New Chinese Regulations Require Real Name On Internet

mpicpp sends word that starting March 1st, China will ban internet accounts that impersonate people or organizations, and will require that people use real names when registering accounts online. "As part of an effort to increase control over the Internet, China's government this week revealed new regulations that require Web users to register their real names. According to The Wall Street Journal, the rules apply to users of blogs, microblogs, instant messaging services, online discussion forums, news comment sections, and other related services. Beginning March 1, China will also ban Web accounts that impersonate people or organizations, Reuters said. That includes groups posing as government entities—the People's Daily state newspaper—and impersonations of foreign leaders, like President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin."

Comments

Re:How long before everybody does it?

[SuricouRaven]

They are only terrorists until they win. Then they retroactively become freedom fighters.

Re:How long before everybody does it?

[magarity]

How many Londoners were killed by George Washington's legions of suicide bombers?

Re:Not entirely 'new'.

[Rick in China]

I'd also like to add the author is an idiot, and her article is pretty much full of speculation and garbage with copied stats to attempt to back it up, for example:

"the CNNIC said microblog users dropped 7.1 percent to 249 million—unsurprising, as social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are blocked in China." - yes, first of all, "dropped 7.1%" - what? Does this person really think Twitter Facebook or Youtube accounted for, at any point in time, any significant user base in mainland China? The more popular local microblog/other similar services have hundreds of millions of active users (like Weixin/Wechat), nobody gives a shit about twitter or facebook being blocked and Youku streams like 1billion+ hours of video a month. There is no relationship between age-old bans on Twitter/Facebook/Youtube and any decrease in microblog registered userbases. *sigh*

Re:FCC

[grcumb]

Sounds like what the FCC will do in the US eventually. Just give it some time until "for the children" or to fight "the terrorists" the FCC will require real names etc.

Yep, I was just about to say, that as much as we in the US bash China for lack of privacy and personal rights (including the right 'not to be seen')....there are a lot in the US government (fed and state) just salivating over ending anonymous access to the internet just as much as the Chinese.

Have you not been paying attention? The 'real names' thing was invented here. Except it was started by the private sector, not government.

Before you claim there's any difference between the two, I will direct you to The Dangers of Surveillance, a paper that first appeared in the Harvard Law Review, and is required reading for anyone who's interested in the legal principles at play here. I too used to think, 'Yeah, but you can walk away from a business, but you can't walk away from government.' The paper makes an excellent point that real name policies, no matter where they originate, are detrimental to human liberty:

[W]e must recognize that surveillance transcends the public-private divide. Even if we are ultimately more concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple with the complex relationships between government and corporate watchers.

In a nutshell, if a corporation has your data, then by hook or by crook, the government can get it too, often voluntarily, often in circumvention of the law.