Every blog needs its Google China post - here it is

[Update: German Version of this available at Kooptech ]

Everybody is talking about cyber attacks and Google and Don't be Evil and Censorship and Internet Imperialism. It is more than difficult to decide which position to dislike more. But I don't need to decide, fortunately, I just need to opinionate on what's going on.

In general terms, the US has replaced China as the main originator of malware (phishing, viruses, botnets...), as the latest report by security company Sophos has indicated (summary here http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2009/07/threat-report.html, full report here http://www.sophos.com/sophos/docs/eng/papers/sophos-security-threat-report-jul-2009-na-wpus.pdf). Back in 2007, more than 50 per cent of malware was from China, now almost 40 from the US. The recent attack against Google that was directed at selected Gmail accounts and that exploited a weakness in the Adobe Acrobat Reader, on the other side, was apparently clearly originating in China, from what I hear in the news media.

You may remember that in March 2009 there was a furor about the Chinese "Ghostnet". Files from foreign embassies, ministries and computers of the tibtan exile leaders were stolen or corrupted. Computers were hijacked and the microphones and cameras used to spy on its owners. The immediate source of this ghostnet seemed to be China, but there was a tendency to word this in a careful way in order not to stir up what now has bee stirred up: while the attacks came from China, there was of course the possibility that these Chinese computers were themselves only a botnet, hijacked and directed from another location.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has actually published a report on this. Summary on this page http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/papers.php ("CHINESE CYBER WARFARE & ESPIONAGE").

In 2007, after the German security services had published a report revealing that spy programmes (hidden as PPT and .doc files) found on ministry computers could be traced back to China, the Chinese government reject all those assertion rigidly and created some bad mood before a meeting between the Chinese and German governments. In general, the Chinese government strongly denies all allegations of being involved in such campaigns. And at the moment it is actually turning around, with all the English language papers claiming that it is China that is primary victim of cyber crime and cyber warfare. (Global Times and China Daily of today and yesterday I think).

The overall assessment is ... well: No doubt that in a highly competitive world economy, many players will pull all stops and use all means available. In the case of China there are some tricky bits about this. There is great ambivalence of the Chinese government towards the Internet (a source of wealth and development vs a source of unrest and uncontrollability). As in many governments, there are some people in place with a very deep ignorance with respect to all things information society (in terms of technology and social impact). The deep entanglement of the government in the whole economy, and in all the relevant businesses, makes it appear highly likely that a concerted attack originating from China will have run through government one way or the other. Some attacks, it was alleged, could even be traced back to PLA computers. And given the apparent deep level of intervention into net affairs, it strikes as a strange case of leadership insecurity that nobody has the guts to just say "We protect our society by censoring the web. Full Stop." Instead, oddly nonsensical statements frequently come out (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6130970.html " In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem.") that put in doubt the ability to really deal with that strange beast called information society.

The sad side to all this, of course, is that nobody who knows anything about it talks about it, and that a lot of people who know nothing about it talk an awful lot (yes, of course, I am guilty as charged by myself…). Has Google used this as a semi-elegant exit strategy? Maybe. Or did it behave the way you learn it on the Chinese silk markets, haggling by threat of exit ("I am going now, really, I am going if you do not give this away cheaper, now, I am going, really! Now, soon I am away, see me going away...?"). It certainly feels like it (low market share, lower revenues and all, plus some nice political backing and a return to "don't be evil" reputation - where's the peril...). And when will the Chinese government ever produce transparent laws that clearly state what is legal and illegal to distribute through media networks? That can be a reliable foundation for any commercial or non-commercial business and challenged at court? Without these transparent regulations, the internet is easier to control. With them, China would have a more useful net and would be a more credible international player in politcis at-large.

As in real life, so also in information society: all short answers are wrong...

Online Conspiracies - there are Internet manipulators!

UPDATE Dec 21, 6pm: the plot thickens, there has actually been a long CCTV special on the dangers oozing from the internet, see the transcript at EastSouthWestNorth.

This is brilliant: The Global Times publishes a comment by some Wu Huaoting blaming influential groups to modify public online opinion on the internet by swarming out over the fora, commenting on hype topics on the big media bulletin board systems, and making people believe "we are doing the right thing", while we are actually only serving the needs and desires of those masterminding this mind manipulation plot. What an incredible notion! Just imagine an army of online commentators just waiting for discussions to emerge that counter their masters' interest, and then jumping in and avenging with words sharper than swords! I wonder what we should call this army to make it clearer that they are nothing but Judases, living on bloody silver (or aluminium) coins dropped by the cunning background figures. Yes, Wu Huaiting, this calls for regulation, this must not happen anymore! Wise man, lead our resistance and expose the evil plotters!

http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/observer/2009-12/493063.html

New limitation against computer games: stop, you vandals!

