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China Proposes Foreign Domain Name Censorship (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new draft law in China could potentially increase domain name restrictions, limiting domestic access to foreign websites. The measures outlined in the 'Internet Domain Name Management Rules' remain unclear, yet they suggest a marked effort to increase censorship on online content. The proposals, released for public comment by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, seek to update existing regulations to censor any domain names not registered within China. Only domain names approved by authorities would be permitted while other names registered outside of China would be blocked automatically.
I was about to say, it might help fend off at least a few of the random scans I get from China...
The rest of the world would be better off if we would just disconnect China from the internet! They don't like an open internet then we should not have to give them one. This would eliminate a major group of corporate and government hackers.
They might allow you to register (intentionally-provocative domain name notwithstanding), but you'd probably have to comply with a laundry list of additional regulatory requirements if you did... like requiring validated government-issued IDs from any user who's allowed to post public content (possibly including users who weren't even Chinese or in China), and removing "objectionable" (to Chinese censors) content on demand (think DMCA, but a hundred times worse). And you'd probably have to pay some Akamai-like Chinese CDN to shepherd your site's content through the Great Firewall regardless.
And if you WERE willing to meet China's regulatory requirements for the sake of market share, you'd probably have to block access to most users in Europe, because the very things you'd have to do to officially get your site's content into China would probably get you fined by the EU for violating its privacy laws.