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Comments: 115 + - Games: China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games on Saturday July 31, @07:50PM
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oxide7 writes "Starting from August 1, Chinese Internet users will have to register using their real names for playing online games, China Daily reported on Saturday. The regulation, issued by the Ministry of Culture on June 22, is said to be part of a nationwide campaign to improve management of the virtual gaming industry and protect minors from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games."
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Protect people from unwholesome content? (Score:5, Insightful)
Such as democracy and human rights?
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The right to privacy in video games?
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There are no doub
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About the pedos in online games, Toontown (a MMO for kids) has a nice system: you can't write anything you want, you can just use a very large set of predefined phrases. Unless you know someone IRL, then you can get a code and tell them over phone or IM, and after introducing the code, chat is free between the two.
In theory, it fixes the problem, although it's probably less fun not to be able to talk freely.
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oh shut up. Freedom is for the wealthy elite, and slavery is for the rest.
What the wealthy elite have is not freedom, but license. What they own also owns them, and with that comes the fear of loss and the obsessive desire to possess and control more and more. They are as far from free as one can get. If you see them as they truly are then you cannot possibly envy them.
Real freedom is not political freedom. It's an inner freedom that does not depend on circumstances and events, only on how one faces them. It is not something that others could grant or take away.
Did you
Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Protect people from unwholesome content? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in America any degree of that we have enjoyed came about because of men who had so much inner freedom that they had the guts to put their lives on the line and start a revolutionary war in order to build a society around any kind of mundane freedom you have enumerated. They were willing to be considered something like terrorists or treasonous, to fight in war, and also to defy the apathy of 1/3 of their population and the opposition of another 1/3 of their population at that time.
You understand that dead men don't have any of the political or monetary freedoms you mention? So why would some folks who were already rather well-to-do value something more than their own lives? That's simple. They had inner freedom and it determined how they faced the events and circumstances of the world around them. You cannot subjugate a truly free people. You can only subjugate cowards who fear the threat of force more than they fear a meaningless existence because such people have no inner freedom. That's why they are so compatible with a meaningless existence (like climbing the corporate ladder as a major focus of life) even though many of them sense that there is something wrong with it.
Admittedly the Founding Fathers are a cliche, mundane, yet concrete illustration of people who understood what I am talking about. Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Ghandi are more examples, for both were imprisoned yet neither was afraid of prison or deterred by it from doing what they knew to be right. Someone concerned about political freedom exclusively would most certainly want to avoid state-imposed incarceration.
I am having to resort to this sort of explanation only because you failed to see one thing: I am not arguing against political freedom. I said only that it wasn't what I was referring to. You didn't bother, but had you asked me about political freedom I would say that its only stable form would have to come from a society that values real inner freedom. In other words, political freedom should follow and have its roots in real freedom. If it doesn't, then you get its roller-coaster form where governments start out smaller and freer and eventually become huge and authoritarian until collapsing and being replaced by something else, ad infinitum. That's why a high degree of political freedom has been so fleeting throughout history. At any rate, they are not opposed. They are related.
I knew when I wrote the previous post that some people would scoff at it. Without a doubt, it can be a hard notion to seriously consider. On that I think we can find some agreement. Where we differ is on the question of whether my writing was truly faulty, or whether the inability to really understand it is a fault in the reader.
Parent
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I'm not saying you should stop talking. Only that you should stop trying to convert most of this crowd, most of whom wouldn't recognize a real principle even AFTER someone shot at them over it.
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Don't waste your time. Rather than preaching to the choir, you're preaching to the fossilized-brained who will never get your point. I'm not saying you should stop talking. Only that you should stop trying to convert most of this crowd, most of whom wouldn't recognize a real principle even AFTER someone shot at them over it.
