Democracy in Residential Area

Democracy is a sensitive word. You can not search it in Google, and you can not include it in your blog in MSN Space. However, recently, the residential area is experiencing the democratic election of the member of the Residential Area Property Owners’ Committee.

Banner: Appreciate the Democracy Right!

The whole banner reads:

Appreciate the Democracy Right! Actively participate in the selection of Residential Area Property Owners’ Committee Member!

These banners are seen many places. They are there for more than a month, I remember.

Candidates

After first round of selection, there are 12 candidates in the final selection. Their self-introduction and pictures are posted at the board at the entrance.

The conflict between property owners’ (including me) and the property management company exists for a long time. The house owners complain that the service company didn’t provide good service, and the monthly fee is too high. It is a long story. Many owners want to select members representing their interest.

It is interesting that one week before the final election, small posters stating 3 candidate didn’t pay the management fee for the last one or two years were posted in many places. The poster suggest people not to vote these candidates.

I guess it may be done by the management company.

The Voting

The voting will end tomorrow. Boxes collecting tickets are places at all the entrance.

Tomorrow, the first “All-Hands Meeting” will be held.

The Process

According to law, after a residential area is built, the house owners will setup their Owner’s Committee. All rights regarding the property belongs to the committee. One of the most important right is to choose a property management company.

It is a starting point of using voting to make decisions. I truly hope the process goes on well in my residential area.

Pressure at Year End

End of 2005 marks the enforcement of the ICP license and recordal requirements. This time, it seems they really mean it.

In my previous story, I outlined the requirements for the registration for website. The first requirement came out in the year of 2000, and asks all website with a domain name to file registration with detailed information with the government. Nothing happened after the deadline.

In 2002, it was said to be enforced again. Nothing happened.

All the websites are in an environment that the law and regulation requires all site registration unrealistically from the year of 2000. The whole five years was under the pressure but not too much action. 2005 is different.

In the year 2005, it is announced that all websites need registration. This time, it seems it will be enforced. At the end of the year, especially recent two weeks, many websites were shutdown.

The homepage of the www.net.cn, the largest virtual server provider in China pops up the following notice:

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Image in courtesy of www.net.cn

It explained the reason why their client’s website were shutdown – because no registration license was found on the home page – it was required by the regulation. The service providers are required to pause the service. This requirement was there for 5 years and these two weeks are the starting point of the real enforcement.

In Shanghai particularly, the network service is very unstable. The backbone network stops function from time to time. Many ADSL users were affected. For several minutes every few hours, Internet seems not accessible at all. I am confused whether the websites are down or just the network infrastructure. For example, the MSN Messenger will logoff for no reason and after sometime reconnects. It is the same for my friends. I bet the MSN Server receives much more logout (lost connection) or logon request these days from Shanghai. Beijing seems not impact from the network failure.

Anyway, the end of 2005 is not a happy ending. The network blocking and shutting websites added a lot of stress to the atmosphere of the new year. It is annoying, very annoying.

According to Supervisor’s Notice

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Notice in metro city

This is a typical notice in Shanghai, or in China. The note says:

According to Supervisor’s notice, this W.C. will be removed

I recently notice almost all the posters in Shanghai metro starts from the same sentence: “according to supervisor’s notice”. Following this starting sentence, there are many events, like: “no baggers are allowed”, “the business time will be extended” or the “Dongfang Road station will be closed”…

It is a very interetsing way of expressing something in national-owned large enterprises. All the actions are driven by the supervisors, not the customers. :-)

Kevin Wen

I met Kevin today. Blogging, helped both of us to connect with each other so we seem to be good friend already. Actually, not blogging, the continuous writing, and updating that connects people.

As I told Kevin, the top 3 beneficial blogs in the blogging/it category I read are Keivn‘s, Chedong‘s, and 6e.

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Face of Kevin’s name card

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Back of Kevin’s blogging name card

Autumn

When I enter the class room of Andreas, I read a banner outside the building: 2005 EMBA Autumn Class. This morning, when I took a short walk in my garden, I found many yellow leafs in the garden. It is a strong indicator of Autumn in Shanghai. I am going to plant some tulip in the garden at the end of Nov. So I have some hope for March the next year when the cold winter comes.

Andreas’ class

Recently, when I am drafting strategy, and I found to foresee many years ahead for a business is a weak point for me, or most people at my age. So I spent this Saturday to attend Andreas’ EMBA class. Thanks Andreas to genouerous allowed free admission for me. To my surprise, I was put the spotlight and finally turned out to be one of the speaker for the afternoon session when we talked about “tag”, “participation architecture”. I start to wonder whether I should take some time to attend some EMBA education.

