China Veers Away From Real-Name Blogging Requirement

A policy that would require Chinese bloggers to register their real names has been hotly debated since this was announced last Fall.  There are other means of determining a user's identity, besides such a registration process, such as an IP address, but losing one of the last vestiges of anonymity is something that concerned many.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the government reversed its plan after backlash from the technology industry within the country proved convincing.  With nearly 20 million registered bloggers in China, the industry has obvious profitability and value to the nation's economy.  Fear of losing such a large sector of the tech industry caused the government to request, not order, that companies register their bloggers' real names. 

The article notes that reactions to this request are mixed and there is no clear path that blog hosts plan to take.

Berkman Fellow Rebecca MacKinnon provides some great notes and videos from a forum at the University of Hong Kong on "The future of media in China."

Xiao Qiang of the UC Berkeley's School of Journalism also contributes quite a few posts on the state of blogging in China for China Digital Times, the Berkeley China Internet Project's participatory media website.

The work of the ONI, which began five years ago, will be presented at the project's first public conference, taking place tomorrow at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford.  Stay tuned for podcasts of the conference events.

The ONI will also be launching its redesigned website tomorrow as well, which will include 40 country studies, 8 regional overviews, and much more.

The ONI is a partnership of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge University, and the Berkman Center.