RConversation

Chinese bloggers react to registration deadline and censorship issues

(Originally posted at Global Voices Online, with a few more personal comments added here.)

Laohumiao (老虎庙) at 24HoursOnline describes his frustrating efforts to figure out whether and how he should register, given that his blog is hosted on Blogbus, which is registered as his blog's host domain. (Laohumiao's blog is thus a subdomain, at http://24hour.blogbus.com.) According to my recent interview with Isaac Mao, who is an investor in Blogbus, Laohumiao doesn't need to register because the blog hosting service is registered and is also required to comply with government filtering and censorship requirements anyway. (So in other words, if the government asks Blogbus to take down Laohumiao's blog, Blobus must comply.)

But Laohumiao says that when he made inquiries with the relevant departments in the Shanghai city government and the Ministry of Information Industry, which issued the registration requirements and which is administering the applications, he got a range of contradictory answers. At the end he was told by one young woman he reached on the phone at the MII in Beijing that blog hosting services as well as all their sub-blogs must ALL register. Then he called the person who runs the Shanghai office in charge of registering Shanghai-based sites. The person said: "信产部热线是怎么搞的？为什么这样解释呢？我要去电话，子域名登什么记呀！" (Loose translation since the colloquialisms don't translate: "What's the deal with the MII? Why are they giving that explanation? I'm going to call them. Sub-domains don't have to register!")

Gotta love Chinese bureaucratic disconnects. I've heard from some Chinese bloggers who hope to slip through the cracks of bureaucratic confusion.

As we pointed out in Friday's Global Voices roundup, Wang Jianshuo has applied for a registration number for his blog, but is still awaiting a response from the authorities.

For what it's worth, when surfing Chinese blogs over the past week, I've been running across a lot of blogs with registration numbers on them.

Blogging in China is certainly not dead. In fact, according to this report, the blog hosting company BlogChina plans to list on the Nasdaq.

In response to my questions to Chinese bloggers about how internet filtering affects them and other Chinese internet users, I got a variety of answers.

People guess that somewhere between 1-5% of Chinese internet users know how to use proxies. Some think that those who know how to use them are likely to do so, while others think that even those who know how to use proxies don't bother very much because it's such a nuisance and time-consuming.

At CNblog, calon points out that the real problem has less to do with people's ability to access information; the bigger issue is their ability to share the filtered information with other people.

MadeinJune points us to a  PDF paper written in Chinese on "China's superficial online democracy". I haven't read the whole thing yet but it sounds like a great translation project for somebody to take on. 

There is a good comment on the importance of bulletin boards and how censorship impacts them.

Williamlong, who has run websites himself, says that when a site's IP address is blocked in China it loses 99% of its traffic and when its domain name is filtered it loses 100% of its traffic.

Ken says that when a site gets blocked that can often create buzz and interest about the site, causing people to learn how to use proxies. But he also thinks that government filtering policies do result in an information imbalance.

Blogger ZhiZhaiTianKong (止斋天空) (blog legally registered in Jiangsu) says my questions are well meaning but show condescension and lack of understanding of the Chinese people. He recommends I should have more contact with people who live in China. He says "we can't and don't need to access all information" and he doesn't feel that he is prevented from saying what he wants.
(I guess the fact that I lived for more than 11 years in China total, spent 2 of those years in a Beijing primary school, and 9 of them working as a journalist, dated a Chinese national for a long time and maintain close friendships with Chinese friends does not count as sufficient "contact with people who live in China." Oh well. Can't win.)

Joi Ito's blog-block

When we die, what would you rather have on your tombstone: "He was a great blogger" or "He was a great person"?  When you're ninety-plus and bed-ridden looking back at your life would you rather say: "dang, I've had an interesting life" or "dang, I had a great blog!"  Maybe if we're lucky we can "have it all," but I for one know where my priorities lie.

Joi Ito is worried he's lost his blogging edge, or is becoming boring, that he receives a lot of criticism about his blog, and that he wrestles with blog-block. He asked his readers how to deal with this, and got a lot of advice and reaction.

Joi may or may not know this, but he was the initial catalyst that led to a chain reaction of events and encounters with people, which ultimately resulted in my decision to leave CNN for the blogosphere. (Not that I really know what I'm doing now, but I'm one heck of a lot more fulfilled and happy than I was before.)

I just posted my own comment on the long discussion thread which has largely become about whether he should care what anybody else thinks about his blog. The general consensus is that he shouldn't. As I said to Joi: "Unfortunately, the annoying people out there are not very forgiving or empathetic about the fact that you are a human being - or that any blogger other than themselves is a human being with feelings. Ignore them."  But like David Weinberger I also agree that the shift in his blog probably reflects a shift in his life.

