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China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games

Posted by timothy on from the blizzard-was-avant-garde dept.

oxide7 writes "Starting from August 1, Chinese Internet users will have to register using their real names for playing online games, China Daily reported on Saturday. The regulation, issued by the Ministry of Culture on June 22, is said to be part of a nationwide campaign to improve management of the virtual gaming industry and protect minors from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games."

12 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Protect people from unwholesome content? by mangu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Such as democracy and human rights?

    1. Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? by causality · · Score: 3, Insightful

      oh shut up. Freedom is for the wealthy elite, and slavery is for the rest.

      What the wealthy elite have is not freedom, but license. What they own also owns them, and with that comes the fear of loss and the obsessive desire to possess and control more and more. They are as far from free as one can get. If you see them as they truly are then you cannot possibly envy them.

      Real freedom is not political freedom. It's an inner freedom that does not depend on circumstances and events, only on how one faces them. It is not something that others could grant or take away.

      Did you imagine that the elite would spread such misery and fear, manifest such pathological selfishness, and care so much about power over others if they were truly free?

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    2. Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you take a trip down from your fantasy fairy land into reality you'll realize that a person with financial security and general liberty to pursue their interests (which may come from money or from political influence or usually both) actually IS more free and more happy than a hungry beggar digging through trash or a political prisoner who is tortured daily. Inner freedom my ass.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    3. Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? by causality · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you take a trip down from your fantasy fairy land into reality you'll realize that a person with financial security and general liberty to pursue their interests (which may come from money or from political influence or usually both) actually IS more free and more happy than a hungry beggar digging through trash or a political prisoner who is tortured daily.

      And in America any degree of that we have enjoyed came about because of men who had so much inner freedom that they had the guts to put their lives on the line and start a revolutionary war in order to build a society around any kind of mundane freedom you have enumerated. They were willing to be considered something like terrorists or treasonous, to fight in war, and also to defy the apathy of 1/3 of their population and the opposition of another 1/3 of their population at that time.

      You understand that dead men don't have any of the political or monetary freedoms you mention? So why would some folks who were already rather well-to-do value something more than their own lives? That's simple. They had inner freedom and it determined how they faced the events and circumstances of the world around them. You cannot subjugate a truly free people. You can only subjugate cowards who fear the threat of force more than they fear a meaningless existence because such people have no inner freedom. That's why they are so compatible with a meaningless existence (like climbing the corporate ladder as a major focus of life) even though many of them sense that there is something wrong with it.

      Admittedly the Founding Fathers are a cliche, mundane, yet concrete illustration of people who understood what I am talking about. Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Ghandi are more examples, for both were imprisoned yet neither was afraid of prison or deterred by it from doing what they knew to be right. Someone concerned about political freedom exclusively would most certainly want to avoid state-imposed incarceration.

      I am having to resort to this sort of explanation only because you failed to see one thing: I am not arguing against political freedom. I said only that it wasn't what I was referring to. You didn't bother, but had you asked me about political freedom I would say that its only stable form would have to come from a society that values real inner freedom. In other words, political freedom should follow and have its roots in real freedom. If it doesn't, then you get its roller-coaster form where governments start out smaller and freer and eventually become huge and authoritarian until collapsing and being replaced by something else, ad infinitum. That's why a high degree of political freedom has been so fleeting throughout history. At any rate, they are not opposed. They are related.

      Inner freedom my ass.

      I knew when I wrote the previous post that some people would scoff at it. Without a doubt, it can be a hard notion to seriously consider. On that I think we can find some agreement. Where we differ is on the question of whether my writing was truly faulty, or whether the inability to really understand it is a fault in the reader.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    4. Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      you'll realize that a person with financial security and general liberty to pursue their interests (which may come from money or from political influence or usually both) actually IS more free

      And in America any degree of that we have enjoyed came about because of men who had so much inner freedom that they had the guts to put their lives on the line and start a revolutionary war

      Any WHY were the founding fathers able to accomplish this task? Because they were rather well to do and had a good amount of political influence. Inner freedom is one thing but if you want to have an effect on the world outside your head usually more than that is required.