Kevin’s Word

Kevin quoted the CEO of technorati.com:

Focus on one thing;

Do it really well;

and enjoy it!

Well said.

Real Name Requirement for QQ

The most popular IM QQ in China has a great feature called QQ Group. It is real time chatting groups integrated in QQ client.

Recently, Tecent was asked to enforce real name registration for all group owners. People much submit their national ID to keep their QQ group. Well. Another step after the web site registraiton.

eCommunity Center in Shanghai

Shanghai is famous for the strong execution power of the government. I read about the eCommunity Center project on newspaper. It was reported that 400 eCommunity Center will be built in the recent 3 years to help people who do not use Internet to gain access to the Internet. 100 of such centers have been built and they offer FREE Internet access for all the community members. They are equipted with computers and staff to help people get online. This is a good idea.

I visited some eCommunity Center today. It was impressive.

Most eCommunity Center were located in very good residential areas like this:

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Zhi Yin Community in western Shanghai

They are typically an empty room just like other residential apartments, but with computers. Here is the entrance:

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Door of the eCommunity Center

The backdrop of the center with name and logo on it.

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Entrance of the eCommunity Center

This center is relatively smaller, so they only have few computers in this room and will have some in the other.

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Computers of the eCommunity Center

The other eCommunity Center was of shop functions that they can deliver the goods when people order online (but what I heard is 90% or more orders still comes from telephone).

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Shelf of the eCommunity Shop 365

To be honest, I was really impressived by those information center – it is a big step to leverage the IT technology to change people’s life.

Registration? Claim of Buggage?

Let me update something that seems important for me but I didn’t take too serious about. :-)

1. Registration of blogs.

After I registered all my information with the official website, nothing happened so far. I checked every other day, but it seems there is no reply yet. It means, I am in the process of registration, and the process took about 2 weeks already. Don’t worry. My expectation is to get it done in the next two months. I can image how hard it is to process all the registration requirements from all the bloggers, personal website owners, business, and all kinds of website with a single website, and manual process. Let’s wait.

2. Recently, the change in custom rule requires all passengers exit the custom to claim their belongings.

The upper limit is 5000 RMB or equivalents. Anything above this number will be charged for tax. So in the next trip, I need to claim my laptop, my camera, so that I am not charged of tax when I am back. Actually, this rule was there, just like the rule for website registration, for years but hasn’t been enforced (correct me if I am wrong).

Others

I am doing well recently. I put all my effort into the new business Kijiji and really didn’t put too much time in this blog. Most of the time, as you may notice, the blog was updated after 1:00 AM. I feel bad about it, but still think I kept my commitment almost three years ago to write daily. But what is not as good is, as you may also feel, that I didn’t put too much personal stuff as I did in the previous two years. Well. I know that is the most important part of this blog – the details, and the human side of the life in this city. Let me try to get back soon. Sorry for not be able to reply to every single comment. I wanted to, but when I sit down at my desk in my home, it seem it is far too late for me to got to bed. This is Friday weekend, and I get back early – at around 10:00 PM.

Commit? You get it in China

I talked with a Tina, a girl with very nice profile in media industry, who is going to U.S. for graduate study in Stanford. She shared her experience of being a volunteer in Fortune. Her responsibility was to hold the microphone so if someone want to ask a question, she will hand it over. There are too much wire on the ground that she fell over when she runs. What one of the guess on the stage noticed was, she handed the microphone over to the person asking the question, before she tried to get up and check if she was hurt. The second day, the person (with name Mary, one of the big name) who saw it came to her and asked “Are you OK? I was really impressed yesterday that you gave out the microphone to complete your job first before you got up…”

It echoes the story I heard from foreigners at the Paulena in Pudong, at the other side of the Bund. The foreigners were discussing about how people committed to their work in China. “I was really impressed by how much people committed to their work. They just want job done!” commented one of them.

I happen to read about a story in Shanghai in Xinmin Weekly today. According to the late report, 1/4 of people go to bed between 10 – 11 PM, 1/4 go to bed after 11:00 PM in Shanghai. Only 1/10 of people go to bed before 8 PM. Well. I don’t know whether it means good or bad. On one hand, people work (or play) hard in this city, which is good for the grow of the economic, on the other hand, people really scarifies a lot of their personal life. I am pround of the hard work spirit people have in this city, and meanwhile, appreciate those efforts to remind people to spend more time with their family and enjoy life.