"games that promote drug use, obscenities, gambling, or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft are "against public morality and the nation's fine cultural traditions." Games that promote murder or slaughter apparently are not � meaning the latest ban on a subgroup of the gaming genre seems specifically aimed at the kind of games like GTA or other mobster-genre games that animate the kids to become GoodFellas and pursue a career in the Chinese triades. There is no specific mention of the glorification of opium dens (鸦片烟馆 � is that the word? Just checking for the blog's Chinese spelling capabilities), but surely the fun is taken out of playing a mobster who is raping and vandalising, then cursing while rolling some dice, and finally stealing drugs before using them. What is left to do for the millions of graduates who will never get a job outside goldmining for online games? Let's see how the line will be drawn between massacres of trolls and elves and vandalism in a New York supermarket, and who will be there to play the judge. The message behind this seems to be: as well hidden as your internet café is, as anonymous as your internet connection may have been set up � we will try to spoil the hell out of you!

Policy on cleaner Online Games in China

Xinhua brings us this update on Chinese policy for online games:

“The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) of China said Wednesday that the country will next year start to implement a five-year program advocating clean online games.” What will come exactly under this "China Green Online Games Publishing Program" has not yet been clarified, but from the sound of it, once can expect a mix of crackdown of smutty servers and games, educational programmes, and the promotion of “clean green and healthy” content. More to come.

The Xinhua news item can be found here:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/22/content_11755348.htm

Green Currency Dam

After all the Green Dam exhilaration has ebbed, there is now a bit of a more interesting development in Chinese Information Society Regulation. Virtual money (i.e. Linden Dollars and friends) must not be converted anymore into either real-world currency or goods, a new regulation of the Minsitry of Commerce says (http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/newsrelease/commonnews/200906/20090606364208.html). Firstly maybe: why is that more interesting than the Green Dam? Because Green Dam defies analysis, it is just one of these ad-hoc regualtory measures that come out of nowhere, based not on sound scientific analysis, but on some gut feeling of somebody who may or may not understand too much about Information Society. Also, the Green Currency Dam tackles a problem that is being perceived all over the world and where academics and governments have been looking for solutions for a while. See for example this event by the International Expert Association Muenchner Kreis of 2007: http://www.muenchner-kreis.de/index.php?id=207.

Now China introduces one, and the rest of the world is invited to see whether it works well. If you assume that the current level of a couple of billion RMB annual turnover in virtual currencies and goods, with the 20 per cent growth rate mentioned by the Ministry, continues for another while, the vague notion that triggered the whole debate - namely that a convertible virtual currency is a potential source of inflation that is not under the auspicium of national central banks - becomes a real threat for monetary stability. This is true for any country, but all the more for a country like China with a currency not exposed to free capital flow, because of the very tight grip government has on it for fear of growth- and trade-induced inflationary pressures, with all the detrimental effects this may have on economic and also social stability.

Is this the second time within a few days (after the unified phone charger standard introduced in China two years ago, now taken on by the EU: http://lfie.net/eu-pushed-standardization-mobile-phone-charger-iphone-micro-usb-interface/) that China shows to the rest of the world a viable path to tackle a virulent problem? We will keep oberserving the outcome, for sure.

Chinese Cybercrime Regulations 2009

China has targeted cybercrime in three new sets of regulations issued this
month as the activity starts to look like an established industry in the
country. The full story with the explanation of the three regulation's
thrust is here at Networkworld.com: http://tinyurl.com/kjzc25.

