Tag: <span>Governance</span>

White Paper: The Internet in China

Released by: 
Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China

On 8 June 2010

Contents

 

Rule of Law or Rule of Moral

Rule of Moral or Rule of Law? Contending Passions of China’s Information Control in the New Round of Metropolis Development

This is an outline of my presentation prepared for a Symposium

Lust, Caution is a movie telling a story in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1940s. I personally like it because it has not only good scenery but also some artistic, as well as sexy episodes. From the law perspective, the interesting thing is: This movie, especially those episodes with nude bodies may not be protected by China’s copyright law because Article 1 of that Law said that it aims to promote the development of ‘spiritual civilization’ but not indecent content, and Article 4 of the Law excludes the copyright protection to ‘illegal works’.

Therefore, if someone uploaded the movie to a website in China, the copyright holder might not eligible to sue the uploader for the copyright infringement. On the other hand, if the copyright holder licensed a website to provide the online watching, both the holder and the website might confront with criminal penalty no matter what warning signal had they placed on the website before the visitor could see the movie. The worse thing is no instruction in China’s law revealing what is obscene or indecent.

They just had Not Noticed It – Rebecca's Talk

screen-capture.pngRebecca Mackinnor brought an interesting talk at the Berkman Center on China’s Internet culture. See the video here, and see the notes by Ethan Zuckerman here, and notes by David Weinberger here.

In her presentation, Rebecca figures out the Back-Dorm Boys (后舍男孩), Premier Wen Jiabao’s 2-plus hour net chatting, rivercrab(河蟹), "alpaca sheep(草泥马)", blocked blogs and so on. These are very familar to Chinese netizens, at least those Chinese netizens who are working on the social development of the cyberspace and the cyberlaw. While what the most important observation of Rebecca, in my view, appears at the Q&A session. She said that for many people living on the mainland China, they  just not noticed the censorship.

Why? Becuse they just have many other concerns about their life, and

(1) for Chinese mainlander students, there are so much interesting stuffs IN the Chinese Cyberspace, including "alpaca sheep";

垃圾网站展览馆

  从今天起,将到我这里发垃圾广告的各种垃圾网站记录下来,同时将这些网站上的其它可疑违法行为一并陈列(鉴于这些网站发垃圾信息,他们网站页面有问题的可能性比较大,没事不要随意进入我列的地址)。如果各位的Blog也被骚扰,请在我这里留言,告知垃圾信息在你网站上的地址,我去查看后加进这篇日志。(07年4月25日)

071116 Update:点此看本站过滤的词汇列表。
070507 Update:今天起,不仅记录发垃圾广告的网站,而且还记录大规模侵犯著作权或邻接权的网站,此外由于被展览的网站可能随时改邪归正,所以法豆只能保证在加入当天,该网站存在侵权行为或者发送了垃圾信息。如果被展览网站纠正了错误,请来邮件或者在下面留言告之。
070428 Update:展品中的红色字符为垃圾关键词,可放进您的网站过滤列表内。另外,也可将它们的地址列如列表内,也能有效控制垃圾信息。
今天起,统一编号,格式为:XXXYYMMDD,前面三位为垃圾编号,后面六位为发现的日期。

 

022080411
中国开门网 www.com51.com 这个网站只有非经营性网站的备案号,却大肆从事经营性电子商务业务,且长期、高频率地滥发垃圾邮件,在接收者声明不愿接收后仍不罢休。其号称有全新的业务模式,其实完全没有创新,让不懂网络的厂家付费而已。

Some Useful Links on China Internet Governance

Internet Governance in China is an aspect of my research topics. The following is a list of some useful publicated materials on the topic. I believe this collection is very copyrightable even it is just a rough version. This list is also contributed by Dr. Zhao Yun, so please at least mention our name (Zhao Yun and Dong Hao) and the URL of this site (www.blawgdog.com) after you use it.
 
Click HERE to see the details.

IGP launches Chinese website

The Internet Governance Project announced today that its website is now available in  Chinese. "We view it essential that one of the world’s largest Internet user community  have access to the global debate on Internet governance," said IGP Operations Director  Brenden Kuerbis. "In anticipation of the upcoming Internet Governance Forum, all  individuals, the private sector and governments must have access to objective analysis of  issues of freedom of expression, content filtering, and competition policy surrounding  critical network resources."  While only providing limited translation at this point, IGP  plans to publish translations of key papers prior to the Forum.

http://internetgovernance.org/cn_index.html

Who Controls the Internet?

In their new book "Who Controls the Internet", Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu make a compelling case that the optimistic hope that the internet would erase national boundaries has been replaced by a reality of local control leveraged through governmental pressure on intermediaries, at least in the case of large multinational companies. (Cited from PingSwept)

Are we really in "the beginning of a technological version of the cold war?" (p. 184) I don’t think it is absolutely correct since the conception of cold war is under some objective  threatens which may be illustrated superficially with the term of "nuclear terrors". The only analogy may be the seperated world by censorships of governments and/or giant multinational enterprises. Talking the issues of freedom of expression and freedom of religion, the gap may be huge, however, I think, only if the Matrix of Internet really be crushed down by the different domain systems, those censorships may never really filter all since the intellgences and ideas are not merely emerged from the western/eastern world. Further, while we are talking about the protection of private rights, say, copyright, personal privacy and commercial secret, the cold war may be substituted by the hot love scene between west and east … not only because the hegemony of someone, but also because the inherent needs of developing their own cultures.

So, as Ethan Leib said, the book may be a "popular" and "entertaining" one, though I still need to evaluate the same after reading it through.

Besides, Milton Mueller (The author of the wellknown Ruling the Root) think it is a "manifesto for counterrevolution", and John Mathiason suggested it is an "Episode II".

Internet Governance Project

The Internet Governance Project (IGP) is an interdisciplinary consortium of academics with scholarly and practical expertise in international governance, Internet policy, and information and communication technology.

The goal of the Internet Governance Project (IGP) is to:

  • Inform and shape Internet public policy choices by providing independent analysis and timely recommendations.
  • Identify and analyze new possibilities for improving global governance institutions
  • Develop policy positions guided by the values of globalism, democratic governance and individual rights.

http://www.internetgovernance.org/

WGIG Report on Internet Governance

Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) 

WGIG Final Report: [Chinese] [English] (Doc)

WGIG Background Report; [English] (PDF)

The first phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) agreed to pursue the dialogue on Internet Governance in the Declaration of Principles and Action Plan adopted on 12 December 2003, with a view to preparing the ground for a decision at the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis in November 2005. In this regard, the first phase of the Summit requested the United Nations Secretary-General to establish a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).  The WGIG was asked to present the result of its work in a report "for consideration and appropriate action for the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis 2005." More information on the mandate of the WGIG…

The WGIG Report was discussed by the PrepCom-3 of WSIS. The sessions were webcast.

 SECOND PHASE OF WSIS was held in TUNIS, NOVEMBER 2005.

Internet Governance Vs. Cyberspace Self-government

Internet Gvernance is mainly based on legislations and government's enforcements.

Cyberspace Self-government is mainly based on the customary rules of cyber society, usage of trade and  course of dealing.

Custom is differ from customary rule since the latter is more common and sometimes can be directly enforced by government, court and/or other public organizations.