News sites in China are now being required to obtain the true identities of their commenters, likely in an attempt to suppress and deter so-called “subversive” behavior. Previously, commenters had been offered a bit more anonymity where they could either post without registering at all or with much less personal information.

The new policy took effect last month and requires a real name and government issued identification number. This would positively identify every commenter on top of their already traceable IP address.

It appears from news reports that the government has tried to keep its involvement in the change under wraps, working to suppress reports on the matter in the media. It has worked for much of this decade on bringing a “real name” system to the Chinese Internet, and those in China say this is likely just the beginning.

There’s also another reason why the government didn’t want this publicized: it is unpopular and previous attempts have gotten a lot of blowback. China tried in 2006 to implement the policy on blogs, but after prominent bloggers in the country came out against the new policy and the public also overwhelmingly opposed it, the country backed off.

Local officials tried it too: Hangzhou officials wanted a similar policy for all who post on sites in the city earlier this year, however again public criticism killed the government’s plans.

It is certainly disappointing to see China once again working to curtail their citizens rights. The “subversion” tactic is something they use frequently: in most cases it’s an excuse to prevent free speech. Truly, there isn’t much that can be said that could truly disrupt the country.

What they’re paranoid of is the fact that there is a large portion of their population that wants freedom of speech and to be able to speak out. What China’s learning now is that in the digital age, that’s going to be much harder than ever to control.

(Cross posted from TechPolitik)

Apple has confirmed that an employee of its Chinese manufacturing partner Foxconn committed suicide last week. Various online reports say that the staffer, Sun Danyong, was responsible for iPhone prototypes and took his own life after one disappeared. And some stories are saying that Foxconn’s security department may have harshly interrogated or beaten him.

It’s hard to know what to make of this without definitive facts on what happened–the fact that it happened so far away, and that some of the coverage is in another language, doesn’t help clarify things. One story quotes a Foxconn spokesperson as saying “regardless of the reason of Sun’s suicide, it is to some extent a reflection of Foxconn’s internal management deficiencies.” That’s either a misquote or an example of amazing honesty that you’d never hear from an American PR person. But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is right: Apple needs to find out what happened, and needs to be prepared to fire Foxconn if it’s enforcing Apple-related security by assaulting its own employees.

Special pre-Apple WWDC edition:

China mandates Web-censoring software.

It’s official: Pre a hit.

Are there Pre screen problems?

The Pre: $170 of parts.

Opera 9.7 for Windows Mobile.

Epix streams movies in HD.

Panasonic’s new featherweight HD camcorders.

New Walkman may run Android.

Search startups: Wowd and Yebol.

Twitter will certify celebrity accounts.

Google has found itself on the other side of China’s “great firewall’” of Internet censorship. YouTube is presently inaccessible in China, while its foreign minister has assured Reuters that the ruling party is “not afraid of the Internet.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters that he had no knowledge about YouTube being blocked, but Google confirmed to Reuters that the service is unavailable to users in China. The company said that it was working toward a solution, and avoided placing blame on the Chinese government.

The Chinese government has a longstanding practice of filtering Internet traffic by using techniques such as DNS poisoning. Its targets have traditionally included news, religious groups, and anything else that could be construed as critical of its policies, as well as pornography.

According to Reuters, Qin said that Internet regulation was necessary in order to prevent the spread of,”harmful information and for national security.” He also said that China’s 300 million Internet users and 100 million blogs was proof that China’s Internet was “open enough.”

If the government has objected to YouTube’s content, it is likely that Google may cooperate in censoring it, as it does with Google Web search. In any event, here are some YouTube videos that its citizens are missing, with apologies to the ruling party:

Tiananmen Square Protests:

Tibetan Riots:

Protesting Parents of Earthquake Victims Jailed:

Human Rights: Dissidents Placed in Mental Hospitals:

Petitioners Arrested:

Pollution:

Support for Sudanese War Criminals:

Howdy from Beijing, where I’m on a whirlwind of a visit (48 hours!) and just spent the day attending a journalism conference called APSP. I had a good time meeting journalists from China, Japan, Korea, Australia, the UK, and other places, and gave a presentation about the bumpy, fascinating shift from print-first publishing to the Web among U.S. computer magazines over the past decade. (I didn’t plan for it to take place days after PC Magazine stopped being a magazine, but the timing kind of made sense.)

It’s always useful to get a real-world reality check on assumptions you make about the universality of tech products and services. Ristin, my interpreter here, is studying science communications at a Chinese university. She’d never heard of YouTube and was only vaguely familiar with the iPhone–but she loves The Devil Wears Prada.

There’s only one significant hitch with this visit so far: It’s impossible to get to Technologizer from here, let alone post content to it. The site shows up fine on my iPhone, but I can’t get to it on the hotel’s Internet connection–it just times out eventually.

Assuming that the Great Firewall of China is at work here, I don’t think it has anything against me personally. (At least I hope not.) Blogs hosted by WordPress.com, I’ve heard, are all blocked. And indeed, I’ve tried a few others, and they’re refusing to pop up as well. That’s several million blogs, most of which contain nothing that would irk even the most censorious Chinese censor. (Most of the other sites I’ve tried, such as Gmail and Twitter, work without hitches; TIME.com takes forever to load, and I’m not sure if that’s due to a glitch or intentional blocking.)

Um, if I can’t get to Technologizer to post content, how did I post this? I’m using a proxy service, and it looks like it’ll let me post this. If it doesn’t I’ll e-mail this back to one of my cohorts.

Assuming I figure out how to get text on the site, I may post once or twice more before I take off. Tomorrow evening, I return to the Bay Area. There are many things I’ll miss about Beijing, but I’ll be very happy to return to the full-blown Web. And I’ll be happier still when the fine folks in China get it, too–although I suspect some of them have discovered the power of proxy browsing, too…

At the moment, I’m blogging to you from the floor of a departure lounge in Terminal 1 at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. (The area is conveniently equipped with a Samsung “power tree” which lets me plug in my notebook–but the only free plug isn’t located anywhere near a chair. And I’d rather look silly and have power than maintain my dignity and drain battery before getting on a plane.)

In a little over twelve hours, I’ll be in Beijing, where I’m heading to participate in a conference on the world of science and technology journalism, which is evolving at least as fast over there as it is here. I’ll be talking about the massive impact of the Web on tech journalism–which can be a challenge in some ways for sure, but I’m an optimist and so I tend to dwell on its multitude of upsides. (The timing is interesting given that the most financially successful computer magazine that ever was went online-only this week.)

I intend to have fun, meet interesting people, eat interesting food, and do at least a little sightseeing. I also plan to blog over there, the Great Firewall of China permitting. But if I have any trouble, Technologizer will be in the capable stateside hands of Ed Oswald and Dave Worthington. And I’ll be back late on Monday (yup, I’m not spending much more time over there than I’ll devote to getting there and back).

See you soon!

It’s a Friday in August, and there’s not a whole lotta shaking goin’ on in the tech world. So I’m not too sheepish about giving you a T-List that includes almost as much stuff from the 1980s as from 2008.
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