China Mandates Parental Controls For Online Games

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China Mandates Parental Controls For Online Games

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 1, 2011 @05:34PM from the kinda-wish-xbox-live-did-this dept.

eldavojohn writes "The quintessential nanny state is tightening its grip on online gaming a little further today, as it announced that starting March 1st, 'online game companies must set up a web page, enquiry hotline and other special channels for parental supervision of their children. Besides, these companies shall authorize parents, who want to monitor and control their children playing online games, to take measures to limit or ban the playing. Also, the online game companies shall provide help to parents in supervising their children's online game accounts and preventing them from playing improper games, as part of the project.' If you're a parent, the new effort by the Ministry of Culture has surprisingly specific recommendations for how to regulate your child's gaming: 'The document suggested a school student play online games for less than two hours every week and spend no more than 10 yuan ($1.5) on playing online games every month.' The article (from the state media) ends with amusing speculation that the youth will simply acquire a fake adult ID to get back online. Stay tuned for more rules and regulations from China's new 'Parental Watch Project.'"

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nanny state by BradleyUffner · 2011-02-01 17:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is it really a "nanny state" kind of action if it is giving power and control to the parents?
1. Re:nanny state by orphiuchus · 2011-02-01 17:46 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Its much more literally a "nanny state". They're giving more power to nannies!
2. Re:nanny state by EdIII · 2011-02-01 19:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Is it really a "nanny state" kind of action if it is giving power and control to the parents?
  No it isn't. Children have no rights of any kind and they are not citizens. Your parents have your rights on your behalf. Used to piss me off something awful when I was a kid, but I am a little more understanding of the situation now.
  There are plenty of regulations that make perfect sense regarding children and toys. I sincerely doubt the requirements for child safety and stuff, like you know, no toxic lead in toys is seen as the government being a "nanny" state.
  This is merely an extension of that. The government is not outright banning anything, but simply mandating some features which seem entirely optional on the part of the parents.
  Speaking for my family, boy can I tell you the lengths we go with technology to keep some of my little relatives off games when they are being punished or playing too much. Having a helping hand from the online companies is quite welcome and I don't see it as part of a nanny state, but a needed feature of their service to *ME*. After all, I am the one really paying for it, one way or the other, both financially and as a parent.
3. Re:nanny state by Elbereth · 2011-02-01 19:39 · Score: 1
  
  No, of course not. But that won't stop Slashdot from posting flamebait.
4. Re:nanny state by Pantero+Blanco · 2011-02-01 20:45 · Score: 1
  
  It's not giving the parents any legal power that they didn't already have. It's forcing the companies to jump through useless hoops in order to show the Ministry's disapproval of an activity.
  
  The project will require online game companies to set up a web page, enquiry hotline and other special channels for parental supervision of their children.
  Of course, next to a lot of other crap China has in place, this is pretty much inconsequential. I doubt the expenses are going to drive anyone to bankruptcy. Sure, it's part of the way things are normally done there. It's still a nanny state action.
5. Re:nanny state by mentil · 2011-02-01 22:28 · Score: 1
  
  Oftentimes when a government committee sets and recommends guidelines, another part of government makes a law turning the recommendation into a mandate. It's the reason why there's so much opposition to US bills that would declare English the national language: a day later it's passed, bills would be proposed making "the national language" the only one written on government forms, spoken in schools etc.
  Today they give power to parents, tomorrow they fine the parents for not using this power.
  
  --
  Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
6. Re:nanny state by commodore6502 · 2011-02-02 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  I really don't find anything objectionable about this. If you're a parent and don't want your One Child looking at games when you're still at the office, enable the switch to block their access beyond one hour.
  It empowers the parent like V-chip does.
  
