Slashdot Mirror
China Locks in its Net-Citizenry
DatedNews writes "China's registry CNNIC teamed up in March with registar i-DNS.net to provide "Internet domains completely in Chinese characters" to the Greater Chinese Internet community.
What at first might look like a localization issue could potentially become a powerfull user lock-in and turn out to be a very effective addition to The Great Chinese Filtering."
I love watching China shoot the wings off of its much-prophesied ascendency to world superpower, one authoritarian move at a time.
Remember, CHINA: "It worked for the soviets, right?"
How does allowing domains to be registered using Chinese characters have anything to do with censorship? The linked articles just prove that China already filters web traffic, regulates content, and shuts down sites they don't like. How is the ability to use Chinese characters in your location bar an indication of a sinister new plot? Sure, there is a sinister plot afoot, but I don't see how this is an astonishing new development...
Great, instead of spam from a fake address at a pump-and-dump english domain, we can have spam from fake email addresses on domains that appear as a bunch of random characters to those without the language set.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
China is not implementing their own IDN scheme in an attempt to lock people into it. This is based on existing work on internationalized domain names. The largest country putting their weight behind IDNs is only going to encourage their rapid universal adaptation, and eliminate localization issues.
English is easier said than done.
In this day and age, I believe that you would probably be watched closer if you were american and looking at chinese sites than if you were chinese and looking at american sites. Propaganda is such a strange thing.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
The 60's called. They want their paranoia back.
Was Tiananmen Square in the 60s? No.
Was the Navy EP-3 midair crash in the 60s? No.
While you can argue that localized domain names are not much of an issue and that things are being blown way out of proportion, it is asinine to declare that the days of being wary of communist china are long gone. When the chinese citizens can vote anyone out of office then we can revisit the trust issue.
...newly-government approved Chinese names of the form . (i.e. 'name.gongsi') and . (i.e 'name.wangluo')... The purchase of Simplified Chinese names from the i-DNS.net/CNNIC partnership will automatically allow the corresponding web-site to be accessed by an equivalent, computer-generated domain name in Traditional Chinese characters (i.e. used in Hong Kong and Taiwan) free of charge. Conversely, one can also buy a Traditional Chinese name directly and get an automatically assigned Simplified Chinese version free.
.gongsi or .wangluo instead of traditional Chinese characters and get the same website. In other words, this system doesn't lock users in or out... I really don't see how this is that big of deal. Not to be a jerk, but do the editors read these articles? I'm not a very big fan of China's internet policies myself, but the newspost's threats of lock-in are totally unfounded.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like a non-Chinese user could type in
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Don't fret. Here's how this article came to be:
- A random Slashdot reader stumbles upon an article;
- Realizing it's about China, he suspects this could make the front page;
- BUT! It's not anti-Chinese, just about allowing Hanzi URLs! What to do!
- The random Slashdot reader adds a RANDOM ANTI-COMMUNIST BASTARDS slant. Voila!
- Editors approve the article in the blink of an eye.
And that, my friend, is how Slashdot front pages are made.