Following the last post on the 10 websites that lead you understanding Cinternet, I’d like to share more specific observations to two of them. One is Douban.com , a “2.0” site but unique from other web 2.0 sites in English web sphere, and the other is Tianya.cn, a huge BBS that is also different from the western style of discussion groups. From them, one may find the law (I mean the living law, not definitely the legislations) has changed the code. 

1. Douban.com

Douban.com is a unique website that I can not find the counterpart in the English web sphere. It has launched a English site but now suspended.

Named after a spice used in Szechuan cooking, Douban allows Chinese consumers to share, tag and browse through one another’s collection of books, music, and movies. Douban has very good infrastructure which provide the aggregation of the users every act (tag a book after read it or just “want to read”, write a review, rank a movie … all the user’s acts can be aggregated and published to his/her friends’ first page. and each act can be set hidden from the public). According to a user’s acts, douban “guesses” the new books, movies and musics for the user, and recommend the user to other users. Douban released a “Douban 9” channel, which is a social aggregator that the users may use it as an RSS reader, but more openly to the others. Recently, douban launched a “Douban Listen” (douban.fm) channel, which is similiar to Pandora.com.

The contents in Douban are mostly user generated. However Douban is distinct from Youtube: only comments to the items (books, movies and music albums) are posted on the website. In each item’s page, Douban provides the links to the online bookstores (including Amzon’s Chinese site). The prices are easily compared in an item’s page.

Douban’s biggest distinction from the SNS (like facebook) is: it is not a real-name network. Therefore, it is mainly not for social  and personal networking, but for public expression. Besides the review tab in each item’s pages (which are now becoming the most useful resource for Chinese young people’s when they are about to watch a movie or buy a book), users can also establish groups and invite others join. There are thousands of groups and thousands of entries are posted every day. Because the groups are established by the users, one may see many interesting ones. Take the keyword of “man” as an example, there are “man-should-cook” group, “we-love-very-old-man” group, “not-answering-phone-man-should-die” group and more than 370 other ones. Because most users are in anonymous, discussions are very interest-oriented and open.

If there were no censorship, Douban might be a good platform to form a classic “public sphere”. However, douban enforces a very strict self-censorship policy. Any thread that may “threat the operation of douban in China” will be hidden (only the author can read). The groups include too much “in-harmonious” topics will be closed by douban’s staff – or be hidden and only the members of the group may read those threads. It is obvious that Douban’s operator does not want this websited be involved into any political debate. 

2. Tianya.cn

Tianya (means skyline) is the most popular and most crowded online forum in China. And as for the number of the threads and the accounts, maybe in the world. It’s traffic is ranked No. 90 in the world (Alexa). It is the symbol of the prosperous BBS culture in China

Two mechanisms keep Tianya being survival and flourishing:

One is that it has a huge group of volunteer forum-board masters who are in charge of deleting/hiding the defamatory, dissenting and – most specially – inappropriate posts (means the threads should not be posted in specific forum board, like an essay on travel is posted to a forum boad on the gourmandism). Besides, the board masters also have the right to deny some ID’s posting, the right to make a post highlighted, etc. The board masters are mostly the famous IDs (in many cases most of users don’t know who the people is in real world), they are famous and reliable only because of their reputation established in Tianya.

The other is the un-deletable and un-editable mechanism. No one can delete/edit his/her own posts at the forum boards, even a board master can only manage the posts at his/her board – as a user in other boards, he can do nothing but posting new threads as a normal user if users think a board master is not appropriate, they may leave the complaint at the manage board – and if those complaints are reasonable, the higher webmaster may decide to suspend the board master’s authority – just like the mechanism of “petition” in China’s real life.

In Tianya, no one can establish a separate forum/group. All the forums are set by the general webmaster. Users may apply for establishing a new board by posting threads to the “Manage board”, but only the website can make a new board. The ecology of Tianya can be described a pyramid one.

