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:

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.