If I needed to convert anyone, requires his agreement or disagreement, or needed any other result, that would be an unhealthy attachment to outcome. Then whether I enjoy having written my posts depends on what the other guy says and does. This amounts to a ceding of control over my inner life to random strangers. It would be living for externals and not out of an inner understanding. Indeed, after talking of real inner freedom, such an unhealthy attachment would make me a hypocrite.
Unfortunately such
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And I don't idolize Thoreau, though I do at least give him points for putting his money and himself where his mouth was: "Why aren't YOU in here with me?"
But I disagree on what I believe to be one essential point. I think if you're not willing to stand up and take at least some kind of action, then you are as much a sheep as anyone else, no matter how you justify it to yourself
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The unfortunate fact, akin to the saying that "One bad apple spoils the bunch.", is that at this moment in American history, a tiny minority of truly greedy and truly malicious individuals controls Americ
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Presidents don't get vacations as we think of them. Every day of their "vacation" includes meetings, updates, decisions, calls, and diplomatic messages. The only thing "vacation" means for the president is that he has a little more time to himself that day, insofar as a president can have something like that at all.
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Maybe they should, maybe that's why they make so many bad decisions.
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It's the nature of the job, especially as POTUS. The US simply has too much going on, too much to worry about, to be able to do something like that, and it's that way even in peacetime. It's a temp job with long hours, little to no time off, and with such stress that everyone who has taken it in the last 30 years has visibly aged in the first year or so, regardless of their age taking office. The best you can do is hide away in a familiar place as Bush 42 did, or regulate the office hours tightly as Reag
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oh shut up. Freedom is for the wealthy elite, and slavery is for the rest.
If only! As as American and hence part of the wealthy elite, that would so rock.
Where are "bigbrother" and "policestate" tags ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is definately not about "privacy" or "security". We all know what is the reason for such law, so it should be tagged appropriately.
It's about finally finding out who the campers in counter-strike are in real life and where they live.
Excellent news (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ladies and gentleman, my opponent has come out in support of policies implemented in polluting, human rights abusing, communist, totalitarian, job-stealing China! Are you going to let him bring that to our shores?"
Re:Excellent news (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what the Australians thought.
Parent
Re:Excellent news (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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And in about a week we'll see another iteration of the same Slashdot story: "Australia: Ruling Party '100% Committed' to Net Filter."
Eventually it will happen, or not happen... but the real problem is that, because of the indifference of Australian voters, it's possible at all.
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The "Internet kill switch" is a misguided idea, but it's not about filtering obscene and security-related information. The idea is to implement some kind of "shield" to defend against an attack by outside entities (well let's be honest, an attack sponsored by the Chinese government). The point is basically shutting off router ports which connect the US to (I presume) the rest of the world and put this power in the hands of the president.
It's quite a silly idea considering the Chinese government likely alr
Well, how is that going to work? (Score:4, Funny)
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Overblown, maybe? (Score:2, Interesting)
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What makes you think they've been killing them? They're more available than ever. A few years ago, the easiest way to get them was to go to a local mall to buy them. Now, I can go to the grocery store and get pre-paid Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, and I think Discover, not to mention gift cards for dozens of stores, and some of those gift cards allow me to purchase pre-paid Visa cards. It's a horrible return on investment, but it makes it harder to follow the trail.
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Where are you that you can do these things? And is your geographic location governed by the same Government [informationweek.com] the parent poster noted?
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Sykopomp's post referenced the US, suggesting that tracking users via credit cards is already done. The AC posted that anonymous cards can be purchased in a manner strongly suggestive that he was countering the identification in the US. My reply was based on that.
With that, I am in the US (California to be more specific), and the cards are all over.
Stalking has never been easier (Score:4, Insightful)
If you steal my loot in a raid I'll know your real name, and with a bit more googling everything there is to know about you:
Many of the vast unwashed masses on the net as spectacularly naive about their privacy. Take Gabrielle Romney, ex-lover of a right-wing political party figure in Australia. She wrote a letter to "The Age" bawling that they published her photo: "I am dismayed by the prominent publication of my photograph accompanying the article. To be targeted by a stalker is invasive, intimidating, and terrifying. As a private individual, one of the most debilitating aspects is the constant and unwelcome intrusion into one's life. Publishing my photograph has been a further violation of my privacy and dignity."