Short conclusion:

Neutrally speaking, the different law in various jurisdiction diversified the digital code, as well as the Internet. When a society is digitized, the Internet is also formulized by the law in such society. “Cinternet” is not only a concept of physical “walled part” of the Internet”, but may be another “sphere” of the Internet, which isolated from other spheres mentally, systematically, and even institutionally – It’s not absolutely a bad thing, or a good one. It may be just an existence.

As Google’s abrupt leaving from China, the splitting of the Internet seems faster and faster. I think the following ten websites can lead observers understanding the Chinese Internet. All of them survived China’s censorship, and are developing rapidly. Compare to the websites that has been blocked (that I listed on Wednesday here), they are the real main stream for the over 400 million Chinese netizens.

First of all, They are all in Chinese, and seldom provide multi-language service. This might be the obstacle for the English speaking researchers, but it can also be regarded as the first typical character of Chinese website – not because of the censorship, but because of the population. The formation of a separate “Sub-internet” needs a big enough population.

There are many great blogs and websites reporting Chinese Internet (Cinternet hereinafter), such as Danwei, Shanghainist, Gokunming, etc. But if one wants to understand the trend of Cinternet, the following websites, as well as a little Chinese, plus some translation tools are necessary.

In my view, when we are talking about the Cinternet, the targets should be the “plain” websites, not those pioneer ones. Each of the following websites is crowded with millions of users, and all of them survived the censorship and/or self-censorship. The core/column of the Cinternet should be based on them but not those obviously unsurvivable ones. For example, a research to Chinese bloggers should focus on not only the independent or even blocked bloggers, but also the mainstream in those highly controlled blog services.

1. http://www.QQ.com (Alexa China 2; world 11; on Jan 15th 2010, the same below)
The top website in China according to Alexa in Jan. 2010. And it has almost all kinds of web application including blog (blog.qq.com), game (qqgame.qq.com), news, sns (qzone.qq.com), search engine (soso.com), micro-blog, C2C (www.paipai.com), and most importantly, Instant Message (im.QQ.com). Almost each Chinese netizen has a QQ number. the number of the accounts has exceeded 900 million in 2007, and the active users were over 400 millions in 2008. Then they only publish the number of  concurrent online users – this number exceeds 80 millions on Oct. 10th 2009, and exceeded 90 millions two months later.

This is a diagram of the concurrent online users of QQ on 5 December 2009. The communication among them are not cacluated by the Alexa.

2. http://Baidu.com (Alexa China 1; world 8)
Baidu is a search engine service provider. Just like Google, it provides many other services like blog (hi.baidu.com). However, the core of baidu is still the web search. It enforces strict artificial intervention to the search result. However, most of Chinese users still take baidu as their first choice. One of the reasons is: Chinese users are more familiar to Baidu’s way of locating Chinese knowledge.

3. http://www.KaiXin001.com/ (Alexa China: 9; world: 56)
A unique SNS different from facebook style, grow rapidly in last two years. 60 Million users up to December 2009 (15 million active users per day). The aim of 2010 is over 100 million. A competitor of KaiXin001 is RenRen.com (Alexa China: 14; world 93). RenRen is the ealiest SNS in China, and it duplicated Facebook’s mode. However, that approach can not compete kaixin001 on the matters of authenticity and the user stickiness.

4. http://DouBan.com  (Alexa China: 24; world: 178)
The unique website that I cannot find the similiar website in English web sphere. It launched an English version but suspended. Some reported that its accounts exceeded 30 million by the end of Dec. 2009 (the number of account by Sept. 2009 was just 10 million). The founder of this website denied it is a SNS. Douban is the most successful Chinese Web 2.0 website. It is a very typical UGC website that the users generate almost all contents in the website. Without the interfere of the government, douban may be one of the promising websites in the ahead 5 years.

5. http://taobao.com (Alexa China: 5; world: 24)
The famous C2C or B2C E-commerce website, together with alipay.com (the online payment leader in China – Alexa China: 32; world: 267) and alibaba (B2B website – Alexa China: 25; world: 109), consist the giant of the E-commerce in China.