Personally, I am very happy about what I am doing – if someone has a chance to do something, that may change the way people live, and give back to the community and generate big business at the same time, the passion will drive him to try very hard. I am in the stage.

Personal Feel

The direct feel to live in Shanghai these days is, it is hot, way too hot. It has broken the record set in the year 1934. In the last 70 years, not a single year is hotter than this year in early July. It is wired that there is no raining season this year too. I warned two reporters who just relocated to Shanghai from Beijing that the two months of raining season is ahead and waiting for them, the radio station announced yesterday night that we have already left the raining season and stepped into hot summer. Wow. This is the first raining season without rain in Shanghai.

My Site is Almost Legal in China

Tonight, a long Friday night, I don’t have too many things to do at around 23:00 in the office. The office is completely empty. Only the small noisy laptop is with me. Well. Maybe it is the good time to register my blog with the government – 13 days before the deadline.

The registration process itself is not complicated, at least not as complicated as registering at another free email provider. It seems so easy maybe because I expect it to be a long process. Here is what I did, in case you are interested.

1. Get a user name and choose a password.

2. Enter email address and mobile phone number. It is the first time mobile phone number is required I have experienced though.

3. Wait a SMS to be sent to my mobile phone and an email to be sent to my email address. The SMS contains a 8 digit confirmation code, and the email is the same.

4. Login into the system and enter the two 8-digits number. At this time, I know that someone can reach me by mobile or email and I cannot say, it is not my mobile.

5. Enter the required information. It seems all of the information is required, including: Name, Mobile, Home phone, Home address, Domain name, Host provider, Organization

7. After I submit all the information, I should wait until someone review my application and decide whether to grant me the certificate or not.

Finally, Wangjianshuo.com is almost legal now.

Where is my Sense of Safty Today?

Got an email like this in my email box. I hosted my server (not this blog) at this ISP before.

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Name of ISP is removed

They told me (in case you cannot read Chinese) that I have to shut down my BBS immediately because it is not licensed.

If I do not do it, their policy is:

“If found, ban the IP first, then locate the owner. Absolutely no exception”.

I support the cracking down of porn website, but I do worry about how they approach it.

The current rule is, if you are not in the NOT evil database, you are evil.

My site has been illegal in China since 2002 and is still illegal. Check this story: My Site Remains Illegal in China learn how hard it is to get contact with the right person to get ICP.

I have to pay to proove I am NOT evil. The yearly cost is higher than the cost domain name + hosting service together.

I got similiar from every ISP I have account with this week.

Well. I am happy that I have moved my site out of ISP in Shanghai and to iPowerWeb. Otherwise, I have to worry about my site everyday.

According to law, my site is illegal and subject to be deleted without notification.

According to ISP’s practice, they will not inform their customer before they ban their sites and will proactively report whatever they know about you to police.

According to how virtual hosting works, if any of the more than 100 sites hosting on the same server is found porn content, the whole machine is take away from the Internet…..

So, where is my sense of safty today?

Blogcn is Down for the Third Time

Blogcn, the largest blogging service provider, shut down their server again. This time, it seems because of technical difficulties.

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Image in courtesy of blogcn.com

As far as I know, there close friends of mine has been affected. Jackgu commented in his last post that he has lost passion for blogging since the 10-day downtime broke his pace of updating frequency and leaving unbearable blank on the blog history.

Claire and Eric were also driven mad. I am proud to help them to host their blogs on wangjianshuo.com. Their new homes are:

I love their writing styles so much. These two blogs, along with Wendy’s blog are the three best personal blogs I saw (in my friend circle). I am happy that I won’t lose them again.

Meanwhile, I still encourage people to start host their blogs by themselves as soon as possible. Check this entry: Blog, to Host it or Not? for reasons.

I hope Eric and Claire enjoy the new home (not fancy but stable home). I hope one day, they can move to their permanent address at http://www.clairehu.com and http://www.zhengziying.com, where their blog should reside at.

How about Starting an Online TV Station?

I was impressed by Seattle Wireless TV (via Slashdot). It looked like a formal media (or official media) if there is no “Help Sponsor the Show!” text or the PayPal denote icon.

The host just carries a camera and go out to catch interesting things. In the June 2004 edition, they interviewed Drew from WiFiMaps.com (with Doug Luce of Telarama) and recorded a presentation of Jason Levitt of Less Networks – “How Less Networks and Austin City Wireless Project beat T-Mobile”.