The Chinese titles and original sources of the regulations are here:
《互联网网络安全信息通报实施办法》
http://www.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11293832/n11294057/n11302390/12336245.html

《木马和僵尸网络监测与处置机制》
http://www.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11293832/n11294057/n11302390/12336276.html

第三部应该是《电信网络运行监督管理办法》
http://www.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11293832/n11294057/n11302390/12356001.html

3d Internet Workshop documentation

During a workshop on March 13, the EU-China Information Society Project presented an overview over the status quo, trends, developments and challenges in the area of the "3D Internet". The speakers covered technological, business and policy challenges in a one-day seminar, with speakers from Europe and China introducing their respective perspectives. Three companies introduced their respective approaches to 3D worlds through snapshot presentations of their products. As an overview input to the workshop, the project had commissioned "From Virtual Worlds to the 3D Web", a brochure prepared by +8* (see their own description here). The English versions of the workshop presentations, agenda and the brochure can be downloaded here (.RAR, 13 MB). For the Chinese versions and any questions, contact Thomas Hart at thomas(at)information-society.de.

Flesh, beware!

This is not the place to discuss the phenomenon of "human flesh searches" in detail and theory (see e.g. Orchis Tower for a bit more and see a regular Google search for much more). Yet, when reading about a new legislative proposal to protect citizens against online vigilantes (a very accurate term in that context, I think), what occurred to me is that this is only another example of the strange moral code that can be observed in online environments in general, but a bit more extreme in Chinese contexts. The extent to which a considerable group of Chinese "Netizens" (and if somebody could define that term for me sometime? Thanks!) consider themselves to be above the laws and regulations, able to set and execute their own codes, is quite a bit bigger than in other environments. Not only does it happen frequently that online mobs collaborate to identify an alleged ill-doer (in order to - say - hand over the details to the authorities in charge of investigating kitten-murder). In most cases, research, result and punishment and all part of the same action plan: Who did wrong needs to be punished, and we are here to punish. While at it, we define what "wrong" means.

This whole flesh search phenomenon I do find increasingly creepy, and for once I may voice my appreciation of government departments having the same ideas about it (I believe, never try to read government's mind!). The way vigilant groups set out to destroy individual's existences based on a vague, self-defined notion of truth and justice is scary and appalling. Particulary prominent and telling example: the husband supposedly cheated on his wife, she supposedly killed herself because of it, the online mob sought to punish the husband / widower by publishing all his personal information and distributing it all over the tabloids. Did his wrong extend beyond the reach of his inner family life? I suppose all Chinese laws would say "no". If his wrong was to cheat on his wife (I am sure her killing herself was not his intention), why not publish all cheating Chinese husbands' names and addresses? Server capacity limitations? If his wrong was to have cheated on a wife who then decided to kill herself, then how does that make a difference in terms of his violation of whatever code?

This strange detachment from socially accepted and implemented rules and regulations (e.g. in laws) might have to do with the fact that the WWW has been shaped among a very specific group in the past, with a certain cultural and moral background and certain resulting values that become knitted into the fabric of the online world (the cute things such as the "netiquette disclaimers" still to be found on many websites are residual of this). One element of this was to establish that the ethical code of the Internet may be quite dissimilar of the code used in the offline world. Resulting from the fact that many Internet-related processes by nature are trans-national - or non-national, from a certain perspective - there was a very early perception that the regulatory environment for the online world needs to be a different one from the offline world. Specifically the question then is whether to adjust the offline provisions to cover online phenomena as well (e.g. by covering theft between Second Life avatars through regular criminal law), or to create some set of online regulations dedicated to the specifics of the networked world.

While this debate is tricky enough on various levels, it does not get easier with the wake of self-regulation - self-regulation, that tis, through an informal group of online users not attached to any kind of legitimate body. Self-regulation as co-regulation in a Western sense would mean handing over tasks to entitites outside government, to relief public sector from tasks that can easily (or at least better in some form of definition) be conducted through industry or users. But who has handed over the flesh search authority? Can I sue them if they do not take action against a villain? Is a policing force not always (whether this is liked or not) very closely bound in their actions by clear provisions on when they have to act (when observing a crime) and when not?

I am hesitant to see this observation linked to other instances where Chinese citizens are more comfortable with handling issues and arguments on their own as opposed to handing them over to the authorities, as it may mean I would have to judge on the general level of trust between public and private sector in China as opposed to other regions. But maybe it is worth analysing it more in-depth some other time where these observations lead to, and how they can be made productive for the creation of a proper system of co-regulation with citizens acting in accordance with laws, and sharing the responsibilities with government and police in an organised way. Some other time, though.