6. http://www.tianya.cn (Alexa China: 13; world: 89)
The most crowded Chinese BBS community in the world. With the traditional form of web forum, this website focuses and enlarge hottest news and topics every day. For those focused threads, it is very easy to have more than 100 thousands replies in one day.

7. http://Xunlei.com (Alexa China: 21; world: 129)
Based on its downloading software (Xunlei), Xunlei become the king of the dowloading in China. It declares only providing copyright-free resources, while since Xunlei software is a searchable, unified format “P2SP” software, one may find many copyright-doubtable resources on it. However, forget the copyright, Xunlei is very efficient and can be one of the successful practicers of the “cloud” concept.

8. http://blog.sina.com.cn (Alexa China:4, world:16, as for sina.com.cn)
Sina has been among the top ten Chinese websites for a decade. It is the traditional portal style. Checking the Internet archive of Sina ten years ago here, you will find that the style of the first page of sina had not changed so much. It is a typical obedient private owned website that follows the orders of the regime. As for the future of the Cinternet, observers are suggested to watch sina’s blog channel and the micro-blog channel (t.sina.com.cn).

9. http://youdao.com (Alexa China:42, world:282)
Youdao is the search engine developed by Netease (163.com – Alexa China:7, world:27). It seems paid more attention to the web 2.0 applications and the relevant page arrangement. It has the personalized first page like iGoogle. Netease has other products like 126.com E-mail service (Alexa China:27, world:195). As an old website rise together with sina and sohu.com (Alexa China:8, world:43), Netease seems more willing to embrace the web 2.0. It is the only one opens the free API for the 3rd developers among the four biggest portal sites (QQ, sina, sohu and 163) in China.

10. http://www.hao123.com (Alexa China:23, world:169)
Hao123 is a simple static 1.0 style html page aggregated links of many websites. For geeks, it is stupid and like an antique, but it always stands at the top 30 websites of China. It is the home page of millions of browsers. It was acquired by Baidu in 2006. Baidu keeps it on the original way, even doesn’t make it more customizable.

These websites including the 2.0 oriented sites (douban, youdao) and very static web 1.0 homepage (hao123). While in my view, the main stream of the Cinternet is unique and can not be categorized with Web 1.0/2.0 . Here are the features that I roughly summarized at the current stage.

(1) Accepting the 2.0 ideas, but making the user generated contents controllable. The latest example is t.sina.com.cn, it is launched in October and now become the top one among the micro-blog (as the matter of users’ number) services.

(2) Complying with Chinese culture – I am not saying censorship/dictatorship, but the culture. A typical example can be the comparision between reren.com and kaixin001.com.

(3) One website provides integrated services, but very few websites provide open API.

(4) IM driven. Other than the E-mail driven culture in English cyberspace, the Cinternet is and will still be an IM driven culture. People contact with QQ numbers everywhere. Besides QQ, Taobao has its IM too, and has made being the hub of all the Taobao’s e-commerce applications; sina, baidu, netease and China-Mobile all provide their IM services, but non of them are inter-communicable.

This is just a simple illustration. There must be more features. Here I am actually discussing the appropriate approach to stuy the Chinese web sphere.

From December 14th to December 20th, 2009, seven new Chinese entries have been posted to the Blawgdog. Here are the brief one-sentence abstracts for the English readers’ reference:

