January 30th, 2010, Verna Yu wrote an interesting article for the South China Morning Post: ‘Upset Net Users Show Their Discontent On Censor’s Website’. Ms Yu wrote that the website of the government’s internet censor in Hunan was attacked by hackers, that were, allegedly unhappy applicants for website approval.
The article explains that in China different levels of communication administrations act as supervisory authorities. For example: Sina.com needed about 10 different licenses from different government authorities for providing their range of internet services.
There is a recent regulation that prohibits to host individually owned websites. Only business licensed or government authorised websites can register domain names in China. The Chinese government said that this measure was taken to rein in the spread of pornography, but some allege the reason is to control the flow of information.