A black list is the better white list

I remember when some years ago I was involved in the development of a user-autonomous internet filtering system - one feature would have been to integrate white lists and black lists into the filter, so that a kid could only visit sites that are on a white list (all other internet access restricted), or visit all sites, except those on a black list (provided by churches, youth protection organisations or other institutions on which shoulders you can shove parental responsibility). The fun aspect about it: such a black list includes exactly all the URLs of the sites any halfway bright and lively kid ever wanted to visit. How to avoid turning it into a school yard asset for which you can charge a considerable number of Pokemon cards (not sure what today's currency equivalent would be and whether they would be convertible)? A lot of time and money went into appropriate hash encryptions and distribution security.

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center has faced the same problem when thinking about how to deal with all those sites providing access to naughty - often user-generated - content. Result: Publish the list freely in the press release and allow everybody to develop their own level of outrage on the unhealthiness of the material provided there. Luckily we now are aware not only of the YouJiu portal (of which I never heard before), but also of their "pretty girl channel", which after checking out last night and all morning I find repelling and unhealthy, only matched by the "hot girls section" of the Hefei Hotline. Bah! Cost me all afternoon to get appalled.

UDP and TCP and uTorrent melting down the Web

Someone is calling fire, and that someone is Richard Bennett ("a network architect and occasional activist in Silicon Valley"). In his story on "The Next Internet Meltdown", explains how the developers of the uTorrent P2P client have changed their design (they make the UDP protocol the default transport protocol for file transfers, not just tracker communication), why (to circumvent TCP traffic limitations) and to what effect:

"By most estimates, P2P accounts for close to half of internet traffic today. When this traffic is immune to congestion control, the remaining half will stumble along at roughly a quarter of the bandwidth it has available today: half the raw bandwidth, used with half efficiency, by 95% of internet users. Oops."

His suggestion:
"The best way to ensure that uTP doesn’t kill the internet is to throttle it at the source, and any law that stands in the way of ISPs exercising that level of management is deadly to the internet. We can thank the uTorrent developers for reminding us of that salient fact."

Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/01/richard_bennett_utorrent_udp/

UPDATE Dec 08: Another Register story here

Great Firewall To Go

As seen on the China law blog:

In its post, "The Great Firewall of China: Coming to a Browser Near You," Sinosplice alerts us to a new Mozilla Firefox that allows one to "have the frustration of the Great Firewall of China in the comfort of" one's own home:

The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It’s open source, free and easy.

http://www.chinalawblog.com/2008/10/now_everyone_can_try_chinas_gr.html
And
http://chinachannel.hk/

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy - New York Times

Brilliant New York Times Magazine overview over the mechanisms, social effects and impact of social networking tools. Well worth investing half an hour and reflecting on one's own behaviour!

Don't be Evil: now Skype!

Rebecca McKinnon of the China Media Project provides in Rconversation a good overview over the "Skype/Tom.com Incident" (soon to become "Skypegate"? That happens quick sometimes…). A complete breach of custumer trust may be fatal, and especially tricky if you now have a truckload of skype clone alternatives waiting at the door. Good luck, Skype!

Digital Outlook 2008

Two nice postings on Kaiser Kuo's Digitalwatch blog, reposting an article by Chris Reitermann (and I keep memorising Jason Reitman, but that is the director of "Juno", right?) providing his Outlook for 2008.
Part 1 here and part 2 here

China Boosts Most Internet Users

Couple of days old, but now officially China seems to have the largest
Internet user community, see here.

China has more Internet users than any other country, the Wall Street
Journal reports
The paper estimates that there are 228.5 million Internet users compared to
217.1 million in America:

BDA estimates that China's online advertising market reached $1.3
billion in revenue in 2007, while U.S. Internet ad spending was expected to
reach $21.4 billion in the same period, according to New York-based research
company eMarketer Inc. Although the two numbers aren't directly comparable,
analysts agree the disparity of the ratios of user numbers to advertising
dollars is vast.

Liu Bin, an analyst at BDA, says the Internet makes up only about 5%
of advertising spending in China, compared with 10% in the U.S. But if
China's economy continues to grow and China's Internet users increasingly
choose the Internet over traditional forms of entertainment, China is bound
to catch up.