• Top Ten 2009 Copyright News in China
  Chosen by the China Copyright Journal. I added the referral links to those news that had been commented at blawgdog.
• It’s Wrong not because of Burdening the Duty of Carefulness, but because of Providing Joint Liability
  Some Beijing academicians oppose Article 36 of the drafting China’s Tort Law Bill by saying it should not burdens the ISPs the duty of carefulness. I clarified in this essay that the key problem of Article 36 is wrongfully providing a joint liability to the ISPs. 
• Turning Exemption Provisions to the Criterion of Liability
  This article is also about Article 36 of the drafting China’s Tort Law Bill. I noted that, in the legal transplantation in recent years in China, the exemption provisions in foreign legislations are often (intentionally or mistakenly) shifted to be the criteria of liability. For example, Sec. 230 of the CDA in US is an exemption arrangement, while Article 36 is a criterion of liability; another example can be the safe harbour to the ISPs in the DMCA (on the so-called red flag test) was wrongfully transplanted to be a criterion of liability.
• Xinhua News Agency: China will not Resolve the un-recorded Domain Names
  This entry has been translated into English at here.
• I See the Historical Day
  This post mentioned the latest news: the Ministry of Industry and Information is proposing that the foreign enterprises “must register domain names from Chinese registrars if the names are used for business in China. The domain names oversea registered shall not be used in the businesses toward China.” And admitted the state will “supervise the domain names that launches the website oversea, and take measures to control the foreign name registrars”.
• Reprint: Two Articles by Mr Youxi Chen
  Chen is a lawyer, and the vice Chair of the Committee of the Constitutional Law and Human Rights in China Bar Association. He published two articles at his website blaming the newspaper misleading the mass in reporting the news that lawyers are arrested in ChongQin. He argues that the Chinese lawyers are in very hard social environment now.
• China IP Weekly Newsletter
  Writen and edited by Luckie Hong, a co-author of BlawgDog, reporting the latest news in IP Law. This issue includes SNDA Literature (NASDAQ: SNDA’s subcompany) annouced suing Baidu for over one million in infingement of copyright, and the new development of Netac v. Sony, and other 7 latest news.

Seven Chinese posts have been posted to the Blawgdog from December 3rd to December 13th, 2009. Here are the brief one-sentence abstracts for the English readers’ reference:

• A broadcast station = A Karaoke Shop?
  This essay roughly compared the standard of remuneration of using music recordings in the broadcast and TV programs (promulgated by the State Council, and will be enforced since 1 Jan 2010) and the standard of royalty to the Karaoke shops (provided by the state administration of copyright). It seems the former is very low. And it seems the state owned enterprises (all broadcast and TV Stations) always get more institutional benifits than the private enterprises (most Karaoke Shops are of private) in the entertaimet industry.
• Fighting Google Unarmed?
  This article has been translated into English, click here.
• Answer Shizhao: why searching Books will infringe the copyright but searching webpages will not?
  Shizhao is the top cordinator of the Wikipedia Chinese. He asked the question at BlawgDog. As for “why searching books will infringe the copyright”, some of the answers are translated into English at here. As for the webpage searching, I pointed out that actually even (1) searching the webpages; (2) providing the cached pages may infringe the copyright under Chinese copyright law.
• It Is Contrary to the Right Way of the Internet: On Article 36 of the drafting China’s Tort Law
  China is drafting a Bill of Tort Law. In its exposure draft, Art. 36 burdens the ISPs joint liability to all kinds of torts (with a safe harbour of notice -nd-take-down). I strongly opposed this provision in this short comment.
• The Function of the Domain Name Registration Informations: Protect Private Rights but not Aid Social Control.
  The information provided by the registrants for domain name registration are originally functioned as a facilitation of protecting either the rights in trademark or the right of the domain name holders. However, some Chinese administration made the mistake and thought they can be used to aid the social control.
• Academic Paper: The Review and Reflection of the History of China’s Regulations on Domain Names.
  My 2005 paper and had never been published at Blawgdog. I republish it because the new round of  Internet controlling compaign in China is focusing on the domain names. Some of my arguments in the paper are still useful for the current situation.
• Ploughing the way to the Civil Society: the Qualification of Registrating .CN
  China actually had never permit the individuals registering .cn domain names. But the customary law and even the dispute resolution had admitted the right of individual .cn holders. Now the customary law encountered the state law when the government swipe the Internet recently in the name of anti-pornography.