7 ms·

China bans individuals from registering domain names

103 points by joe_bleau 17y ago

CWuestefeld 17y ago
How ironic is that? A country that was supposed to have been founded on (Mao's interpretation of) Marxist principles, giving power to the people over the capitalist extremes, will now refuse Internet domain to those people; only businesses, those tools of capitalism, get this privilege.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  I think it's clear that no Communist nation has ever succeeded in being the bastion of democratic, personal freedom that it was ever intended to be. I actually sort of feel bad for Karl Marx. I mean, dude just wanted people to live happier lives and not worry about owning stuff so much. Now he's forever tied to some of the most oppressive regimes in modern history. Idealism fail.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    Maoism is not marxism, not that China is practicing Maoism today anyway. There are models of collective ownership that pre-date Marx.
    - CWuestefeld 17y ago
      You'll note my parenthetical acknowledgment of that in my post. Mao would have claimed to have embraced and extended the Marxist philosophy. But Mao was a complete idiot in every way except as a politician who could play people. Certainly his philosophy was no better than junior-high-school grade.
      - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
        Oh, I wasn't arguing with you, but to my other comment's parent.
      - light3 17y ago
        >Certainly his philosophy was no better than junior-high-school grade. He was well read and educated, you may disagree with his philosophy, but to say it was 'junior-high-school' grade would be incorrect. From wiki: 'Mao was a prolific writer of political and philosophical literature' 'In China, Mao was considered a master calligrapher during his lifetime' 'Politics aside, Mao is considered one of modern China's most influential literary figures'
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > I think it's clear that no Communist nation has ever succeeded in being the bastion of democratic, personal freedom that it was ever intended to be. Nuh-uh, no, you can't give him this sort of pass. He introduced the concept of "class struggle" and "class warfare" that took over so much of modern labor/monetary/commerce/market vocabulary, and specifically said that the transition to socialism/communism will take proletariat violence. The man has inspired as much harm and destruction as any person in history. And he's not even right - his labor theory of value is so completely flawed it's hard to know where to start debunking. He had it in mind that there was a "socially necessary abstract labor-time" of every action - which take a very limited view based on a very limited period in history. Take for instance, Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization. How much socially necessary abstract labor-time was that worth? Ten million units of necessary abstract labor-time? How much was creating GMail worth? How much abstract labor time is Picasso's best work worth, compared to Matisse? Publius Syrius said back in Roman times, "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." - and so far, that's the only model we've found that does a decent job of handling contributions without going to totalitarianism. When you start letting third parties dictate value to people who want to buy and sell, you throw the world off equilibrium, you get black markets and create a new class of crime. I'd implore you to please, please, please stop seeing Marx as a misguided would-be hero. Almost every bad person in history thought of themself that way. Marx's works were both incorrect from an academic standpoint, very emotionally appealing to certain kinds of people, and generally fostered violence and hostility between groups of people that do the best when they work together to create the best world together. Marx was no friend of humanity, and should be remembered as someone who had bad and violent ideas that led to millions of people oppressed and killed as part of the "proletariat revolution to overthrow the bourgeois". Marx brought this kind of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_rouge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_rouge Please, please get educated and stop whimsically giving him a nod. The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
    - CWuestefeld 17y ago
      Thank you for formulating such a concise, clear, and true reply. I've tried many times, and never been able to express it so well. I'm going to copy this off into my notebook for future use, if you don't mind.
- rms 17y ago
  Unfortunately Mao was too ignorant to properly implement his own ideals.
- idlewords 17y ago
  Zero ironic? Private ownership of a communal resource is not Maoist.
drtse4 17y ago
I didn't expect that something like this could ever happen... ok,it's China, but still unbelievable.
- InclinedPlane 17y ago
  China executed people for being involved in a non-violent protest. And then they sent bills home to the relatives of the deceased for the cost of the bullets. In that context, this sort of thing should not be the least surprising.
  - drtse4 17y ago
    I'm aware of that, i just didn't expect them to care about domain registrations when they can persecute the individual site owners. But i guess that that way there will be less work for them to do.
  - joubert 17y ago
    What happened if they refused to pay? I also wonder what would have happened if you showed it as a tax deductible in further sign of protest.
    - jhancock 17y ago
      Taxes don't work quite the same as the U.S. Taxes in China for the most part are pay as you go. Payroll taxes work pretty much the same as U.S. but there is no 1040 to file each year. As to the bullet billing, I do know a bit about that. Its something they still do and is mostly to make a social point. I have no idea if anyone actually pays and doubt there is punishment for not doing so. But no, its not tax deductible as your income was already taxed when you received your income.