  --
  Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
7. Re:nanny state by hairyfeet · 2011-02-02 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly! What is the problem in giving parents more control over a child's game playing especially if the parents work. Though personally it would probably be easier to do through the hardware the household uses than coding it into every individual game. I mean who uses a "bare" connection without a router/firewall nowadays?
  I have set up a ton of the things over the years for customers, from the cheapest bottom of the barrel models to the most expensive and frankly I can remember the last time I saw a router without basic filtering built right in. Even the bottom of the line Trendnet that is quite popular with my home consumers allows you to set specific times for connectivity per PC as well as blocking for specific IP addresses, so while I see nothing wrong with the Chinese trying to give more controls to parents it would have probably been easier and more cost effective to simply publish a list of how tos for the dozen or so most common routers along with pushing router manufacturers to place tutorials on their website to walk parents through it and finally a link or two to filtering software for those that are hooking bare.
  And OT but when is /. gonna fix these stupid comment boxes?!?!? It is insane that on a widescreen monitor I have to squint while I type in this teeny tiny box that looks like it is designed for tweets more than anything else. I have noticed the number of comments per article going down and I have to wonder how many are like me and starting to get irritated at the stupid new layout and just not bothering. If they don't fix this mess soon I'm gonna have to find some other part of the net to lurk, because frankly these tiny boxes are giving me a headache. Fix the fricking code Slashdot!
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
8. Re:nanny state by Zironic · 2011-02-02 02:13 · Score: 1
  
  What are you on about? Children have lots of rights and do count as citizens, they just lack the right to make their own decisions and vote until they're adults.
  There's a reason you can't use child labour or beat your children anymore.
9. Re:nanny state by EdIII · 2011-02-02 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  What are you on about? Children have lots of rights and do count as citizens, they just lack the right to make their own decisions and vote until they're adults.
  There's a reason you can't use child labour or beat your children anymore.
  I mean from the perspective of a child.That's why I said our parents manage our rights on our behalf. As for the child labor, that is not so much a right that children have, but a regulation on the parents.
  It's just context and a point of a view. I don't disagree that children are not citizens or anything, just that they cannot effectively exercise the benefits of being a citizen until they are 18. Otherwise they could fight parental controls, which they cannot.
10. Re:nanny state by jdgeorge · 2011-02-02 04:58 · Score: 1
  
  Is it really a "nanny state" kind of action if it is giving power and control to the parents?
  No it isn't. Children have no rights of any kind...
  False.
  
  and they are not citizens.
  False in the United States. According to the 14th ammendment of the US Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
  
  Your parents have your rights on your behalf.
  In the United States, False. Your parents exercise and protect certain of their children's rights. They do not "have" them on your behalf.
11. Re:nanny state by EdIII · 2011-02-02 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  I was clearly speaking from the perspective of a child, from which you are in fact wrong.
  Does a child have the protections of the 1st amendment? Clearly not.
  As you pointed out, the parents are the guardians of the children's rights. Which mean they determine if and when the 1st applies, and i'll be damned if they ever did let me use the 5th to protect myself either.
  Put yourself back in a child's shoes. Did we really have the full benefit of rights back then? That's all I was pointing out.
12. Re:nanny state by enderjsv · 2011-02-02 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  It can be considered nanny-state, but not from the perspective that China is enabling parents the tools to monitor their kids, but more-so from the perspective that China is forcing companies to provide these tools. I'm not saying it's necessarily good or evil, after all even in America the government forces companies to do things to protect children, but it's still an apt description.
13. Re:nanny state by jonamous++ · 2011-02-02 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, they do. Since when does the bill of rights protect your from your parents? I was under the impression that they were restrictions on congress. The first amendments says nothing of being able to say what you want to your parents. However, the government would not be able to censor someone or arrest someone for exercising protected speech, even if they were a minor. Again, I think you are a bit mislead on what the bill of rights actually is (protection from the government, not exemption from parental oversight).
I wonder... by orphiuchus · 2011-02-01 17:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

I wonder if all of those quiet Chinese kids in college were quiet because they didn't speak english, or if it was just because they spent the previous 19 years of their life not allowed to look up from their homework so they had no idea how to interact with people.
1. Re:I wonder... by Pentium100 · 2011-02-01 17:57 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  However, I do not think that this law is bad. The parents are given power to control the gaming of their children, which seems appropriate, just like web content filters (installed by parents) or some program that limits how long the kid can be using the PC. Or video game ratings.
  Unlike other countries, like Germany, where some video games are banned so even adults cannot get them.
2. Re:I wonder... by rainmouse · 2011-02-01 21:02 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  However, I do not think that this law is bad. The parents are given power to control the gaming of their children, which seems appropriate, just like web content filters (installed by parents) or some program that limits how long the kid can be using the PC.
  Having previously worked for an online games company with a player-base demographic of mostly kids or young teens, I very strongly support at least the idea of this.
  Once you have seen one of the many chat logs where your trained eyes spot an adult in amongst the kids pretending to be another kid and your blood runs cold. The adult then tries to isolate the kid from their friends, then the adult tries to isolate the kid from their parents (are you alone, can we speak private etc.) then the talk turns sexual and a meet up IRL is attempted. When you have read some of the awful things these creeps say, I'm sure you may be more inclined to support this kind of action too, especially when you consider that there are many other similar kids games out there where the developers or publishers save money by not having in game player support and the report things like murder threats, suicide threats, child abuse and grooming.
  The chat logs in the game are not continually and permanently stored I might add, they are buffered and if someone reports abusive or suspicious behaviour then that buffer is dumped to disc and sent to staff for analysis who do not really actually read the logs, but train their eye to scan through endless pages of crap for specific key words and phrases.
  If you are going to let your children play an online game, please check what support is offered by the developers and if there are no parental controls then your internal alarm bells should be ringing.
3. Re:I wonder... by guyminuslife · 2011-02-01 23:42 · Score: 1
  
