According to a recent article in Ars Technica, the Chinese government withdrew a proposal to require all bloggers in China to register their real identities.
The government-regulated Internet Society of China (ISC) said that real-name registration would now only be "encouraged" but not required, according to the Xinhua news agency. . . . The ISC's new code is still in draft, so changes might still be made before it is finalized.
While China has been the subject of some excellent studies concerning the government's use of technical measures to control access to information, including a recent report by the Open Net Initiative, there hasn't been a great deal of focus on the use of law to limit and censor citizen media within China and other countries that actively filter information. If you are aware of countries that have, or are considering, registration requirements for bloggers or other citizen media, please let us know.
In addition, I've been receiving a lot of interest from people within and outside China to include Chinese law in our legal guide and other resources. We will be adding that material to the site as soon as we can.
(Disclosure: The Open Net Initiative, like the CMLP, is a joint project of the Berkman Center.)
