Well, it may be just one of those temporary blips, or it could be that the ever-mercurial Net nanny has decided that Blogspot really is too uncivilized for Chinese Internet users. At any rate it is, at least in Beijing, inaccessible again, as Danwei reports.Read more »

Last week reports started flying around that China's Ministry of Information Industry would begin requiring Chinese bloggers to register for their blogs using their real names and ID numbers. With spoofing, Internet mobs and other rowdy Internet behavior garnering a lot of attention, this was meant to be part of the Government's push for more civilized Internet use. Naturally concerns of censorship were raised, especially among sensitized foreigners. However, it's not time to push the panic button just yet. Not only does it turn out that the regulation is only in discussion, but it seems like a law that would be difficult to enforce.Read more »

I noticed an article this morning --in an Indian paper actually-- remarking on how courts in the Chinese city of Nanjing will use SMS services to deliver information to people in the area:

The court can provide basic information on lodging a lawsuit, court notices and even case-specific information to those who request it, officials with the Intermediate People's Court of Nanjing, Capital of eastern Jiangsu Province, said.

This is a first for China, Xinhua news agency reported.

In the mainland, access to trial information has traditionally been difficult and only a small fraction of the general public has any litigation know-how.

In Nanjing, people can send a text message request to the court's information center, but access to specific case information is restricted to those involved in the case.

The court gives both parties to a litigation an 11-figure code number which they use to make their text message request, the report said.

Read more »

Betting on whether eBay will abandon China or not is a popular game in the technology salons of China. The company has had a rough go in the mainland, and is in bitter competition with Alibaba's Taobao auction site. Late last month rumors started swirling that eBay might finally give up on China, or at least scale back its operations. Among the possibilities discussed was that eBay might sell out to a Chinese partner and retain a stake in the resulting business. That's the approach taken by Yahoo, which essentially paid Alibaba to take its Chinese business off its hands, while retaining a significant minority stake in the company.Read more »

Regular readers will recall one or two previous posts I wrote on China's lively Web spoofing (恶搞 or "egao") scene. National regulators have already been casting an eye on the scene. Now the Chongqing municipality has decided to get ahead of the game, with new regulations designed to reign in unruly spoofers and control online defamation, rumors and other uncivilized Web behavior. In fact, this is just the latest in a series of moves by authorities trying to come to grips with the fast-changing Internet culture. All we can say in response to these latest steps is, best of luck with that!Read more »