If China firewalls itself off from the rest of the world, it will be repeating a serious mistake. They've been through this before; closing their borders to foreigners bit them in the ass later when the rest of the world passed them by, technologically ans socially.
Okay, from the posts I've read so far the basic assumptions that have been made (the article implies them, but doesn't come right out and say so) are that:
a) China is not allowing people to register Chinese character domain names. This is not true. They are not allowing foreign companies to act as registrars. This put things in a whole new light.
b) China has banned all use of Chinese characters in domain names. This is somewhat true, but I don't think that they're going to go about enforcing it with any litigation type deals. Think about it. Since (of course) the majority of Chinese character using individuals reside within their borders, all they have to do is make everyone use their DNS servers. And as far as international (or national) corporations go, they could just fine heavily whoever registers with Verisign instead of any of the nine other registrars. With that backing them, they should be able to easily get the majority of Chinese character domains registered with them. And once they have that info, nobody will want to bother with the smaller "alternative" registrar, Verisign. They will be to CNNIC what AlterNIC was to the rest of the Internet.
With that in mind, I'd like to just say that I support China in this as long as they don't stop people outside of China from registering, they should be fine. Technical issues might bear looking into, since presumably these are all.com/.org/.net domains, but I think China would be able to enforce it without resorting to any international lawsuits or anything like that, even if they only did things on a (national) legal level versus an international one. It might be a little bit heavy handed, but I think it's livable, not really too much to ask. I'd rather see them in charge of it than NSI, anyhow.
dotster.com provides domain registration service that doesn't reveal the billing contact. A few posters have brought up the rationale that it's necessary so that people know who to contact in case of abuse from or to the site. That's fine. Technical and administrative contacts SHOULD be public information. But really, what would justify a third party knowing your billing information? The link above provides a good median between the two. Not to mention that (AFAIK) it isn't NSI.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, fordsucks.com is registered to Ford.
If China firewalls itself off from the rest of the world, it will be repeating a serious mistake. They've been through this before; closing their borders to foreigners bit them in the ass later when the rest of the world passed them by, technologically ans socially.
If the previous statement says that everything belongs to them, then of course by suing you they're defending "their" property.
Okay, from the posts I've read so far the basic assumptions that have been made (the article implies them, but doesn't come right out and say so) are that:
.com/.org/.net domains, but I think China would be able to enforce it without resorting to any international lawsuits or anything like that, even if they only did things on a (national) legal level versus an international one. It might be a little bit heavy handed, but I think it's livable, not really too much to ask. I'd rather see them in charge of it than NSI, anyhow.
a) China is not allowing people to register Chinese character domain names. This is not true. They are not allowing foreign companies to act as registrars. This put things in a whole new light.
b) China has banned all use of Chinese characters in domain names. This is somewhat true, but I don't think that they're going to go about enforcing it with any litigation type deals. Think about it. Since (of course) the majority of Chinese character using individuals reside within their borders, all they have to do is make everyone use their DNS servers. And as far as international (or national) corporations go, they could just fine heavily whoever registers with Verisign instead of any of the nine other registrars. With that backing them, they should be able to easily get the majority of Chinese character domains registered with them. And once they have that info, nobody will want to bother with the smaller "alternative" registrar, Verisign. They will be to CNNIC what AlterNIC was to the rest of the Internet.
With that in mind, I'd like to just say that I support China in this as long as they don't stop people outside of China from registering, they should be fine. Technical issues might bear looking into, since presumably these are all
dotster.com provides domain registration service that doesn't reveal the billing contact. A few posters have brought up the rationale that it's necessary so that people know who to contact in case of abuse from or to the site. That's fine. Technical and administrative contacts SHOULD be public information. But really, what would justify a third party knowing your billing information? The link above provides a good median between the two. Not to mention that (AFAIK) it isn't NSI.