It's been a year and some, so why would I re-dredge the saga of "Sprezzatura" Siegel? Probably because there are folks in this end of the blogging world who didn't catch it the first time around and it's a cautionary tale about getting caught with a sockpuppet.

For those that didn't catch it the first time around Lee Siegel was an editor with the US based political magazine The New Republic. At this point he's most famous in the blogosphere for coining the term "blogofascism" and the Sprezzatura saga.

Here's the Boston Globe on Sprezzatura

Visit the blog now and you will find it purged: In place of Siegel's prose, and the long and generally abusive thread of reader postings that always followed it, is a bleak little notice from TNR editor Franklin Foer. ``After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel's articles and blog under the username `sprezzatura' were produced with Siegel's participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel's blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine."

Here's the New York Times on Lee Siegel as Sprezzatura

Lee Siegel, creator of the Lee Siegel on Culture blog for tnr.com, was suspended indefinitely from the magazine after a reader accused him of using a “sock puppet,” or Internet alias, to attack his critics in the comments section of his blog. An editor’s apology replaced the blog on the Web site, announcing that the blog would no longer be published and noting that The New Republic deeply regretted “misleading” its readers.

Ezra Klein, as one of the primary victims of Sprezzatura/Lee Siegel's attacks, wrote this excellent coda to the whole saga.

I've been a blogger for three-and-a-half years now, and I well know the business end of an angry readership with instant feedback mechanisms. The temptation to create a new persona and rally support for yourself in comments can be almost overwhelming. Almost. But most of us resist the urge, take the lashing and move on. The next day, our skin is a little thicker, our tone a little harder, our arguments a little tighter.

Some people though can't resist the temptation and their computer skills aren't as big as their egos and they leave an evidence trail that confirms their sockpuppetry.

They say that the blogosphere is self-correcting, although you'll seldom find a blog that is self-correcting. It's a sign of an above average blog with an active comments section, where someone in the comments corrects an obvious inaccuracy in a post. Most below average blog communities consist of "me toos" and "dittos", who lap up inaccuracies as great insight. The greater China blogosphere is no different.

On Monday, China Law Blog posted this steaming pile of shit on JFK and a quote on beauty and grace.

I admit to being a sucker for anything JFK, but can anyone even conceivably imagine any of the candidates running for President now, or any President since JFK, saying anything even close to that?

in reference to this quote from President John F Kennedy:

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

Hmmm... Let's start here.

The National Register of Historic Places is the Nation's official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. Authorized under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Register is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect our historic and archeological resources. Properties listed in the Register include districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.

Hmmm... 1966. That would be a President after JFK. Perhaps the same President, who at the urging of the First Lady Ladybird Johnson, pushed through the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. From the signing ceremony:

We have placed a wall of civilization between us and the beauty of our countryside. In our eagerness to expand and improve, we have relegated nature to a weekend role, banishing it from our daily lives. I think we are a poorer nation as a result. I do not choose to preside over the destiny of this country and to hide from view what God has gladly given.

Lots of Presidents have had great speechwriters and JFK had no monopoly on the love of beauty, nature and the environment. Hell, even Richard Milhous Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency via Executive Order to reorganise the US Executive Branch bureaucracy to more effectively protect the US environment, at least until the "Reagan Revolution" types brought in a bunch of Randroids selling the anti-bureaucrat anti-government regulation crap.

As for China and being "afraid of beauty", thankfully some of the commenters at China Law Blog pointed in directions more worthy of exploration: profit motive to build on the cheap and property developer/CCP cadre vanity for White Elephant projects.

ChinaTechNews provides the news on Chinese Blog Service Providers.

The venerable Internet Society of China has formally published the Blog Service Self-Discipline Convention, the first of its kind in China which has already been endorsed by over a dozen blog service providers including people.com.cn, Sina.com, Sohu.com, Netease.com, Tencent.com and Qianlong.com.

ISC released the Convention in May to solicit opinions. The final draft now comprises 19 clauses, including regulations on the implementation and management of real name blog mechanisms.

For those reading Chinese, here's the Internet Society of China's news posting with photos. (here's a Google language tools translation)

ChinaTechNews provides the news on Chinese Blog Service Providers.

The venerable Internet Society of China has formally published the Blog Service Self-Discipline Convention, the first of its kind in China which has already been endorsed by over a dozen blog service providers including people.com.cn, Sina.com, Sohu.com, Netease.com, Tencent.com and Qianlong.com.

ISC released the Convention in May to solicit opinions. The final draft now comprises 19 clauses, including regulations on the implementation and management of real name blog mechanisms.

For those reading Chinese, here's the Internet Society of China's news posting with photos. (here's a Google language tools translation)

New information has surfaced on the connection Yahoo! had to the Shi Tao state secrets conviction (via Ms. MacKinnon's RConversation)

The police document, a copy of which recently surfaced on the web site of the US-based Chinese-language web site Boxun.com, is essentially a standardized search warrant making clear that Chinese law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to collect evidence in criminal cases. (The Dui Hua Foundation has produced a full English translation of the document, which it has examined and believes to be authentic.)

Addressed to the Beijing representative office of Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., the April 2004 notice specifies that evidence is being sought in a case of suspected “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” (a state security crime under China’s criminal code) and requests the account registration, login times and corresponding IP addresses, and email content over a two-month period in early 2004 for a specific Yahoo! email account, huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn. Court documents have already revealed that this account information was used as evidence in the trial against Shi.