  You think China doesn't ban video games?
  
  --
  I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
4. Re:I wonder... by Pentium100 · 2011-02-02 08:18 · Score: 1
  
  From quickly reading the relevant wikipedia article I see that China bans video games usually for political reasons (that is, if the game "smears the image of Chine" or something like that), which is not that strange, since they ban all media that does that.
  Still, this new law is not a ban, it just requires the game to allow parental controls, so that the parents can decide what is good or not good for their kid. And if an adult plays the game, he can do whatever he wants.
5. Re:I wonder... by Pentium100 · 2011-02-02 08:27 · Score: 1
  
  The adult then tries to isolate the kid from their friends, then the adult tries to isolate the kid from their parents (are you alone, can we speak private etc.) then the talk turns sexual and a meet up IRL is attempted.
  Parents should inform their kids about this danger (or rather - "do not meet anyone that you only met on the internet before"), since this is quite popular now (a girl in my country found a "boyfriend" on FB, went to his city and got murdered).
  However, in China there is one other problem - MMO players killing each other in real life for virtual items.
  In any case, I support parental controls - the parents have a right to to control what their kid does.
6. Re:I wonder... by rainmouse · 2011-02-02 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  Parents should inform their kids about this danger (or rather - "do not meet anyone that you only met on the internet before"), since this is quite popular now (a girl in my country found a "boyfriend" on FB, went to his city and got murdered).
  Yes the problem is that most parents either do not understand the technology or have no idea of the risks and the things their kid is being exposed to.
7. Re:I wonder... by Pentium100 · 2011-02-02 09:10 · Score: 1
  
  You do not need to understand the technology to know that if teenagers find new friends using "something" and then end up dead after actually meeting those friends, it's not very good and you should tell your kids not to use "something" to find new friends or at least not go to actually meet them.
8. Re:I wonder... by guyminuslife · 2011-02-02 21:16 · Score: 1
  
  No, not just for political reasons, and not just for children. See the back and forth and censorship over World of Warcraft, for instance.
  
  --
  I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
9. Re:I wonder... by Pentium100 · 2011-02-02 21:25 · Score: 1
  
  Ok,so they ban games for other reasons too. However, I still think that this law (the one in the article) is not bad at all - now parents will have more options than either allow the kid to play the game without restrictions or forbid it completely (using content filtering and so on).
Who's the nanny state? by johnsnails · 2011-02-01 17:42 · Score: 2

Hardly a nanny state, I have family over their and paradoxically its less (in some ways) of a nanny state than Australia, the way they can let fireworks off in the street is only one example, their OHS rules or lack their of is another. So who's the nanny state?
1. Re:Who's the nanny state? by orphiuchus · 2011-02-01 17:45 · Score: 1
  
  Hardly a nanny state, I have family over their and paradoxically its less (in some ways) of a nanny state than Australia, the way they can let fireworks off in the street is only one example, their OHS rules or lack their of is another.
  So who's the nanny state?
  Still China.
  Thats cool about the fireworks and Occupational Health and Safety though, its nice to see that their intrusive laws are all related to curbing dissent rather than protecting their citizens.
The Fifth What? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-02-01 17:46 · Score: 1

Just because you can use the word quintessential like that doesn't mean you should.
which kids? by outsider007 · 2011-02-01 17:56 · Score: 1

Why do some chinese kids work in iPhone factories and other ones get to play video games? That doesn't sound like much of a communism to me.

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If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
1. Re:which kids? by SharpFang · 2011-02-01 19:58 · Score: 1
  
  Of course the kids would never be allowed to assemble such precise equipment as iPhones!
  They are only allowed to make Nike sportswear, and the likes.
  