  2. Where are "bigbrother" and "policestate" tags ? by TheBlackMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is definately not about "privacy" or "security". We all know what is the reason for such law, so it should be tagged appropriately.

  3. Excellent news by maugle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now no politician in the US can even consider supporting it!

    "Ladies and gentleman, my opponent has come out in support of policies implemented in polluting, human rights abusing, communist, totalitarian, job-stealing China! Are you going to let him bring that to our shores?"

    1. Re:Excellent news by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's what the Australians thought.

    2. Re:Excellent news by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because the US government never does anything the Chinese government does.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
  4. Re:Of course this is in the best interests by causality · · Score: 2, Insightful

    of the children, it's China we're talking about here, it's not like it's some country that would steer online information in their own favor.

    Like the USA, it's also not a country that would trust parents to decide what is appropriate for their children, supervise them as needed, and gradually equip them to deal with the online world just as they do for the offline world. No, for that parents are thoroughly inadequate. What you need is a large, faceless, unaccountable state bureaucracy with lots of political power. Then and only then are the children safe. Taking over the role of all parents is surely better than dealing on a case-by-case basis with the small minority of parents who neglect their children.

    Isn't that the message behind every governmental action that uses "for the children" as its basis?

    "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  5. Stalking has never been easier by CuteSteveJobs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you steal my loot in a raid I'll know your real name, and with a bit more googling everything there is to know about you:

    Many of the vast unwashed masses on the net as spectacularly naive about their privacy. Take Gabrielle Romney, ex-lover of a right-wing political party figure in Australia. She wrote a letter to "The Age" bawling that they published her photo: "I am dismayed by the prominent publication of my photograph accompanying the article. To be targeted by a stalker is invasive, intimidating, and terrifying. As a private individual, one of the most debilitating aspects is the constant and unwelcome intrusion into one's life. Publishing my photograph has been a further violation of my privacy and dignity."

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/man-sent-more-than-100-sometimes-offensive-messages-to-exlover-20100726-10slv.html

    Fair enough, but type her name into "Google" and you'll find yourself staring at her mug in facebook:

    http://www.facebook.com/people/Gabrielle-Romney/528810959

    Let me repeat what she said: "As a private individual, one of the most debilitating aspects is the constant and unwelcome intrusion into one's life."

    If you're on Facebook, you're not a private individual.

  6. Re:So that's why Blizzard wanted RealID... by John+Saffran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a larger picture at play here rather than some sort of supposed victimisation of china.

    In South Korea the real-name rule was instituted to stop people using their anonymity to harm others through defamataion. The worst case scenario is that the aggrieved party, ie. the defamees, can bring legal suits against malicious rumour mongering. In other words it serves to empower victims, and no more than that.

    To contrast, what's the worst thing that can happen to someone in China? Unfortunately china is still a country where posting the 'wrong' opinion, particularly for political matters, can have some very real-life consequences. Even posting from a pseudo-anonymous location, eg. an internet cafe, can have the police showing up within minutes of making such a post. This specific article might only speak of real-id for online gaming, ostentibly to ensure defamation doesn't happen, but the issue is that it can far too easily be the thin end of the wedge of yet another measure to stifle political dissent through the threat of physical harm. To illustrate the possible consequences, the Ghostnet report into cyberespionage highlighted the case of a tibetan in china who was convicted through evidence 'gathered' via the botnet. Clearly the noose would tighten around freedom of speech when (not if) the measure was extended beyond game forums into the internet as a whole.

    Whilst individuals like yourself might not care about such measures because perhaps it doesn't affect you directly, but there's a clear danger to people who happen to live in china and have a strong social conscience .. this is why articles about censorship in china garner attention, not because people like to 'pick on' china.