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China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games
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."
Oh, and South Korea already does this. But "we" only care about this because this is CHINA and CHINA IS BAD!! Mmmm'kay?
USB Key fob with all your bio data will be required. Of course, we're all for it, right? Only terrorists and pedophiles want privacy...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Such as democracy and human rights?
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 the minor from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games.
How does knowing a players name determine if they are a minor or not? It's not like they get something suffixed to their name once they turn 18/21 (select where applicable).
This is definately not about "privacy" or "security". We all know what is the reason for such law, so it should be tagged appropriately.
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?"
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
How is this different from the current state of things in the US, where you so often have to register with your own credit card? That seems like it'll cover virtually all cases. Not that it doesn't really suck that players can mostly be tracked down to their real identities or anything, but that's a different story, I think.
Exactly! People think China's government doesn't care about its citizens or listen to its people, but it's simply not true. They pay great attention to what people say, and responds immediately if anyone expresses discontent.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Most American online games already have your name or can track the players because they pay with credit cards and use the Internet from home.
In China they use prepaid card which virtually anyone can buy and then play the games at an Internet cafe. I don't agree with the proposal but they are doing the same thing that most counties do by requiring credit card payments.
i thought i sensed some sarcasm is the first post. i really hope you weren't being sarcastic because i would really like to believe that's true.
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
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.
Runs out and goes register "Chen": sorry, this name is already taken.
We are talking about registering for an online game. I see this as a debate of public vs private space, and unfortunately I see many people trying to impose their rights to privacy in public arenas.
For example, if you are walking down the street and a photographer snaps your photo, do you really have a right to expect privacy? When you walk into a store to buy your gimp outfit, do you really expect the cashier to not see your goods as you buy it or your name when you pass them the credit card?
Why are they talking about name registration? Protecting minors from unwholesome content is mentioned. So, yes, to a certain degree they want to impose censorship. You know, maybe to prevent minors from seeing explicit gestures or language like the USA's MPAA rating system does with movies.
Also, it could be used to track down those who are socially unacceptable or political dissidents. I don't know how many times I've overheard these times of conversations in Everquest when I use to play - you know, planning protest marches or talking about the injustice of the communist system while playing dark elf females dressed in all leather armor and using whips. Yeah, if I had a nickle for every time that happened, I'd still be as broke as I am now.
My wife states a good test from private space to anyone with a bit of modesty and manners that I have expanded to the most likely shameless crowd that visits the web - namely do you feel comfortable walking around totally naked, blowing your nose, and farting all while masturbating to your favorite fetish porn? You wouldn't do this in a store, on a public street, in your back yard, or on a video chat site (unless you're on chatroulette I guess - but then you're a criminal deviant who has no respect for public space).
An MMO is not a private space unless you develop the software, buy the server, build your own dedicated network lines, and restrict who can have access to it - it is a virtual RPG store holding events. You should not expect to have any privacy there.
The only issue I would have is if they required you to use your real name for your in-game name. That would defeat the purpose of a MMORPG. However, there is nothing unreasonable about using your real name to register for the game.
One can easily find many resident IDs with the associated names on the Internet & in real life. Copy it, validate it, use it, voila.
And some service providers don't really care about all this real name shit - they just ask for a resident ID in valid format and don't bother to check whether it is associated with the name you provided. There are tools readily available for creation of fake IDs.
It's funny you mention that. Recently, the central government has had to listen to the people. A local official either was or will soon be executed for corruption because of complaints -- even demonstrations! -- on the part of the people in his district. He is not the first, either.
They certainly won't respond as kindly to another attempt to overthrow the government, but they do sometimes have to pay attention to the people's complaints.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Things like this pop up all the time in China...there are multiple gov't groups that vie for "attention" and thus "power". One side says "we are going to protect the children from ______". Then the other group goes "No no no you do not have the power to do that - that is our job"...and nothing ever happens. The last version of this was "ID Card Numbers" which is effectively the same thing...It never came to pass either, before that it was "Time limits on MMO games"....never happened...the list goes on and on.
I have the same rule for my own online game (no link or I'd be accused of slashvertisement). It's "my home", so to speak, I don't charge for it, but I expect my guests to follow some basic rules of courtesy and one of them is that you give me your actual, real, full name as I give you mine (on the site).
Nothing forces you to, you can play somewhere else if you don't like the rules in my "home". Which is where the chinese approach of making it mandatory for everything becomes a bit difficult. What if I wouldn't care? I - as the owner of the game should have the choice. Maybe that's a better way than both the mandatory and the "freedom über alles, make it the choice of the players" hysteria.
No, why should it be the choice of the players? We all know that the majority of people don't need rules for basic etiquette, they will follow it without rules. The rules are there for the minority who don't. So the "freedom" you speak about is only to the benefit of the anti-social assholes you don't want around anyways. I wouldn't let people into my house who refuse to give me their name. Why should I let them into my game?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"The problem with trying to child-proof the world, is that it makes people neglect the far more important task of world-proofing the child." -- Hugh Daniel
Realistically with 1 billion people plus extremely commonly repeated, simplistic first and last names in their language, China is going to have sooooo many first and last name repeats that they still won't be able to pin this down to one unique person based on just a name in most cases. Not even close actually. Just because of how things are there compared to here, it could easily be possibly that for any given person in China, it's 100,000 times (or more) more likely that there's at least one other person named exactly that in the country compared to the probability of that happening in the US. Definitely kinda funny if you think about it.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Most American online games already have your name or can track the players because they pay with credit cards and use the Internet from home.
But the name on the card need not be a person's "real name". The whole issue of names is far from trivial. Especially when it comes to putting them into computer systems.
If they outlaw the /spit emote and t-bagging, then we will know the chairman got powned and camped for sure.
Take the Red Pill.
"The problem with trying to child-proof the world, is that it makes people neglect the far more important task of world-proofing the child." -- Hugh Daniel
Thank you, madam. I had this one in my quotes file but it was unattributed. That's been fixed now.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Where did you get the idea most American games require credit cards? Very few games actually REQUIRE credit card payments. Customers just tend to use them out of convenience. You can pay for X-Box Live accounts in-store, which more or less throws the "Most American online games" out the window on its own considering how large the X-Box Live userbase is. You can pay with cash in the store. Valve games such as Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead (2) all can be bought in-store without a credit card as well. Most games offered on Steam have retail versions which often can be bought without credit cards.
World of Warcraft can be done this way too, I think, but I've only seen cards up to 60 days. Others may exist if you really wanted to do it that way though. And that's basically the other half of American online games. I've seen cards like this for other MMORPG games as well, but sure, not all of them offer these cards.
There probably are some that fit your description, but it's likely due to the company not seeing much point to releasing cards like those as their userbases are much smaller than WoW's userbase, not because they have some potentially malicious conspiracy to use the information obtained by card purchase. China's reasoning for including real names, on the other hand, is pretty obvious and they'd probably even be fine with telling you they intend to use it to violate people's privacy (just worded in that special kinda China way). American online games that perhaps have access to that information have it not because it was intended, rather, it was easier for the customer to provide it because they wanted to buy the game from their computer desk rather than in a retail store (We're lazy).