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  45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
2. Re:which kids? by Cant+use+a+slash+wtf · 2011-02-01 22:26 · Score: 1
  
  China hasn't been much of a communism for quite a long time now.
Another nail in the coffin for WoW Gold farmers. by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-01 18:33 · Score: 1

This has to be a double wammy for WoW.

One also has to wonder if this will temper or be used as a data mining tool recruiting into the Chinese hacking community.

Think about how easy it will now be to contact Johney Chan's parents to grant scholarships into the fold now that they can map IP's to so easily.
Very subtle way to bring hacking under management.
A law? by the_Bionic_lemming · 2011-02-01 18:50 · Score: 1

So, like, how are they going to enforce a law that isn't accepted by the various online gaming companies EULA when they aren't based in china??

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_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
1. Re:A law? by mark-t · 2011-02-01 19:07 · Score: 1
  
  I would imagine it would be, at least in part, accomplished by not allowing retailers to sell the game.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
2. Re:A law? by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-01 19:09 · Score: 1
  
  So, like, how are they going to enforce a law that isn't accepted by the various online gaming companies EULA when they aren't based in china??
  Seems like a fairly trivial task of eventually just blocking those who haven't yet voluntarily associated source IP's or border MAC addresses with the required family org chart overlords. FOCO's for short.
  
  The in or out of country game service providers are just not an issue or a even a minor factor in the blocking equation.
  
  I would also like to point out that this IS the logic and structures and processes needed to do what Egypt did but without blacking out the whole country, with this infrastructure in place it would take a keystroke or two just black out and track only the rabble rousers.
  
  and they can ensure Johney is into whatever "they" consider appropriate. Like hacking the US instead of playing WoW for epic artifacts.
3. Re:A law? by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-01 19:42 · Score: 1
  
  So, like, how are they going to enforce a law that isn't accepted by the various online gaming companies EULA when they aren't based in china??
  Well, according to the article, folks will be invited to register the family org chart presumably with IP address or router Mac address info. From this point its trivial to implement blocking to any unregistered IP to a known gaming host service provider.
  
  The fact that the game host is not in China is not even a small tiny relevance in the blocking equation. Blocking does not happen at the application layer, so where the host is, is not relevant.
  
  With the family now registered with the local authorities, the local authorities can make visits and mentor little Li and Mei to train in appropriate sanctioned activities, like hacking over long hours gold farming.
  
  Ask Google if China violated thier EULA recently. I don't recall China asking permission before they routed 15% of back bone Internet routes to Chinese servers that were some how able to not get DDOS'ed and quite prepared in advance to suck up and not get hit by %70 - %80 of world wide data for an incredible 18 minutes. China is a county which recently demonstrate its readiness and capability to take the fire-hose of world data what they likely need now is more command management and control its young hacker community to quickly exploit perishable data.
  
  You can bet, the next time they make that pr similar configuration error, they will ready to exploit much much much more of the data.
4. Re:A law? by Inconexo · 2011-02-01 21:01 · Score: 1
  
  By restricting access to their servers, obviously. If they can live without Youtube, they can live without WoW.
5. Re:A law? by _Shad0w_ · 2011-02-01 21:48 · Score: 1
  
  By blocking access to them from inside China if they don't, the same way they control anything on the Internet.
  
  --
  Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
6. Re:A law? by Pharmboy · 2011-02-02 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  Block access to any company that doesn't comply with local laws. China has shown a willingness, as well as a reasonably degree of success, at doing this.
  Keep in mind that these companies are wanting to do business in China, so they must comply with local laws, which itself is pretty reasonable. If they don't like it, they don't have to do biz in China. They don't have a right to sell to China or any other foreign country simply by the virtue of being a business.
  
  --
  Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Sensible ideas by Max+Romantschuk · 2011-02-01 19:27 · Score: 2

I do believe that it is a parent's duty to keep a child at sane levels of any activity the child takes part of. Giving parents the tools to determine if a kid has been playing insane amounts makes sense. But IMHO an emailed report with a per-day total time summary and perhaps some trends should do fine.
The rest should be good ol' regular parenting and communication with your offspring. Ultimately any technological block/tool can be circumvented, and they never can replace mutual trust and understanding.

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.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
If gaming addiction is a really a problem... by pifactorial · 2011-02-01 19:32 · Score: 1

...this will do little to solve it.

