China Moving to Real Name Registrations for Blogs

dptalia writes "China is moving to require people to use their real names when blogging. The proposed solution, arrived at by the Internet Society of China (affiliated with the ministry of information) would allow bloggers to use a pseudonym when blogging as long as they used their real name when registering."

apples and oranges

[bcrowell]

OK, this is a total apples and oranges comparison, but...

Generally, in a society with freedom of speech, it's a good thing to have people use their real names in online forums. As an example, I participate in one usenet group where there's a person who has made a bunch of very bitter enemies (not including me), who want to plonk her. But she changes her handle frequently, so they can't. Regardless of the merits of the actual disputes involved (which I couldn't be less interested in), it would be a big plus for the group if she would allow these people to plonk her, because they simply don't want to read her posts.

Another good example is a web site I run (see my sig) where I catalog free books, and accept user-submitted reviews. My policy is to require reviewers to give their real names, and one of the points of this policy is to keep people from reviewing their own books. You'd think that my policy would be impossible to enforce, and therefore pointless, but actually most people have compunctions about out-and-out lying about their identity, even if they don't see any moral issue in reviewing their own book under a fanciful login name. It's psychology, it doesn't have to make sense! Amazon.com has similar issues (although the books they deal with and the books I deal with are basically disjoint sets), and recently I noticed that when I tried to review a book on amazon, I couldn't, because I've never bought anything from them. They've made a new requirement that you have to have bought something from them in order to write a review, and I think the idea is simply to keep people from making sock puppet accounts.

None of this means that I'd like a government (any government, mine, China's, or whatever) to start regulating speech on the internet, or forbidding anonymous use of the internet. Obviously the Chinese are simply doing it for purposes of political repression. Anonymous use of the internet is a good thing sometimes, and we need to be suspicious of anything that would make it easier for Big Brother (*cough* Homeland Security) to forbid anonymity. But that doesn't mean that it's always a good thing that the design of the internet makes it so hard to maintain and prove a consistent online identity, even when you want to.

Annoying, yes, but...

[808140]

Names are by no means unique identifiers in China -- there are only a hundred or so family names in common use and the characters used in people's names are often recycled. With the population of China being as large as it is, even if you use your real name there could easily be 50 people in your area who have exactly the same name.

Now if they were requiring that a person register with their ID number -- everyone in China has one -- that would be something. It surprises me, actually, that they're not doing that. I wonder why?

Re:It's a different society.

[Pantero Blanco]

The same thing is in place for registering .us domain names, isn't it?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/31/01 4239&from=rss [slashdot.org]

Anonymity is different than privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy needs to be defended to the death, I think there's some balance to be played with anonymity. Think of it like caller id. If someone calls you, you can see who it is before you answer. You can even block anybody who tries to call you that blocks their number, so nobody can call you anonymously.

If this can be done for email, spam is dead.

Obviously, this would be bad for slashdot, as we would not get some info that we would have otherwise, but if you want to talk directly to me, email me, chat with me, I want to at least know your real name.

Posting AC because I don't have an account. No need to be ironic.

Re:It's a different society.

[RappinTonyG]

The reason for domain name registration is so that a name is not consumed by an uncontactable individual. It's like owning a building to print/sell newspapers. If something happens to the property or you do something to it, they may need to contact you about it. What this is saying, however, is that you have to use a name that can be traced when blogging, which is an exclusivly speech activity. Basically it seems they require all journalists to be registered. This would be like the US government requiring all publications to discose who their authors are.

Re:It's a different society.

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove that. Prove that although we can be monitored, we aren't. Because I can prove otherwise: I worked for a company called ClientLogic that does customer service and Tech Support for Earthlink in Albuquerque, NM. Every single message you send out through Webmail is kept on a server, whether or not you delete it at home. We even had the option of reading your mail and then checking a box to Mark them as "Unread". Because you are such a compliant citizen, it makes no difference to you, I'm sure, but all servers do that. If we didn't like what we read, we were trained to report it anonymously at work or simply to call DHS on our own.
And just like I'm sure in China they will be scanning large amounts of date for keywords, the same thing is done here. Noone is sitting there reading everything but certain sites and certain keywords or phrases activate surveillance on you. Google Total Information Awareness and Ecehelon...

a refutation

[foreverdisillusioned]

A famous, funny, and somewhat insightful joke to be sure, but I'd have to say that the vast majority of insightful, inspiring, bullshit-cutting dialog I've ever witness (or partaken in) has been on the internet. Check out the top of that blackboard--the comic was inspired by Unreal Tournament 2004, not +5 Insightful comments on slashdot. For all of the bullshit and flame wars out there, I think that anonymity inspires honesty and frankness that, while holding the potential to inspire personal attacks and general disruption, also holds the potential for real, unhindered communication in a way that most real-world communication sadly lacks. If a friend or coworker or member of my family says something stupid and shortsighted about (for instance) Iraq, most of the time I let it slide because it isn't worth the potential long-term consequences if they decide to take offense or otherwise become bothered by my response. Even less-divisive topics can be troublesome. I remember one time a somewhat-ditzy coworker of mine starting ranting about how sucralose (Splenda) was soooo unhealthy because she heard it contained chlorine, and I was like, "ummmmmmm...., so?" "Chlorine is bad for you!" "Well, chlorine bound up in a molecule isn't *inherently* harmful. In fact, you get far more chlorine from eating salt!" and somehow she took offense (ok, so maybe I laughed at her just a *little*. Couldn't help it.) Put a stopper on the entire conversation, and for a weeks afterwards she wasn't as friendly with me. Oh yeah, and I've probably alienated at least a dozen other coworkers with simple, non-confrontational, matter-of-fact statements regarding my (dis)belief in God and religion in general. (I'm not a completely insensative person, but I happened to be working with a ton of highly religious people and they kept asking me about my church and my prayers and stuff. And when I said "I don't believe in God" they usually asked why. So I told them.)

Anyway, you just don't have to worry about this kind of shit online. At any time you can walk away and find another forum (or hell, sometimes just another username) and never talk to those people ever again without any undesirable long-term consequences. Yeah, you can swing too far in the other direction and devolve into vicious, pointless flaming (safe in the knowledge that you don't personally know anyone involved) but on the whole I think there's more rational discussion on the net than in polite-and-politically-correct real life.

Re:Ingenious

[MarkusQ]

But it could just as well be ingenious in the opposite direction as well. I note that it says nothing about addresses being required. In a country with well over a billion people, what are the chances of anyone having a unique name?

As always with this sort of thing, the devil will be in the details. It may be as bad as you think, but it might be a clever sap for the PHBs with no teeth what so ever. Sort of a "Who is Wen Chen and why is he saying these horrible things about me?" situation.

--MarkusQ

Re:How can they tell if a registered name is real?

[puracc]

No, they cannot. I'm from China. Just to show you some facts: One of my bank account (which is used for ebay) is under a fake name (the Chinese equivalence of John Smith). The name on my ISP account is fake. My utility bill is always send to a person died 1182 AD. And the name on my cellphone bill is, guess what, fake. None of these involve any underground or high-tech work, and all I did was to lie when being asked.

Knowing these, do you still think real name mean real name?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe many people will be sent to prison because of this, but it won't take long for Chinese people to figure out how to lie.

PS, In U.S., cellphone, credit card, ISP, and pretty much everything else require real name (worse than that actually: SSN), but somehow people did not care at all.