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GoDaddy.com plans to stop registering domain names in China
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GoDaddy.com plans to stop registering domain names in China
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 24, 2010; 1:46 PM
[link to www.washingtonpost.com]
GoDaddy.com Inc., the world's largest domain name registration company, plans to tell lawmakers Wednesday that it will cease registering Web sites in China in response to intrusive new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves.
The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of Web site content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also believes the rules will have a "chilling effect" on new domain name registrations.
GoDaddy's move follows Google's announcement Monday that it will no longer censor search results on its site in China. Analysts and human rights advocates have warned that China's insistence on censorship and control over information is becoming a serious barrier to trade.
"GoDaddy is the first company to publicly follow Google's example in responding to the Chinese government's censorship of the Internet by partially retreating from the Chinese market," Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said in a statement. "Google fired a shot heard 'round the world, and now a second American company has answered the call to defend the rights of the Chinese people."
Smith has sponsored a bill that would make it a crime for U.S. companies to share personal user information with "Internet-restricting" countries.
In December, China began to enforce a new policy that required any registrant of a new .cn domain name to provide a color head shot and other business identification, including a Chinese business registration number and physical signed registration forms. That data was to be forwarded to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. Most domain name registries require only name, address, telephone number and e-mail address.
"We were immediately concerned about the motives behind the increased level of registrant verification being required," Christine N. Jones, general counsel of the Go Daddy Group Inc., plans to tell lawmakers Wednesday afternoon, according to a copy of her written testimony to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "The intent of the procedures appeared, to us, to be based on a desire by the Chinese authorities to exercise increased control over the subject matter of domain name registrations by Chinese nationals."
GoDaddy has been registering domain names since 2000 and now has more than 40 million domain names under management, Jones said in the testimony. "This is the first time a registry has asked us to retroactively obtain additional verification and documentation of individuals who have registered a domain name through our company," she said.
Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said China's new rules are yet another example in which the Beijing government has sought to tighten its censorship policies and undermine the ability of U.S. companies to operate freely.
"The underlying intent is if you're engaging in political speech, we want to know who's engaging in it and what Web site is behind it," Ganesan said. "This is a way the Chinese government can send a chilling message to people that they shouldn't speak freely online. It's forcing us companies to be both the censor and the spy on behalf of the Chinese government."
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