- joshfinnie 17y ago
  I thought this was pretty standard for some country specific TLDs. I looked up Ireland's rules once and it seemed as though I couldn't get a domain name since I wasn't a business in Ireland. (I guess this has resently changed per wikipedia: "Registration policies have been liberalised somewhat in recent years and rules such as the one against registering generic domain names have been dropped. Applicants for .ie domain names still have to provide proof of entitlement to the domain that they want to register."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ie)
coliveira 17y ago
In a sense, this is good for the US economy, because it means that China is out of the game in terms of entrepreneurial activities on the web.
- cmgarcia 17y ago
  In what world are you living in that less competition is good?
  - drtse4 17y ago
    And also, consider that even if at the moment China has no significant web activities outside its borders, the internet population in China is bigger than the one in the US or Europe, and every move/law that leads to less freedom in the access to the network could damage a potential market.
    - coliveira 17y ago
      but they won't stop being a market; this law only makes it harder for Chinese people to create new web companies, which will make it easier for other countries to dominate the market.
      - jhancock 17y ago
        no it won't. If you want to operated a server in China, you need a Chinese company to do it. If you operate your server outside China, the bandwidth will be so bad you won't be able to retain many users and you might get blocked. For the most part local Chinese have an advantage over foreign companies trying to operate an Internet business within China. This move by China's gov to only allow companies to register a domain is most certainly just something to ease the trouble of overseeing site ownership and regulation. You may not agree with the regulations, but they aren't draconian (yet).
thijsterlouw 17y ago
Hope this will be one of those rules that is never really going to be implemented/enforced, but if some websites are really already unavailable, that doesn't bode well...
est 17y ago
Meanwhile Godaddy opens Alipay (most popular one in China, kinda like Paypal) for the convenience of the Chinese.
sailormoon 17y ago
This is a very misleading article. The restriction is only on .CN domain names and is in line with plenty of other domain types around the world, for example .co.jp. Here's the original source: http://business.globaltimes.cn/china-economy/2009-12/491515.html http://business.globaltimes.cn/china-economy/2009-12/491515....
- joe_bleau 17y ago
  Thanks for the link. (Odd, my submission must have been moderated, as I submitted a ft.com link, not the telecompaper.com one...)
- joubert 17y ago
  So an individual is also prohibited from registering a .co.jp? It seams reasonable to me to restrict .gov.x or .edu.x, but .co.x?
  - DrJokepu 17y ago
    I don't know about .co.jp, but individuals can definitely register .co.uk domains. I know because I own one.
  - whatusername 17y ago
    Australia provides a .id.au for individuals. .com.au is reserved for "businesses". (Since no-one (outside of places like HN) has ever heard of .id.au we either use .com or register a bus. name to get the .com.au)
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    A .co.jp can only be registered by a proper company, yeah. You know .. .COmpany.JP :) A plain .jp, however, has no such restrictions; individuals can buy them. Seems reasonable to restrict any of them to their intended registrees. Just because the USA didn't enforce it (and now the namespace is an absolute mess) doesn't mean other countries shouldn't.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Ireland did something similar for a while. They would refuse registrations that were 'too general' (eg cars.co.ie) on the grounds that they should be reserved for people who were capable of handling them ie established businesses. There was no lobbying to do this, it was just the natural thing to do, in their eyes. I think this Chinese effort is equally misguided, but I assume some of it has to do with trying to cut off domain tasters and spammers at the knees. Consider that China doesn't have anything like the same level of consumer protection/awareness as Western countries; I don't think it's necessarily an attack on entrepreneurs or free speech.
sili 17y ago
Another example where powers-that-have been are trying to stop inevitable future with restrictions and fines. The way it's done is noteworthy also: instead of targeting pornography on personal sites in particular they have banned any one person from having a personal site at all* . This is akin to chasing flies with a baseball bat. *At lest independent sites that are not created through some service, a la Blogger, and which it would be labor-intense for the government to police one by one. Edit: err, now I know how to italicize in HN
d64 17y ago
Up to until a few years ago .fi domains could only be registered by a company or other organization matching the name of the domain. I sort of liked that system. There were almost no vanity/"spam" domains in the TLD.
- blue1 17y ago
  same for .it
joubert 17y ago
How difficult / expensive is it to set up a company in China?
megaduck 17y ago
I don't think this changes much. You've always needed a government license to run a server, so virtually everybody either already had government permission or was running their stuff out of Hong Kong. This the new ban looks more like they're making sure that everybody with a .cn is "in the system". You can still start a website, you just need to go through one of the approved vendors for a domain name. I'm not in China any more, so jhancock or some of the other China guys can probably tell you more.

