Chinese authorities clamping down on website registrations
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Chinese government has announced that it will begin requiring business licenses and extensive paperwork in order to register a .cn web domain name.
The crackdown is thought to be a response to recent revelations that the .cn domain is host to the second most malware and botnets of any top-level domain, behind only Cameroon (.cm). China shot up the "most hazardous TLD" rankings this year, while previous contestants for that title like Hong Kong amended many of their mistakes, according to security firm McAfee.
The Register reports that much of Chinese internet traffic is "awash in smut," due to lax domain registration oversight. Additionally, says The Register, three domain name registration services were sanctioned last week in China due to "slack business practices."
According to the Financial Times, China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television recently shuttered several video sharing sites, saying that they contained lewd and copyrighted material. The Financial Times says that this could mean that there is a larger crackdown occurring within China, as the government's censorship has struggled to deal with some types of new online media.
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