I am not the most prolific blogger myself. This is for many reasons. One reason is that I don't think I should waste time and energy commenting on issues about which I have no expertise or first-hand knowledge and have nothing meaningful or substantive to add. I feel like I've got better things to do than spend time linking to stuff that everybody and their dog is linking to anyway. (Which is why, for example, I did not get involved with the Newsweek discussion.)

Another reason is that if you're going to spend time out there learning new stuff, meeting new people, and having new experiences (plus train for a marathon, get enough sleep, and have a social life), you're not going to have as much time to blog as you would otherwise. It's a tradeoff. If you ask me to choose between having an interesting blog and an interesting life, there's no contest. If I get less traffic as a result and never become an A-lister or become able to make Blogads money, so be it.

Plus, lately I've been spending a lot of time on the Global Voices project, some of which involves blogging on the GV blog, but also involves working on the aggregator and networking with people both electronically and in person. That's a priority for me.

As I said to Joi, not all good bloggers are good people, and I think he's a good person. That's way more important. At the end of the day, I'll follow his blog no matter what he writes - or how often - because I like and admire him. And I'm thankful that he exists because otherwise my life might be very different.

Ejovi's American Voices idea

Ejovi Nuwere is ruminating about an American Voices project, modeled after Global Voices (which is still very much an experimental work-in-progress). The idea:

American Voices 

The primary mission of American Voices is twofold: 1) To call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens throughout America by linking to text, audio and video blogs and other forms of grassroots citizens media being produced by people living in America. 2) To facilitate the emergence of ethnic leaders of the digital era and provide a means of mentorship for minorities in America.

 At a time when minorities in America increasingly look towards the Internet and technology for answers now more then ever a resource that connects minority leaders in technology with aspiring youth and adults is necessary. Who are the digital voices for Philippine Americans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans in our country? What are these groups saying and who’s listening? American Voices will function as a clearing house of Bloggers and Internet visionaries that will act as pseudo voices for their respective ethnic communities. By utilizing a mix of open source blog and Wiki software it will be a community built by its community.

I hope this gains traction. I definitely intend to share ideas with him on what technologies and techniques seem to work when it comes to promoting and encouraging the emergence of bridge bloggers and blogospheres. Drop by his blog and let him know what you think... and whether you'd like to help.

Things I didn't have time for: meal, music, & et cetera

I could have used another week to explore Vietnam, but I’ve got a bunch of stuff going on back in Cambridge this coming week and unfortunately couldn’t stay longer.

I went down to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City - but all the locals seem to have reverted to calling it Saigon) on Thursday to see the Harvard-affiliated Fulbright program offering courses in economics and law to mid-career Vietnamese professionals.  My original plan was to stay in Saigon until Friday evening, so I could have lunch with freelance journalist and food-blogger Graham Holliday of Noodle Pie.   Unfortunately, I ended up having to go back to Hanoi early Friday morning because a meeting I had been trying to arrange came through at the last minute for Friday afternoon. Later that day Graham blogged about the great noodles I missed, and succeeded in making me feel really really sorry I had failed to meet him. Oh well. Hopefully he’ll still be in Saigon next time I go. (Photos by Graham Holiday from his NoodlePie blog.)

Friday was definitely one of those days that you wish had been twice as long. On my way back into Hanoi from the airport I ended up sharing a taxi with Duc Huy, who turns out to be a well known Vietnamese American musician. He was performing in a local Hanoi club that evening and invited me to come. I had to meet up with some people for dinner that evening, however, and convinced them to come with me to the club, but we showed up a bit late and I think he may already have performed. But I'm not entirely sure. We sat and watched a Vietnamese pop show for a while, which was interesting. The place was packed with fashionably dressed and coiffed Vietnamese 20–somethings out on the make. These kids are part of the post-war baby boom generation who seem to have no interest in ideology and little interest in history - and look like the same fashionable young clubbers you see from Bangkok to Taipei to Seoul. (Unfortunately cameras weren’t allowed inside.) We saw several acts: one Vietnamese hip-hop performance followed by a series of romantic rock ballads sung by beautiful girls and stylish guys. Couldn't understand a word, of course, but it was interesting to watch the action in the club, where the 20-year-old hormone levels were rather high to put it mildly. A rather cute Vietnamese guy who spoke fluent German but no English tried to pick me up, but we had no common language. Then my friends got bored with the show and dragged me off, so I didn’t have a chance to see if Duc Huy had actually performed yet or not, or find somebody to interpret…

Another person I would have liked to meet was blogger Geordie of OurManinHanoi, who works for an Australian charity, KOTO, which helps Vietnamese street kids.  Oh well.  Too much to do, too little time.  Geordie will be happy to know, however, that I did managed to eat at KOTO’s restaurant before heading to the airport on Saturday.

