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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Teh Internets / International GoDaddy Sort of Backs Google in China

Posted by Grant Brissey on Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 2:34 PM

GoDaddy’s top lawyer Christine Jones told Congress Wednesday that the new rules were an “attempt to exercise censorship on the subject matter hosted on domain names.”

“We were having to contact Chinese users to ask for their personal information and begrudgingly give it to Chinese authorities,” Jones said. “We decided we didn’t want to become an agent of the Chinese government.”

“We are concerned for the safety of current domain-name holders and about the chilling effect it could have for new registrants,” Jones said.

The new rules Jones is talking about require domain-name holders to register photo IDs and business licenses with Chinese authorities.

At least 72 Chinese citizens are in jail for internet postings, according to Rep. Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) who urged that the government support companies like GoDaddy and Google.

GoDaddy will discontinue selling .cn domain names, but will continue to administer current registrations.

GoDaddy, which handles more than 40 million domain names, also cited China as a hotbed for DDOS attacks, spam and financial fraud.

Comments (3) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Most Favored Nation Status needs to be reviewes and removed.

Posted by The Amazing Jim

on March 24, 2010 at 2:48 PM

A possible upside to corporate interests trumping national governments passing laws (as stipulated by the WTO.): Cases like this, where repressive national policies impact a corporation's bottom line.

Posted by Whoulda Thunk? on March 24, 2010 at 3:00 PM

This only applies to the ".cn" domains. Not to general domain registrations (.com, .org) etc.

Posted by KnowsSomethingAboutTheIntrawebs on March 25, 2010 at 11:26 AM