Net users claim double standards
- Source: Global Times
- [02:33 December 29 2009]
- Comments
By Zou Le
The stepped-up effort to weed out improperly registered websites has raised questions about whether the authorities are being unfair to privately-run sites while overlooking those run by governments.
The recent rectification campaign, started in the name of removing pornography on the Web, has triggered the shutting down of thousands of unreg-istered privately-run websites that violates a 2000 regulation.
The Southern Metropolis Daily Monday cited a letter to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) from an Internet user identified as Wang Keli who doubted a double standard.
The writer said eight ministerial-level websites were not subjected to the record-filing system that requires the site owners to show they are properly registered, including the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Heath.
The original regulation issued by the administration of information service in 2000 requires all commercial websites to obtain an ICP (Internet content provider) license and non-commercial ones to have an ICP filing-record from the local communication administration office under the MIIT and place them at the bottom of the websites' home page.
No ICP filing records were found on eight websites and the MIIT's ICP retrieving service was under maintenance Monday. It was not possible to check their records, but in an interview with the Global Times, Zhang Jueying, the person in charge of the Ministry of Education's website, did not deny the fact its site did not have an ICP record.
"All documents have been submitted recently and the process is ongoing; we will post the record as soon as it comes through," Zhang said without giving a further explanation.
It takes about 20 working days for the local communication administration office to issue an ICP record.
The issue raised concerns among private webmasters. Zhang Zhengjun, creator of admin5, a website to facilitate communications between private website owners, told the Global Times Monday that there are problems with the current ICP record management system.
"It is unreasonable to shut down private websites without ICPs while let the official ones operate, the ICP record-filing system needs to be updated and the monitoring needs to be strengthened as well," he said.
There's a speculation that these websites have ICP records but just neglected to post them on their websites. According to the measure, all websites with an ICP record must explicitly indicate the record number on the homepage, otherwise they face a fine of up to 50,000 yuan ($7,320), the newspaper said.
The report said 100,000 private websites have been ordered to close, many of which did not hold an ICP.
