Chinese Government to Institute Online Ratings Systems
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By ELAINE KURTENBACH     SHANGHAI, China  -- China plans ratings systems for online games, books and movies to protect children from violence and sexual content in the nation's latest effort to tighten controls on various media, reports said Friday.    The system for censoring online games will be introduced by the end of October and will come ahead of "any similar actions on books and movies," the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily said, citing officials attending a conference in Shanghai...
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Text of report in English by official Chinese n
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CHINA&#39;S police ministry has handed out rewards of up to 2000 yaun ($330) to people who reported pornographic web sites. Some 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 web sites shut down with the help of public
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(InfoWorld) - China is seeking to put technical Internet management issues on the agenda of the next Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting, a U.N.-run forum concerning the development of the Internet. IGF is a forum for countries and other stakeholders to exchange ideas about key Internet issues. China appears poised to raise issues that have put it at loggerheads with the United States, which has been consistently criticized forÂ wielding too much influence over the Internet. However, there are no specific plans for how the issues raised by China may be addressed, said Markus Kummer, executive coordinator for the secretariat of the IGF, on Tuesday in London. "We are going to discuss critical Internet resources, but we haven't framed the discussion yet," Kummer said. IGF's next meeting, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in November, will broadly cover four subject areas: access, openness, security and diversity. A Chinese representative asserted about two weeks ago that last year's IGF meeting in Athens missed discussion of key issues. "Still, there are some critical issues that were missing at the meeting," the Chinese representative said, according to a transcript on the IGF Web site. "For instance, issues like the DNS root servers and IP address." Root servers manage the Domain Name System, which enables the translation of a Web site name, such as www.idg.com, to a numerical Internet Protocol address used to find where the Web page is hosted for viewing in a browser. Kummer stressed that IGF is not a policy-making body and said there are "widely divergent expectations" about its role. IGF doesn't have binding power to regulate the Internet worldwide, but it can provide an international stage to discuss issues, Kummer said. "Negotiating a treaty takes a long time, and it is only as good as the weakest link in the chain," Kummer said. It would appear countries such as China are hoping IGF will be a stage for more controversial issues. China, along with other developing countries, has expressed concerned over the influence of the U.S. government as well as the physical location of much of the Internet's core infrastructure in the U.S., such as root servers. To accommodate an ever-increasing number of Internet users, China is also seeking to increase its allocation of IP addresses, an essential numerical identifier for a computer or devices to connect to the Internet. The U.S. has generally opposed management changes or adjustments in the Internet's infrastructure, saying it could undermine its stability and security.
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China is sending out two virtual police  officers to patrol the Internet to combat online pornography  and other &quot;illicit activity,&quot; state media said on Wednesday.
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BEIJING -- Citing concerns over the rising prevalence of pornography, the Chinese government recently launched a nationwide crackdown against Internet smut sites and pornography peddlers using new media outlets such as cellphone text messaging.
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BEIJING, March 8 -- In preparation for likely approval, China's legislature on Thursday began examining a much-debated law that helps protect private property in an increasingly well-off society.
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By Li Weitao  China has made a major step forward in Internet technology, which could offer faster, more secure access and ease worries over network capacity, industry insiders said this weekend.
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BEIJING, March 8 -- China's legislature began examining a much-debated measure Thursday that is intended to help protect private property in an increasingly well-off society.
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BEIJING  - The Chinese government's aspiration to see Chinese technology defining digital television is losing appeal among TV makers and broadcasters after Beijing failed to announce its standards, industry executives say.
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China is tightening controls on its booming online game industry, requiring distributors to closely monitor game contents after some were found that included forbidden religious or political material, a state news agency said Tuesday.
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China seeks to put technical Internet management issues on the agenda of a U.N.-run forum concerning the development of the Internet.
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(InfoWorld) - Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chinese government for what the press advocacy group considers a move to end anonymous blogging in the communist country. The government, through the Internet Society of China, recently drafted a pact that was signed by at least 20 major blog service providers in the country, including Yahoo and Microsoft, the Paris-based watchdog group said Thursday. "The pact stops short [of] theÂ previous project of making it obligatory for bloggers to register, but it can be used to force service providers to censor content and identify bloggers," the group said in a statement. The pact, unveiled Wednesday, signals an "imminent" new wave of censorship and repression, the group said. Blogging services, which make it easy and simple for people to publish writings, photos, and videos on the Web, have become popular among individuals wanting to anonymously disseminate information that governments would rather keep confidential. The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., Microsoft and Yahoo didn't immediately reply to requests for comment. The pact "encourages" blog service providers to require that people provide their real names and contact information in order to let them post blogs, and then store the individuals' information, the group said. The pact also says blog service providers should "monitor and manage comments" as well as delete "illegal and bad information," according to Reporters Without Borders. In its statement, the group quotes Internet Society of China Secretary General Huang Chengqing as saying: "Blog service providers who allow the use of pseudonyms may be more attractive to bloggers, but they will be punished by the government if they fail to screen illegal information." China's Internet policies, such as the censorship of search engine results, have become a frequent target of criticism by organizations that advocate for human rights and press freedom. These organizations, likeÂ Amnesty International, have also criticized Internet companiesÂ including Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google for going along with Chinese government requirements that these groups charge violate human rights and press freedom. The companies' defense is that they must comply with the local laws of the countries in which they operate. Yahoo in particular has been blasted often in recent years for cooperating with the Chinese government and providing information that has led to the arrest of dissidents and journalists. In April, theÂ wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident sued YahooÂ in the U.S. for divulging information about her husband's Internet activity, which allegedly led to his arrest and torture. The suit was filed by the World Organization for Human Rights USA on behalf of Yu Ling, the wife of Wang Xiaoning, arrested in September 2002 on charges including "incitement to subvert state power." This month, aÂ U.S. congressional committee said it plans to investigateÂ whether or not a Yahoo representative lied during testimony over the company's role in a human rights case in China that sent journalist Shi Tao to jail for 10 years. Â
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China will allow only state-run Web sites to broadcast video or radio through the Internet, tightening the governmentâs regulatory grip over the media content offered there.
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Judges are not usually at risk of losing their jobs to modern technology but that may be changing in China, where new software is handing down sentences automatically.
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China said it would issue new rules  cracking down on "undesirable" elements of online games amid  fears of growing Internet addiction as the number of players  soars, state media reported on Thursday.
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China has moved to restrict videos online, allowing only state-controlled sites to post any Â including those shared by users Â and requiring Internet providers to delete and report a variety of content.