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/man-sent-more-than-100-sometimes-offensive-messages-to-exlover-20100726-10slv.html [theage.com.au]
Fair enough, but type her name into "Google" and you'll find yourself staring at her mug in facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Gabrielle-Romney/528810959 [facebook.com]
Let me repeat what she said: "As a private individual, one of the most debilitating aspects is the constant and unwelcome intrusion into one's life."
If you're on Facebook, you're not a private individual.
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If you steal my loot in a raid I'll know your real name, and with a bit more googling everything there is to know about you:
This is actually a good thing in some cases. Now being a dick on the Internet will carry consequences with it. The "Stab someone with a fork over the Internet" device is one step closer.
On the other hand, voicing your true opinions can also be dangerous so I'm not sure if the gain outweighs the drawbacks.
Public vs Private (Score:2, Interesting)
We are talking about registering for an online game. I see this as a debate of public vs private space, and unfortunately I see many people trying to impose their rights to privacy in public arenas.
For example, if you are walking down the street and a photographer snaps your photo, do you really have a right to expect privacy? When you walk into a store to buy your gimp outfit, do you really expect the cashier to not see your goods as you buy it or your name when you pass them the credit card?
Why are they
FYI (Score:2, Interesting)
And some service providers don't really care about all this real name shit - they just ask for a resident ID in valid format and don't bother to check whether it is associated with the name you provided. There are tools readily available [ip138.com] for creation of fake IDs.
why not ? (Score:2)
I have the same rule for my own online game (no link or I'd be accused of slashvertisement). It's "my home", so to speak, I don't charge for it, but I expect my guests to follow some basic rules of courtesy and one of them is that you give me your actual, real, full name as I give you mine (on the site).
Nothing forces you to, you can play somewhere else if you don't like the rules in my "home". Which is where the chinese approach of making it mandatory for everything becomes a bit difficult. What if I would
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I should have been more clear, my mistake.
I require players to give their real name to me. It remains their choice if they want it published in the player list or not. Privacy is still an important consideration.
kinda funny though if you think about it (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Where's the petition? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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It's funny you mention that. Recently, the central government has had to listen to the people. A local official either was or will soon be executed for corruption because of complaints -- even demonstrations! -- on the part of the people in his district. He is not the first, either.
They certainly won't respond as kindly to another attempt to overthrow the government, but they do sometimes have to pay attention to the people's complaints.
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of the children, it's China we're talking about here, it's not like it's some country that would steer online information in their own favor.
Like the USA, it's also not a country that would trust parents to decide what is appropriate for their children, supervise them as needed, and gradually equip them to deal with the online world just as they do for the offline world. No, for that parents are thoroughly inadequate. What you need is a large, faceless, unaccountable state bureaucracy with lots of political power. Then and only then are the children safe. Taking over the role of all parents is surely better than dealing on a case-by-case bas
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"The problem with trying to child-proof the world, is that it makes people neglect the far more important task of world-proofing the child." -- Hugh Daniel
Thank you, madam. I had this one in my quotes file but it was unattributed. That's been fixed now.
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Yes, because political activists are going to be kept down and freedom of speech will be DOOOMED if I can't grief in L4D and get away with it!
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In South Korea the real-name rule was instituted to stop people using their anonymity to harm others through defamataion. The worst case scenario is that the aggrieved party, ie. the defamees, can bring legal suits against malicious rumour mongering. In other words it serves to empower victims, and no more than that.
To contrast, what's the worst thing that can happen to someone in China? Unfortunately china
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But the name on the card need not be a person's "real name". The whole issue of names is far from trivial. Especially when it comes to putting them into computer systems.