Slashdot Log In
China Bans Running Your Own Email Server
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:39 PM
from the too-many-of-those-around-anyway dept.
from the too-many-of-those-around-anyway dept.
Erwin_D writes "Under the guise of banning spam, China has ruled that running your own e-mail server has been banned, unless you have a license. To qualify for such a license, an 'e-mail service provider' must abide by some chilling rules: all e-mail must be stored for two months, and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted. While the rules contains all the good measures we would all like to see to combat spam, such as prohibiting open relays and outlawing zombie network, the law is also geared toward controlling free speech. From the article: 'I believe that the intent to have an antispam regulation was a good one ... Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
That's the way it is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's the way it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you consider "news" as a revenue source, then "yes", the "surprisier" the better.
If you consider news to be news, then they do not have to.
Re:So China is still a communist dictatorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yell at them for their policy all you want, but get out of the cold war era and blame them correctly. I will use one of my favorite quotes from an American president:
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Parent
The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe somebody could clarify US and UK law for me.
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:5, Insightful)
generally: people tend to be more critical when other ("worse") countries do things.
China: now store email for 2 months
USA: (see next-but-one story) already store email for 2 months but now making it indefinite
China: no emails about bypassing security
USA: no talk of bypassing security in any form
Parent
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Informative)
I've only seen ISP's keep short term backups. ie, mail server storage method completely dies and then backups are restored. I'm not wholly sure how long the rest of the industry keeps these, but I never kept them past a few weeks.
Mail logs are generally kept for much longer...
Now, I think you are refering to the regulations that were pending/passed/speculated regarding business mail for large companies. This is taken from the company rather then the ISP. I believe there were some regula
Re:The only real difference here... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
> Maybe somebody could clarify US and UK law for me.
UK: Alpha test site. It's a "Voluntary Code of Practice on Data Retention" [wikipedia.org], for values of "voluntary" approaching the sort of stat
And... (Score:3, Informative)
Sensationalizing at its best (Score:5, Interesting)
"China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', "
From the regulation [isc.org.cn] that the article links to
taking advantage of emails to engage in activities which are detrimental to network and information security is strictly prohibited in accordance with related laws.
There is a big difference between "engaging in activities that are detrimental to information security" and "discussing information security"
But with a title like "China Outlaws Outlook" are you really surprised that they are sensationalizing it.
Come again? (Score:3, Funny)
What you say? China set us up the bomb?
Seriously though, is this a big surprise. No doubt it's a sad day for liberty in China, but with the Chicoms' history when it comes to the Internet, we had to see stuff like this coming.
Nothing new here...move along... (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn rice farmers... (Score:4, Funny)
It's entirely possible that this is
[ ] Incorrect news
[ ] Making the wrong conclusions
[X] Jumping to conclusions
[X] Flamebait
[X] Copying another post, sorry I had to
Personally I look forward to getting back to Canada and out of the USA so I can get the icky feeling off myself.
Because Canada
[ ] Is so much better
[ ] Has less immigrants
[X] Doesn't have Bush
[X] Can tolerate more than one point of view
[ ] A nation which enjoys equal protection under the law
[ ] Has quality politicians
[ ] Has Effective journalism
[X] Has poutine
Tom
Re:The final solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... In that case, don't you think the cure seems to be worse than the disease? Reminds me of the New Hampshire license plates... "Live Free or Die".
S
Re:In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
End Of Times!!
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail, whose parent companies have a presence in China and are more than willing to comply with China's censorship regime and turn people in?
If you want free speech in China, you do not use an American company to do it with.
Parent
By the way (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:spam is free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:spam is free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
That's stupid and dangerous. You've clearly never run a mail server of any real size. There is a very real and quantifiable cost to spam filtering. For an organization of any significant size (we're talking at least tens of thousands of email addresses), spam and virus filtering needs its own infrastructure. A lot of companies outsource to someone (e.g. Postini). That costs thousands (I know this, I am not talking out of my ass) of dollars every month. Even if the infrastructure is kept in-house, there is a significant up-front investment in hardware, plus the cost of staff to administer the spam/virus filtering infrastructre (if the org is big enough, this could be close to a full-time job). Not to mention the extra bandwidth costs when four spammers do a simultaneous distributed spam run, etc. etc.
It's not enough to allow the "mailbox owner" (a term that dodges the fact that corporate email is owned by the corporation) to decide whether or not they want to use spam filtering. First of all, most end-users have no idea how to make it happen, second, the company has to pay for the disk to store the shit that users never clean out.
Spam is not first-amendment-protected speech. If someone is standing on a soapbox yammering about their religion or hawking viagra or whatever, I can choose not to listen, and it doesn't cost me anything either way. Spam, on the other hand, does cost businesses a lot of money, and it costs the spammer virtually nothing. If spammers had to pay per recipient the way direct (postal) mailing marketers do, spam wouldn't be a problem.
It's 2006. Why are we having this conversation? This was all debated and decided in the late 90s. Did you miss the memo?
Parent
Re:Americans often forget... (Score:3, Insightful)