The story at ChinaDigital Times contains also reference to the shutting or
not shutting down or up of Tudou

SARFT Clarifies New Online Video Regulations

SARFT Clarifies New Online Video Regulations
SARFT, 2/03/08
China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has
published a notice clarifying details of its new Regulations for Online
Audio and Video Services, explaining that some existing private online video
firms will, under a grandfather clause, be eligible to continue operations.
More specifically, those firms which had offered online video services
legally and without violation of rules on permissible content before
issuance of the new regulations will be allowed to re-register and continue
providing services; those which had been cited for major or repeated
violations of earlier rules, such as provision of pornographic, violent, or
other illegal content, will be punished and severely regulated; and those
which had been cited for more minor violations will be required to come into
compliance before a certain date.
However, companies which apply to offer online video services after issuance
of the new regulations will be required to meet the qualifications stated in
Item 8 of the new regulations (e.g. majority state-ownership, possession of
a comprehensive program censoring system, legal program resources, legal
funding sources, and "standardized technology").
Other key points of the notice are as follows:
Websites must not re-broadcast, link, or aggregate content from illegal
radio and TV channels or online audio-visual websites. Content uploaded to
podcast and video sharing sites must also conform to these regulations.
Websites which provide such services will be held responsible for deleting
illegal content uploaded by netizens.
A license is required for companies producing, editing, aggregating and
broadcasting audio and visual programs via the internet to the public, and
is also required for websites that offer platforms to which netizens can
upload audio-visual content. Netizens, themselves, will not be required to
have a license for uploading audio-visual content.
Content (TV dramas, films, and documentaries) broadcast online must obtain a
distribution license from SARFT, and must also have online broadcasting
authorization from the copyright owner.

Net piracy exists

It's only China Daily, but it still may be true that "Internet copyright infringement is still very prevalent in the country", as an NCAC offical was quoted.

Some facts to go:
"Figures released Thursday show that in the latest crackdown from August to October last year, 1,001 copyright infringement cases were investigated, 60 percent more than the combined number in the two previous campaigns in 2005 and 2006.

The authorities closed 339 illegal websites, confiscated 123 servers and imposed fines of more than 870,000 yuan ($120,000) on violators, up 65 percent, 73 percent and 23 percent over 2006.

Of the cases handled, 31 were transferred to police, five times the number the previous year, according to police figures."

See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-01/18/content_6402839.htm

Top 10 Internet-related Events in China 2007

I am not sure whether there is anything on this list you would call an "event" in any other country, but still: the 200 Mio web user threshold has been blown to smithereens. Oh, and pornography and spam is gone now.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/239398.htm

SARFT and MII regulations on online video

Not really new anymore, but still not in effect before January 31, so it's still time to read the English translation of the latest SARFT / MII cooperation, setting up some barriers for video websites. You find the link to the English version at digitalwatch, together with a brief analysis what that means for the site operators. http://digitalwatch.ogilvy.com.cn/en/?p=176

China's Web users leave US behind (Shanghai Daily)

and another quick update on recent facts and figures:

China's Web users leave US behind
By Nicholas Ning 2008-1-9 Read the full story at Shanghai Daily
CHINESE Web users will spend 45.8 percent more this year on online games and booking hotel and flight tickets, among other services available online, as China overtakes the United States to become the world's largest Internet market by Web population size.

Total spending by Chinese Internet users will hit 581.5 billion yuan (US$77.53 billion), while the Web population will hit 244 million by the end of 2008 from last year's 182 million, an increase of 34 percent, said an Internet Society of China report issued yesterday.

Of last year's spending, the bulk was for Internet access fees and online shopping, while only a small percentage of users paid for services such as online music, video and anti-virus software, the report, titled Netguide 2008, showed. The spending figures don't include online advertising.

The report's findings are based on data collected from a survey of 50,786 mainland Internet users and 270 companies across the country, as well as from seminars and interviews with industry experts.

The monthly spend per Web user last year was 182.6 yuan, and ISC predicts a 8.8 percent growth for each Web user this year.

Online game, ranking third most paid-for service per Web user last year, is expected to bring the game companies a total of 13 billion yuan in sales this year, 39 percent more than last year, as the number of gamers expands by 11 million to 59 million.

Hu Yanping, chief of the government-back ISC's development & communication center, estimated that the total Web population will outnumber that of the US as early as June, as broadband penetration grew.

The US had about 210 million Web users by December, with a Internet penetration rate of more than 70 percent. China's December figure was 13.8 percent.

Among other rapidly growing sectors, online travel registered a 65.4 percent growth over 2006 last year to reach 2.25 billion yuan as more and more travelers are using the Internet to book hotels and air tickets.

Search-related ads generated sales of 2.87 billion yuan last year, a whopping 82.8 percent year-on-year growth. It should continue to grow at 81 percent this year, outpacing growth of online branding ads sales, and hit nine billion yuan in 2009.