When I was living in China, I met several families with children and teenagers. Though almost all young people there have your run-of-the-mill Facebook-style "internet addiction", those who stood a serious chance of ruining their lives by spending too much time online were either spoiled senseless or totally ignored by their parents.
Re:Another nail in the coffin for WoW Gold farmers by bwayne314 · 2011-02-02 00:54 · Score: 1

Yea this is a big "fuck you" to blizzard-activision, not only is it likely to cut into their "customer base" but its also going to force them to spend money and resources on new (much needed) support infrastructure. I think we all know how much blizzard likes to shell out money on customer service - last time I had an issue with my wow account it took them 4 days to respond to my email and that whole time I was unable to talk to anyone on the phone because of either busy signals or 3+hour wait times, resulting in me giving up.
Think of the... children? by Drakkenmensch · 2011-02-02 01:01 · Score: 1

This isn't about protecting children, it's about making damn sure no men get to roleplay as hot female elves:
http://boingboing.net/2007/09/26/chinese-mmo-bans-ing.html
1. Re:Think of the... children? by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-02 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Thank god bearded Dwarf women and sheep are out of scope.
Absolute garbage... again. by cheekyjohnson · 2011-02-02 02:11 · Score: 1

Is there any valid reason for forbidding a fictional piece of entertainment rather than just informing the very, very few children who don't realize that it's fiction that it is fiction? You're not a bad parent if you let your children play/view harmless entertainment. You're a bad parent if you construct a bubble around your children, though, in my opinion.

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Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Re:Another nail in the coffin for WoW Gold farmers by Zironic · 2011-02-02 02:19 · Score: 1

Blizzard has plenty of support infrastructure, it's just that they have an insane number of players. Last time I checked they had more then 2,000 people employed in WoW customer support, outnumbering the Devs 10:1.
Re:I can't imagine many flash-game sites doing thi by orkysoft · 2011-02-02 04:05 · Score: 1

I guess you just can't ignore the law of unintended consequences...

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I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Annnd still useless. by vampire_baozi · 2011-02-02 08:09 · Score: 1

The summary notes, they can just get fake adult IDs. As a foreigner, I just had them generate a new ID for me every time I went in (I used a semi-permanent one when I became I gold member). Kids would do the same thing if they had a few extra yuan; if you weren't willing to pay, the cafe I usually went to refused school age kids
Others did not; it was normal to see high school kids pulling all nighters there using fake IDs, supplied by the PC cafe. At home? Just use the same software (or website) as the PC cafe to generate your own ID number. Just enter your birthday, sex, and place of birth, and there ya go.
It's just one more step in the arms race. Guess what, it's like Bittorrent. The masses are still winning.
Re:Another nail in the coffin for WoW Gold farmers by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-02 10:12 · Score: 1

I think his point was, that due to actions by the "Man" approximately 6% of 1,342,100,000 Chinese might seek redress from local Chinese Blizzard/Activision support.
Using your number Nominal support being 2000 personal to address the average volume in the Wow Commiseration Chat rooms.

The game has 9 million "subscribers". Blizzard's Chinese partner, the9, stated on May 22nd that over 7.5 million of the 9 million total are Chinese accounts.
Although it's likely that a couple million Chinese accounts regularly lapse.

So upwards of 83% 1660 of 2000 of customer service agents may receive a severe spike in support calls when their Chinese over lords start to clamp down.
This will effectively DOS all support.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft
http://askville.amazon.com/Americans-play-World-Warcraft-daily-basis/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=19244488
Re:Another nail in the coffin for WoW Gold farmers by WarmNoodles · 2011-02-02 10:17 · Score: 1

Doh Was planning to update the 6% with a real number before submitting and forgot.
What % is 7 million of 1,342,100,000.

Obviously a very small percentage.

Just forgot to do the % replace, my bad.
Great Move by droolinggeezer · 2011-02-02 16:50 · Score: 1

Unlike our own busted ass country, China does not assume that Chinese parents are smart enough to realize that 20 hours per week of gaming turns their children into mental midgets. Maybe that is one contributing reason why our first rate universities are now overflowing with first-rate Chinese students. Our young'ns decided that Grand Theft Auto was more compelling than studying for their SAT...
Great Idea by peetm · 2011-02-02 19:07 · Score: 1

All I can say is that I wish we had that here.

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@peetm