The simplest camera is enough. The result can be edited by (almost) free Movie Maker 2 – to add text, subtitle and credit screens.

Start the Same Kind of Station in Shanghai?

It is a silly idea to start any media, especially the network media in China right now. It will be another illegal site. Someone started to use network as a media to setup their own Internet Radio stations (Google Search, Chinese), however, I worry about their future. It may not be a problem if they are small and no one notices them. But what if it goes stronger?

Blogcn & BlogDriver Shut Down

Two more blog service provider were shut down after blogbus.com. Now, all of the top three blogs stoped their services now. This is not astonishing at all. To be safe, I don’t want to make any comment on this. It is the hard time for everyone involved in the China blogging world.

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© Jian Shuo Wang. Screen shot of blogdriver.com at 9:32 PM 3/13/2004

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© Jian Shuo Wang. Screen shot of blogcn.com at 9:32 PM 3/13/2004

BlogBus.com Blocked

After I wrote the title, I realized it is not blocked. It was ordered to be shutdown.

As one of the three blog service providers (others are blogcn.com and blogdriver.com, blogbus did very well job to innovate and add more functions. However, it is forced to shut down due to political blogs.

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Image courtesy of blogbus.com.

Translation: Due to unauthorized content of some individual users, web server temperorily shut down. We will try to solve the problem as soon as possible. We are sorry for the inconvinience this brought to you. 2004.03.11

I have a wonderful talk with the site owner Hengge during a meetup of Isaac. I know how passionate he was for blogging service and how much effort they put into the site. The pressure is there. Feel it or not.

Caution: You are Reading an Illegal Site

As I posted before, My Site Remains Illegal in China. Don’t be surprised if this site post similar notice one day (or disappear with no notice). Anyway, I am not a good citizen and didn’t follow the current law well enough.

How Interviews were Conducted

I received a series of photos disclosing how an interview were conducted. It seems the picture were taken in a small city. I was curious when I was in Luoyang that why everytime some major conferences or policy change, there will be some “encouraged” people expressing their happiness because of the conference or the new policy. Maybe some of the conversation were conducted this way. No description is added since it may mislead. I am not a witness of this. The order of the photos may not be in the original order.

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Satellite Dishes Still Forbidden in China

To be honest, I am frustrated that I cannot install a satellite dish to receive foreign programs like CNN, NBC in my home. It is explicit illegal to use it at home.

The State Council issued a decree in 1993 saying only hotels, media outlets, and apartment buildings housing foreigners are allowed to use satellite dishes. It seems the ban is out of date since any one can access CNN.com or MSNBC.com via Internet to get the lastest report, if they are not blocked by the Great Firewall at that time.

“The object of the system is to ensure stable social order and the right direction for cultural and ideological progress; it is also expected to help foster our own radio and TV industry” said Hu Zhanfan, deputy director of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) in a recent interview with China Central Television, according to Shanghai Star.

Many people in my residential garden installed the dishes one or two years ago. From outside the building, I see the small dish pointing to the sky clearly. No one ever tried to say any word about it. I get one or two flyers advertising to install satellite dishes everyday in my mailbox (physical mailbox in my house). They offer the dish at 3000 RMB to 6000 RMB. Price varis according to the satellite you choose.

The regulation itself does not make sense. Just like the ICP filing regulation. My site is still illegal since I haven’t registered it at the communication adminstration. Also, I don’t want to pay the 510 RMB registration fee in addition to my hosting/domain name fee. I dont’ want to hire a people with a “security expert certification”. I don’t want to hire another two decidated persons to monitor the comment system. I also don’t want to shutdown the site for two months and wait for the filing to be approved. Even if I get registered, my site still breaks the regulation since this site contains links to site that is not registered. Refer to My Site Remains Illegal in Chian for details.

The Satellite Dish ban is facing the same situation. The rule itself is not realistic so it is not enforced. Then the rule becomes a rule that can be broken….

Bugs in the Great Firewall

To surf on the Internet at home is becoming painful recently. I have to say, I has been driven mad for all the strange behaviors in the great censorship plan. When I click on some of the result website in Google, it is not uncommon that I get the “The Page Cannot be Displayed” error.

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Bugs in the Great Firewall

I believe there must be some bugs in the Great Firewall. If you think I am talking about the holes on the firewall that allow users within the firewall to access banned site, you will be disappointed. It seems the bugs in the software of the firewall have put a lot of “good site” into the blocklist. Disclaimer: I have no proof to say so, just guess from the behavior of my browser.