Perhaps we should go back in time to the beginning and look at ESWN's pro-Yahoo pro-CCP disinformation campaign.

Most judicial warrants appear in a written document in a terse form. I'll make up an example:

"Pursuant to Executive Order #14536 from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Beijing, People's Republic of China, on this 8th day of September in the year 2005, you are requested to provide the IP information for the sender email account haveaniceday@yahoo.com.cn on August 31, 2005 between the hours of 7pm to 11pm to the destination nothavinganicedayatall@sohu.com."

There is usually no other evidence involved, precisely because this is an investigation and there is no reason for the whole wide world to know that so-and-so is the subject of an investigation that may lead nowhere. You will not find the name of the subject nor what he/she may have done.

So where does Roland's firm information about the contents of mainland search warrants come from? Why was he so sure that "you will not find what he/she may have done" would not be found in the Shi Tao case? Why was this uncertainty of the nature of the crime so important to Roland Soong's defense of the CCP and Yahoo! in the Shi Tao case? Was Roland merely acting as a Devil's advocate as he claims in the post or did he cross the line by unequivocally listing the contents of a search warrant, which now surely looks like a lie, in order to bolster his agenda?

I'd heard about this a few days ago {via Rebecca and CDT}, when a client was having their email to their factory in Shenzhen and other partners in China blocked. The tech at their email service provider, a subsidiary of PCCW/Netvigator, blamed it on work with the Great Firewall.

The block was not universal across China, but those email destinations that were blocked {like Tom.com} were completely and utterly blocked. Business email about scheduling containers and product shipment dates were blocked, so it wasn't a matter of unhealthy content.

The fact that the Great Firewall folks have put in place software to scan emails for content at the telecom level is a serious issue. The Reuters article may suggest that the scanning is date and event restricted, but as the internet censorship attempts of the Xiamen municipal government suggest, if the technology is just sitting there to restrict and filter the stream of data flowing to the public, the Chinese government cadre's first inclination is to use the technology. The concept of the technology being deployed but not utilised on a daily basis is like the guy on the street asking to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

When faced with a popular peaceful rebellion against a government-backed environmentally-unfriendly development project, what did the Xiamen government learn? Consult the Financial Times to find out.

“After the opposition [to] the PX project, the [city] government felt that it should have some control over web content,” Mr Tian was reported to have said.

However, local media also quoted an official of the secretive propaganda arm of China’s ruling Communist party as saying there was no link between the draft rules and the PX plant protests.

And I'm the Flying Nun.

Content banned by the draft rules – which range from information judged seditious to any attempt to organise illegal gatherings – closely echoes the vague wording of national internet regulations.

The draft rules also require real name posting for comments and blogs and internet forums. And you'd thought that idea was dead on arrival instead of a zombie lurking to make its comeback.

So the story being discussed at the Peking Duck today is Freedom of Speech on the Chinese Internet. This is a quick link back to Danwei's post on a story about censoring blog comments.

One of the usual pro-CCP trolls at Richard's site went on about Netease censoring comments as being the equivalent of Richard censoring comments. As Richard pointed out, Netease was censoring comments against their desires to avoid possible repercussions. Finally JXie had this to say:

posting or commenting on private web sites has nothing to do with freedom of speech

Despite the best attempts of Americans to make blog owners responsible for the comments posted to their sites, the courts have ruled the comments are the responsibility only of the author of the commenter. The RIAA and MPAA have also pressured the government to create laws forcing web hosts and ISPs providing bandwidth to be responsible for the content that is carried on their servers and across their wires. To the best of my knowledge, such legislation has never passed in the US.

China, though, with its unitary executive-led government has no issues with passing legislation and administrative diktats to deputise ISPs, web hosting companies, blog authors, and almost everyone else on the internet to be responsible for policing content. China Tech News summarised yesterday the new commandments set forth by the Chinese MII.

China's Ministry of Information Industry has rolled out a "Three Who" principle for purifying the Internet environment.

The new principles are succinctly translated as whoever is in charge of it shall be responsible for it; whoever operates it shall be responsible for it; and whoever provides access service to it shall be responsible for it. These forthright principles are a call to all system administrators throughout China to be ever vigilant against the ugly scourge of unclean Internet content, superstitious cult talk, and Chinese porn.

In China, now every private web site has its primary legal responsibility to uphold the CCPs restrictions on freedom of speech.

We'd mentioned some time ago that Google had kept the DNS of google.cn separate from the DNS for the rest of the international domains (including google.hk). At that point I think I suspected that there would be a move of the servers in the future. Well, the time is now according to China Tech News.

According to news posted on Sina.com, Lee disclosed that Google, which is not the top search engine in China, is moving some of its servers from the U.S. to China and would make more plans for launching local products. Lee also said that Google would start services to send map search results to users' mobile phones, free of charge.

Now you wouldn't need to move servers from the US to China for rolling out new products, as you could just build new servers and use new DNS for them. We'll see how quickly route updates get propagated announcing the move to China for Google's .cn properties.

The Busheviks have finally put online the latest FARA search database. FARA = Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Is one of your favourite bloggers being employed by a NY-based PR firm registered in the US as a Foreign Agent of the HK SAR or Chinese government?