Internationalized Domain Names

Chinatechnews reports that Microsoft has made the announcement that it will in the future fully support Chinese domain names in their Internet Browser Internet Explorer 7. This announcement was made at the last ICANN meeting in Morocco. It is, in the words of Microsoft's Michel Suignard a next step in a larger push for multilanguage domain names.

What is the background of this? While Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) have been in use in many regions of the world for some years, the issue is far from being resolved. It is being discussed on various levels: between technical requirements, standardisation efforts and diplomatic challenges, most importantly. In principle, there are currently three alternatives to ensure that regions that do not use ASCII-based scripts have the opportunity to access websites using their own language:

1) Client-based solutions with browser (or any application) plug-ins. This appears to be the easiest way, as it does not require any interference with Web administration, but ideally only an agreement between software producers which character mapping system should be used for each respective script. This solution can also allow for the resolution of protocol particles (e.g. http://), which often causes impediments to access for less literate users (e.g. because the writing and reading direction of the browser is different from the one used in the user’s handwriting).

2) Adoption of the IETF-developed Punycode standard. This would be the continuation of the previous steps on IDN. Punycode was introduced and is being in use for second level domains, but not yet for top-level domains. The success in terms of registration numbers is mixed, but it is interesting to see that Asian countries on average show a greater interest for the second-level IDNs that have been offered than European users, for example. Almost all TLD registries have prepared for and are using the second-level IDNs. Again, the success is mixed, with e.g. the “.org” gTLDs having already withdrawn from it, and registration numbers for many zones remaining weak.

3) Usage of DNAME Records in the DNS root zone. This approach (suggested primarily by VeriSign) would allow for a mapping of addresses of the Chinese-character version of .com to the current .com zone. This mapping would happen through the registry, and would (together with the already existing Punycode-based Chinese second level names) allow for a complete Chinese version of “.com”. It would also mean that users could access any existing domain in their own language.

The third alternative clearly provides for an increasingly important role of the registries, which would need to develop and implement the new mapping solution. It leads, however, to questions like which registry should be in charge of the mapping: should the “local” registry handle all of the mapping of, e.g. Chinese characters, or should this be handled decentralized by those registries already managing the (cc and g) TLDs?

Among the areas of interest is the long-standing trial period for pure internationalized top-level domains in China. Since 2001, Chinese TLDs have been in effect (with ca. 400.000 idn.idn addresses being registered since), while the discussions within ICANN and IETF / IAB as standardisation bodies are only very slowly moving forward. This may lead to frictions, as the lack of pure IDN names may be considered an impediment for local user’s access, in particular when it comes to efforts to connect the yet rather underdeveloped regions or citizen groups with less online experience. In mainland China, the request for third level registrations is continuously increasing. To encourage the usage of the IDN domains, the registry decided that every ASCII gets an equivalent Chinese second level for free.

A number of unresolved issues lie ahead. Neither is it clear whether a specific IDN system will be established, nor who will be the decisive factor on this. The irritation about the introduction of Chinese-character top-level domain names “中国", "公司" and 网络 in early 2006 showed that there are many stakeholders who will join the discussions on the introduction of each respective next stage of IDN. Bringing these stakeholders together and joining the discussions (also in dedicated bodies such as the Chinese Domain Names Consortium, CDNC) should be among the foremost important tasks of the regional ccTLD registries. The introduction of IDN with its many technical, but also cultural and political implications will be among the dominant topics of the forthcoming years.

China creates its own Internet... Or do they?

There have been some calls and questions (some of them of a rather excited nature) about this "new Internet" the Chinese government has announced to set up recently (see http://www.mii.gov.cn/art/2006/02/24/art_722_6994.html for the original announcement. If you read Chinese, that is).

After checking some of the sources and some of the interpretations, I think the best explanation can be found here: http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2006/02/chinas_new_doma.html. Not because it would be the most understandable, but because McKinnon collects a couple of decent sources and resources on this.

I tend to agree with her conclusions: (1) The people who worry should worry primarily about the quality of Chinese-English translation skills, (2) "China is NOT, I repeat NOT creating alternative .COM and .NET top-level domains that would be separate from those now administered by ICANN". Backed by this story from Interfax: http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=10411&slug=INTERNET-POLICY-MII-DOMAIN%20NAME-DNS. If anybody has still other good sources (backing or contradicting McKinnon's interpretation), please let me know.