103 points by joe_bleau 17y ago

How ironic is that? A country that was supposed to have been founded on (Mao's interpretation of) Marxist principles, giving power to the people over the capitalist extremes, will now refuse Internet domain to those people; only businesses, those tools of capitalism, get this privilege.

DannoHung 17y ago
I think it's clear that no Communist nation has ever succeeded in being the bastion of democratic, personal freedom that it was ever intended to be. I actually sort of feel bad for Karl Marx. I mean, dude just wanted people to live happier lives and not worry about owning stuff so much. Now he's forever tied to some of the most oppressive regimes in modern history. Idealism fail.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Maoism is not marxism, not that China is practicing Maoism today anyway. There are models of collective ownership that pre-date Marx.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    You'll note my parenthetical acknowledgment of that in my post. Mao would have claimed to have embraced and extended the Marxist philosophy. But Mao was a complete idiot in every way except as a politician who could play people. Certainly his philosophy was no better than junior-high-school grade.
    - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
      Oh, I wasn't arguing with you, but to my other comment's parent.
    - light3 17y ago
      >Certainly his philosophy was no better than junior-high-school grade. He was well read and educated, you may disagree with his philosophy, but to say it was 'junior-high-school' grade would be incorrect. From wiki: 'Mao was a prolific writer of political and philosophical literature' 'In China, Mao was considered a master calligrapher during his lifetime' 'Politics aside, Mao is considered one of modern China's most influential literary figures'
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > I think it's clear that no Communist nation has ever succeeded in being the bastion of democratic, personal freedom that it was ever intended to be. Nuh-uh, no, you can't give him this sort of pass. He introduced the concept of "class struggle" and "class warfare" that took over so much of modern labor/monetary/commerce/market vocabulary, and specifically said that the transition to socialism/communism will take proletariat violence. The man has inspired as much harm and destruction as any person in history. And he's not even right - his labor theory of value is so completely flawed it's hard to know where to start debunking. He had it in mind that there was a "socially necessary abstract labor-time" of every action - which take a very limited view based on a very limited period in history. Take for instance, Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization. How much socially necessary abstract labor-time was that worth? Ten million units of necessary abstract labor-time? How much was creating GMail worth? How much abstract labor time is Picasso's best work worth, compared to Matisse? Publius Syrius said back in Roman times, "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." - and so far, that's the only model we've found that does a decent job of handling contributions without going to totalitarianism. When you start letting third parties dictate value to people who want to buy and sell, you throw the world off equilibrium, you get black markets and create a new class of crime. I'd implore you to please, please, please stop seeing Marx as a misguided would-be hero. Almost every bad person in history thought of themself that way. Marx's works were both incorrect from an academic standpoint, very emotionally appealing to certain kinds of people, and generally fostered violence and hostility between groups of people that do the best when they work together to create the best world together. Marx was no friend of humanity, and should be remembered as someone who had bad and violent ideas that led to millions of people oppressed and killed as part of the "proletariat revolution to overthrow the bourgeois". Marx brought this kind of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_rouge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_rouge Please, please get educated and stop whimsically giving him a nod. The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    Thank you for formulating such a concise, clear, and true reply. I've tried many times, and never been able to express it so well. I'm going to copy this off into my notebook for future use, if you don't mind.
rms 17y ago
Unfortunately Mao was too ignorant to properly implement his own ideals.
idlewords 17y ago
Zero ironic? Private ownership of a communal resource is not Maoist.

drtse4 17y ago

I didn't expect that something like this could ever happen... ok,it's China, but still unbelievable.

InclinedPlane 17y ago
China executed people for being involved in a non-violent protest. And then they sent bills home to the relatives of the deceased for the cost of the bullets. In that context, this sort of thing should not be the least surprising.
- drtse4 17y ago
  I'm aware of that, i just didn't expect them to care about domain registrations when they can persecute the individual site owners. But i guess that that way there will be less work for them to do.
- joubert 17y ago
  What happened if they refused to pay? I also wonder what would have happened if you showed it as a tax deductible in further sign of protest.
  - jhancock 17y ago
    Taxes don't work quite the same as the U.S. Taxes in China for the most part are pay as you go. Payroll taxes work pretty much the same as U.S. but there is no 1040 to file each year. As to the bullet billing, I do know a bit about that. Its something they still do and is mostly to make a social point. I have no idea if anyone actually pays and doubt there is punishment for not doing so. But no, its not tax deductible as your income was already taxed when you received your income.
joshfinnie 17y ago
I thought this was pretty standard for some country specific TLDs. I looked up Ireland's rules once and it seemed as though I couldn't get a domain name since I wasn't a business in Ireland. (I guess this has resently changed per wikipedia: "Registration policies have been liberalised somewhat in recent years and rules such as the one against registering generic domain names have been dropped. Applicants for .ie domain names still have to provide proof of entitlement to the domain that they want to register."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ie)

coliveira 17y ago

In a sense, this is good for the US economy, because it means that China is out of the game in terms of entrepreneurial activities on the web.