Before

The behavior of the Great Firewall was still predictable at the time when Google was banned. At that time, whenever I see a site unaccessible, I can think of a reason for it. For example:

Google was banned, since it returned “unhealthy content” – according to the media.

Blog*Spot was banned, since it provide much noise from individuals.

BBC.com.uk and TIMES.com was banned, since it provide “negative” report to the government

MIT.edu was banned, because ………

….

(Google ban was unlifted, and Blog*Spot was reported not be banned by the firewall. Instead, there is some technical difficulties)

After some time, people just take it for granted that these sites do not exists in the world at all.

Current buggy firewall

The current version of the firewall seems mad. Many website were unaccessible and I cannot find a reason for it. Why is the homepage of an airport considered “unsuitable” for readers in the country? I cannot understand.

Possible reasons

Friends of mine also complain that many website cannot be accessed. “The Page cannot be displayed” page in IE is frequently visited page. There are two possible reasons:

1) The China Telecom is experiencing technical difficulties. I am using ADSL provided by China Telecom. I hope it is the reason, but it seems unlikely. Sometimes, the home page of a website can be accessed, and most of the pages are OK, just certain pages cannot be accessed. It seems there is a great agrithms behind big Internet and determine certain pages of a site are different than others on the site and should be treated differently.

So the second reason may be

2) There are bugs in the Great Firewall. Since the software has been widely implemented to all the ISPs, they must have a method to judge which site should be blocked and which will not. It must not be on a block list basis since the increasing number of “unhealthy” content will grow faster than the grow of block list. So it may be content based or keyword based.

If there is anything wrong with a single point in the software, it will affects a lot of website, just like a little change in the crawler will result in the great changes to millions of website on ts result page.

This may be the current sitation.

My Site Remains Illegal in China

Notice: You are reading an illegal site in China.

Today, I received an email from Hichina Corp. (Chinese site). I am their client for domain names. They reminded me that I report and register for my web site – yes, for my personal web site.

China State Concil Order 292

The order (unofficial English translation) came into effort two years ago, namely, Oct 1, 2000. (via the explaination of Paul McKenzie in his article China’s State Council Issues New Rules Governing “Internet Information Services”)

Article 3. There are two types of Internet information services, namely business-oriented and non-business oriented services.

Business-oriented Internet information services refer to service activities such as the provision of information or Web page creation for online users via the Internet for compensation.

Non-business oriented Internet information services refer to the service activities of providing public and shared information to online users via the Internet without compensation.

My site belongs to the category of nonbusiness oriented site. In the regulations issued by Shanghai government, it is explicitly expressed that all personal web site, as long as it has a dedicated domain name, is required to carry out filing procedures.

Article 8. All those who engage in non-business oriented Internet information services shall carry out filing procedures at the telecommunications administration authority at the level of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the central government or at the authority in charge of information industry under the State Council. When carrying out filing procedures, the following materials shall be submitted:

(1) basic particulars concerning the sponsoring unit and the person responsible for the Web site;

(2) address of the Web site and its services;

(3) where services fall within the scope set forth in Article 5 hereof, the approval documents already obtained from the relevant competent authorities.

As I understand, it is my responsibility to file my site since my site operates in China.

Article 4: No one may engage in Internet information services without obtaining a license or completing filing procedures.

Article 19: If any person engages in non-business oriented Internet information services without completing the filing procedures or provides services exceeding the filed scope of services in violation of these Measures, the telecommunications administrative authority at the level of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the central government shall order correction within a prescribed time limit. In the event of a refusal to correct, the Web site shall be ordered to close.

Sure. I need to file my web site, as stated by the Order 292. I decided.

With whom I need to register? A question not easy to answer

The first problem is to locate the government authorities who accept the application. I asked Shanghai Informaiton Administration, and Shanghai telecom, and any telephone I believe is right. After about about ten calls, I finally figured out I need to send filing application to Shanghai Communication Adminstration (Chinese site). I begin to wonder, why it is so difficult to follow the Order.