More later with an attempt at some broader observations about Vietnam.
(Technorati tag: vietnam)

Talking blogs at Vietnamnet

This is a picture of me being interviewed live on the internet by Tuan Anh Nguyen, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Vietnamnet, an online news, information, and entertainment company. They also have an English site. Tuan is responsible for bringing the internet to Vietnam in 1995 when he started an "unofficial" internet service - a full two years before the internet was declared legal by the Vietnamese government. After creating this fait accompli he went on to found VASC Software and Media Company, Vietnamnet's state-owned parent company which is also an internet service provider, software company, etc.  Interestingly, he says that Vietnamnet doesn't make money from its PC-based web services. They make most of their money from wireless mobile applications and information services - ring tones, screensavers, information on demand, sports scores and news updates. Vietnamnet has also expanded into cable TV.

Tuan invited me to speak to his staff (average age 29) about my experiences working in Asia as a CNN correspondent, why I left CNN, and my current work on participatory media and weblogs, including the Global Voices project. Most people here haven't heard of blogs. People's mouths were hanging open when I showed them how easy it is for anybody to create a blog for free on services like blogger or blogsome.

Given that Vietnam isn't covered much by the Western media these days, Tuan hopes that Vietnamese bloggers writing in English will be able to help outsiders understand Vietnam better. Tuan is also thinking about starting a Vietnamese language blog-hosting service. He sees blogs as the next step in Vietnam's participatory media evolution.   As I wrote yesterday, Vietnamnet and some other online news sites in this country already have online forums and publish articles written by readers. The next step could be the development of blogging communities attached to news sites, enabling the professional reporters to get a better idea their audience's interests, passions and opinions by reading their blogs.

Given the political situation here, there are lots of un-touchable subjects that we can assume will remain un-touchable. But even a controlled blogosphere would do much to increase public participation in media, and would likely boost responsiveness of professional media to the interests and needs of their audiences. That would certainly be a good thing.

It will be very interesting to see how this all develops.

vietnam

Final "BloJoCred" report posted

I've posted the final, revised version of my report summarizing the Jan 21-22 Blogging Journalism & Credibility conference.

Full MP3 audio and full transcripts are posted for those who want to dig deeper.

The Nation has also published a transcript excerpt.

Netaloid's anti-spam petition

Typepad managed to keep most spam out, but I've been struggling to keep comment and trackback spam out of my WordPress and Movable Type blogs.  Trackback spam is especially evil.

Netaloid has a petition calling on the Interactive Gaming Council to stop spam from online gambling sites. The IGC says it's against spam. According to the petition: "one individual enterprise is responsible for 80% or more of the spam we are receiving daily." In asking bloggers to sign the petition, Netaloid writes:

Netaloid concludes that the online casino operators and their umbrella association are likely to take the matter of the Poker Spamster more seriously if presented with a petition from, hopefully, numours blog owners who’ve been affected by this person/persons over the past few weeks or months.

Check it out and sign if you agree.

Standing up to the bullies

Attorney Ronald Coleman, general counsel for the Media Bloggers' Association, has written a most excellent letter to the Tulsa World after it threatened blogger Michael Bates for linking to its content and quoting small bits from the newspaper from time to time, in what has become the standard blog manner.  My favorite paragraph of the letter:

Your organization's attempt to intimidate a small media competitor and a critic with the threat of legal action over his free speech is ironic, but it is unfortunately not unique. The Media Bloggers Association Legal Defense Project was formed expressly for the purpose of providing legal advice and counsel, and if necessary to assist in securing local counsel, for webloggers and others whose freedom of expression is threatened by established institutions who act as if the purpose of the First Amendment were to protect a sort of media monopoly. It is not.

Applause.

Nightline scooped by bloggers

Nightline showed up at our Berkman Thursday night bloggers meeting and shot most of our discussion. It's unclear when their story will air, but Steve Garfield has beaten them to it with a wonderfully edited video-blog. An MP3 of the whole meeting has also been posted, plus an assortment of accounts that can be found in the Berkman-Thursdays del.icio.us feed.

February 22: Free Mojtaba & Arash Day

The Committee to Protect Bloggers has declared February 22nd as Free Mojtaba and Arash Day. The commitee asks that bloggers dedicate their blog to the release of Iranian bloggers Motjaba Saminejad and Arash Sigarchi.

Reporters Without Borders points out the irony that Iran, which is now "undergoing the Middle East's biggest-ever crackdown on online free expression," is also a participant in this week's U.N. preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will be held in Tunis later this year.  RWB rightly asks: "How can Iranian officials parade at a UN summit on the Internet at the same time as they are jailing bloggers?"  Good question.

Time for the blogosphere to start caring about global internet governance before thuggish governments try to take it over under U.N. cover.