Starting March 1, China will ban internet accounts that impersonate people or organizations, and enforce the requirement that people use real names when registering accounts online, its internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), said on Wednesday.
The new regulations are part of efforts to impose real-name registration requirements on internet users and halt the spread of rumors online, the CAC said. Internet companies will have the responsibility to enforce the rules.
On Tuesday, the CAC accused NetEase Inc, a U.S.-listed Chinese web portal, of spreading rumors and pornography. And last month, 133 WeChat accounts were shut down for "distorting history", state media reported.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:24AM
So, does this apply to services outside of China as well, or only those hosted within China on their ISPs?
What about services that don't support or allow Chinese kanji when registering usernames; is it acceptable to romanize the person's name?
Considering those two questions ALSO leads me to ask: what happens when The Other People On The Internet start taking up the names of real Chinese folks to use as their online aliases? I feel like it might be a very inevitable outcome just out of spite and protest, but it's just a guess considering that it was my first thought when I heard about this to begin with.
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