cmgarcia 17y ago
In what world are you living in that less competition is good?
- drtse4 17y ago
  And also, consider that even if at the moment China has no significant web activities outside its borders, the internet population in China is bigger than the one in the US or Europe, and every move/law that leads to less freedom in the access to the network could damage a potential market.
  - coliveira 17y ago
    but they won't stop being a market; this law only makes it harder for Chinese people to create new web companies, which will make it easier for other countries to dominate the market.
    - jhancock 17y ago
      no it won't. If you want to operated a server in China, you need a Chinese company to do it. If you operate your server outside China, the bandwidth will be so bad you won't be able to retain many users and you might get blocked. For the most part local Chinese have an advantage over foreign companies trying to operate an Internet business within China. This move by China's gov to only allow companies to register a domain is most certainly just something to ease the trouble of overseeing site ownership and regulation. You may not agree with the regulations, but they aren't draconian (yet).

thijsterlouw 17y ago

Hope this will be one of those rules that is never really going to be implemented/enforced, but if some websites are really already unavailable, that doesn't bode well...

est 17y ago

Meanwhile Godaddy opens Alipay (most popular one in China, kinda like Paypal) for the convenience of the Chinese.

sailormoon 17y ago

This is a very misleading article. The restriction is only on .CN domain names and is in line with plenty of other domain types around the world, for example .co.jp. Here's the original source: http://business.globaltimes.cn/china-economy/2009-12/491515.html http://business.globaltimes.cn/china-economy/2009-12/491515....

joe_bleau 17y ago
Thanks for the link. (Odd, my submission must have been moderated, as I submitted a ft.com link, not the telecompaper.com one...)
joubert 17y ago
So an individual is also prohibited from registering a .co.jp? It seams reasonable to me to restrict .gov.x or .edu.x, but .co.x?
- DrJokepu 17y ago
  I don't know about .co.jp, but individuals can definitely register .co.uk domains. I know because I own one.
- whatusername 17y ago
  Australia provides a .id.au for individuals. .com.au is reserved for "businesses". (Since no-one (outside of places like HN) has ever heard of .id.au we either use .com or register a bus. name to get the .com.au)
- sailormoon 17y ago
  A .co.jp can only be registered by a proper company, yeah. You know .. .COmpany.JP :) A plain .jp, however, has no such restrictions; individuals can buy them. Seems reasonable to restrict any of them to their intended registrees. Just because the USA didn't enforce it (and now the namespace is an absolute mess) doesn't mean other countries shouldn't.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Ireland did something similar for a while. They would refuse registrations that were 'too general' (eg cars.co.ie) on the grounds that they should be reserved for people who were capable of handling them ie established businesses. There was no lobbying to do this, it was just the natural thing to do, in their eyes. I think this Chinese effort is equally misguided, but I assume some of it has to do with trying to cut off domain tasters and spammers at the knees. Consider that China doesn't have anything like the same level of consumer protection/awareness as Western countries; I don't think it's necessarily an attack on entrepreneurs or free speech.

sili 17y ago

Another example where powers-that-have been are trying to stop inevitable future with restrictions and fines. The way it's done is noteworthy also: instead of targeting pornography on personal sites in particular they have banned any one person from having a personal site at all* . This is akin to chasing flies with a baseball bat. *At lest independent sites that are not created through some service, a la Blogger, and which it would be labor-intense for the government to police one by one. Edit: err, now I know how to italicize in HN

d64 17y ago

Up to until a few years ago .fi domains could only be registered by a company or other organization matching the name of the domain. I sort of liked that system. There were almost no vanity/"spam" domains in the TLD.

blue1 17y ago
same for .it

joubert 17y ago

How difficult / expensive is it to set up a company in China?

megaduck 17y ago

I don't think this changes much. You've always needed a government license to run a server, so virtually everybody either already had government permission or was running their stuff out of Hong Kong. This the new ban looks more like they're making sure that everybody with a .cn is "in the system". You can still start a website, you just need to go through one of the approved vendors for a domain name. I'm not in China any more, so jhancock or some of the other China guys can probably tell you more.