubing messages". Oh dear. Well, I think we know what they mean.
Needless to say, I am opting out of any such scheme. I think this country has a whole lot more trube than is good for it. We're all woefully over-trubed, and we need as much dis-trubing as we can get. Tulsa, Earthling, and the rest of my 'crazy gang' of 'distrubing' commentators, are you with me on this?
PS Although this particular article is slightly marred by some faulty English, Asia Media (a news monitoring and collation project run by the UCLA Asia Institute) is in general a very good potted source of news about this region of the world. You can sign up for a weekly digest to be sent to your e-mail account.
4 comments:
I have to understand the word "trube" first and be sure what you are asking me to be in on together with you and the rest of your crazy gang, before I can say anything about anything.
ah, i did come across this real name registration bit in one of my legal updates... of course it would happen as I take the great leap into the blog world on my own.
But, I'm not sure that it will ever get out of the drafting stage. Laws here can take years to come to their final versions... Recently, I'd worked with the impact of one related to business that was recently promulgated that took 11 years and numerous drafts to get to final. Imagine how the business environment has changed in the last 11 years, since the thing was first put down on paper!!!
Though, the government did recently (yesterday? day before yesterday?) put a freeze on approving any more licenses for internet cafe. I think the existing ones can continue, but they don't want to add more to the pot while they consider the potential negative impact the internet is having on the youth.
And, Earthling, no worries, only bloggers physically located in China need worry about the trubing.
Actually, I suspect it's only Chinese nationals located in China and using China-based service providers as their blog hosts who have to worry. But I'd rather they didn't have to.
And I'd rather I was the Queen there and made all buildings get showers and indoor toilets asap, all of this after I diminished poverty there.
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