Unrealistic requirements

On the web site (Chinese site), I found it is almost impossible for me or anyone who like me to meet the requirements to file. The Order issued by Shanghai Communication Administration (SHCA) requires:

  1. All web sites, including personal web sites, as long as it has an independent domain name, are required to file. Actually, it is impossible. The domain names registered is boosting. If I understand it correctly, every domain name owner need to go to SHCA to register for the domain name again in SHCA again, which is a exteremely large number. I don’t know the exact number, but I believe it is far beyond the processing ability of the Administration. It is even more sure if you know the process for filing – it is all done manually now.
  2. An annual review of the license is required for each site. The time ranges is Dec to Jan of next year. I am afraid the annual review itself will be a big problem if all domain name owners rush the administation in the two month window.
  3. The application should be sent to SHCA 60 days before the launch of the web site. I garentee no one will wait for two months just for this license and postpone the launch of a personal web site.
  4. Detailed information for at least two persons responsible for the BBS is required. Really hard for me. According to the definition, the comment system included in MovableType is also type of BBS. It requires to person who administrating it. I have to write down my name and my GF’s name in this column.
  5. A dedicated Information Security Specialist is required for any one who provide information service on Internet. An Information Security Specialist must hold a certificate named “Computer Information Network Security Specialist Training Graduation Certificate” issued by Shanghai Policy. I never heard of the certificate and don’t want to hire any body for my personal web site, but I am obviously not a “dedicated” Security Specialist. Again, is it possible for any company in Shanghai who has a web site to attend a single training? I believe it is only joking, not a very serious requirement.
  6. All web site need to post a logo at the right-bottom corner of your web site. This one is very reasonable. If you want to see the logo, you can check http://cn.yahoo.com. Yahoo! China is always a very good citizen in China. I found it always stand up and follow any regulation from the government recently. Just when Google is banned, Yahoo! switched to Baidu.com.
  7. Any organization or person who has aquired a license SHALL NOT link to any site without the license. It is another intersting requirement. It seems our good citizen Yahoo! will have trouble, since I don’t think all the site listed in its directory has a license.
  8. No web site will pass the annual review when: 1. it is infected by virus for many times with bad results, or 2. it is hacked for many times, 6. it links to any ICP without an ICP license. It seems no web site in the world can pass the annual review unless it has only one required logo.

After carefully reviewed the regulation, I found myself hopeless to get a license. Later, I decide to have a try, even though my site didn’t meet any of the requirements.

The final call – no money, no registration

When I call SHCA to ask for procedures to get a license, the operator told me to download the Word documents from their web site first. It is very cool the government is going electronic. Good job.

Later, she told me that I need to mail it to SHCA. Fax, email or another other method is not accepted. OK. I will send it out. I decided.

Then, the girl continues: “We will inform you to come to SHCA to hand in the money”.

Money? What money? Do I need to spend money on that? The answer is simple, it is free to registeration, but 500 RMB (60 USD) is required to publish a notice on newspapers. No monay, no registration.

Now it seems I am totally hopeless to get a license. I don’t want to pay the money, it is more expensive than my domain name + my hosting + ……

Most Importantly, Is the License that Imporant?

The Order 292 came into effect on Oct 1, 2000. It claimed that only 60 days time window is given before any unofficial web site is forced to stop operation. After 60 days, nothing happened.

On Nov 25, 2002, SHCA issued an order with strong voice: all sites without the license will be disconnected after Jan 31, 2001. ISP MUSTNOT provide service to these web site. Nothing happened.

On May 22, 2002, SHCA issued a third order that all site who has no ICP license should be shutdown by SHCA before June 10, 2002. After that deadline, nothing happened.

Actaully, I am very confused when I am facing this embarrasing situation. I am reviewing an Order that is impossible for me to follow. I guess 99% of personal web site cannot reach the requirements and not all business-oriented site can reach it. The order has some problem in itself.

To be or not to be, it is a question

Pardon me if I am too serious on the regulations. I am analysising it in a very interesting manner. If I did take the regulations seriously, I may have three choices:

1. Shutdown the web site immediately.

– or –

2. Do not use a domain. Register a free space without a domain name. The regulations say, such personal web sites don’t need to file.

– or –

3. Follow the requlations. Here are the steps to do it.

  • Shutdown the site for 60 days
  • Hire a dedicated “Information Security Specialist”
  • Send him to the training
  • Pay for the training so he can get the certiciate (or I quit my job to be a dedicated Security Specialist for my site)
  • Hire two more person who will be responsibile to monitor the comments posted and delete anything the law or the order does not permit. – I have only 1 comments every two or three days.
  • Filling out the form and send it to SHCA.
  • Hand in 500 RMB and wait my site appears in the long list of web site on major newspapers.
  • Get the license, if everything goes smoothly.
  • Remove my link to any page out side China – they don’t have an ICP license yet.
  • Remove my link to all my friends in China. I don’t remember they have a license yet.

After that, my site is legal, it will not have the risk to be shutdown “immediately”. After that, I am already mad.