opinion: Why you should buy chinese .COM instead of .CN

[mdw]

blog post from Susan Crawford:

This report from Reporters Without Borders / Chinese Human Rights Defenders (http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Voyage_au...censure_GB.pdf) may be incomplete - and there’s no information from 2007 in it - but it’s worth reading. The report says:

China is the only country in the world to have tens of thousands of cyber-censors and cyber-police. . . Although their activities are a well-kept state secret, this report reveals their impressive ability to purge the Internet of news and information that embarrass[es] the government.

Unlicensed news sites, and licensed news sites publishing independently-gathered information, aren’t allowed.

News is centrally gathered by the government.

Text messages are sent by the government to instruct sites not to cover particular events or to delete articles or comments.

There is a great deal of self-censorship.

The Beijing government bureau that deals with the internet (where control of the internet is at its strictest) divides its orders into three categories — orders (to delete or edit) that have to be implemented within five minutes, orders that have to be implemented within ten minutes, and orders that have to be implemented within thirty minutes.

It goes on and on. Here’s a sample order:

Dear colleagues, regarding the death of a radio presenter while she was at the deputy mayor’s home, do not disseminate any reports, do not send any new articles, withdraw those that have already been posted on the site, and ensure that forums, blogs and messages no longer refer to this case.

Keyword censorship abounds - sites do it themselves. Any words having to do with the Tiananmen Square massacre have been banned. About 400-500 words are banned by sites.

The government has begun blocking RSS feeds, according to this ArsTechnica article (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ss-feeds.html).

The Beijing Olympics are less than a year away. Here’s a blog post from China, thanks to Global Voices Online:

As I’ve come to understand …., things not beneficial to the Olympic Games’ radiant image are all being filtered out. So much in regards to this radiant image that, for example, even restoration to the sports stadiums has been forbidden to report on.
I really, really don’t know what it is the authorities are afraid of, or to what extent they’re afraid. Even our Party and government consistently express willingness to be subject to public scrutiny, so why do the Beijing Olympics have all-encompassing authority?
A modern human society ought to constitute a sophisticated and heterogeneous society, a pluralistic society which accepts various sorts of values.

[Prodigy]

I think you mean the reverse.

From a profitability perspective, it is better to have domains that fit within the regulatory structure than those that go against it.

Unless your Chinese IDNs target all Chinese speakers outside of China.

[touchring]

I thought that with Iraq, such naive concept is already a thing of the past?

Your .cn is at danger when it is worth money - it hasn't reached this point yet btw. The more successful, .cn is, the more risky.

Originally Posted by mdw

blog post from Susan Crawford:

This report from Reporters Without Borders / Chinese Human Rights Defenders (http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/Voyage_au...censure_GB.pdf) may be incomplete - and there’s no information from 2007 in it - but it’s worth reading. The report says:

China is the only country in the world to have tens of thousands of cyber-censors and cyber-police. . . Although their activities are a well-kept state secret, this report reveals their impressive ability to purge the Internet of news and information that embarrass[es] the government.

Unlicensed news sites, and licensed news sites publishing independently-gathered information, aren’t allowed.

[Prodigy]

Originally Posted by touchring

I thought that with Iraq, such naive concept is already a thing of the past?

Your .cn is at danger when it is worth money - it hasn't reached this point yet btw. The more successful, .cn is, the more risky.

True.

But risk versus reward tells me that losing 10K/year for a windfall beyond proportions is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

[Rubber Duck]

If you link to the Verisign report posted earlier to day, Asian IDN is very much dot Com territory.

The big surge is ccTLD IDN is largely Latin based. The Dot De figures of course are a major contributor.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by ChinaStar

True.

But risk versus reward tells me that losing 10K/year for a windfall beyond proportions is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Yup, it's about risk management.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by touchring

Yup, it's about risk management.

Clearly.

There are other ways, however, of spreading risk than paying $40 a year for high risk ccTLDs. I have spread risk by investing in a variety of different languages. As until now I have been getting some renewals at $5 each, 8X is a big premium for second best.

[sbe18]

the verisign report pdf that I posted earlier is very important.

china, korea, japan, and germany lead the ccTLd and gtld data points....

china numbers for idn's ccTLD estimated by Verisign .....are 300K based on
1st quarter data cumulatively.

idn's dot com in Chinese are Verisign's own internal data at roughly 250 K or so.

Any IDN with Chinese/Japanese scripts were separately calculated.


My strategy is that dot CN has political risk. It can taken away.
chinese dot Com's can get blocked or blacklisted.

In many categories, I bought both.
In many I bought only dot com's.


I think that ICANN is under enormous pressure from China, Japan, Korea and Germany to act.

Germany is very forceful with the dot DE IDN's.
They do not want to continue to teach children to spell with umlauts for assignments and then type AE OE etc.........for web URL's to substitute for umlaut words in addresses.....

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by sbe18

Germany is very forceful with the dot DE IDN's.
They do not want to continue to teach children to spell with umlauts for assignments and then type AE OE etc.........for web URL's to substitute for umlaut words in addresses.....

As a fluent german speaker, I will say that the substitution of ae for ä or oe for ö is very natural and it will not stop just because idns are introduced; the substitution is needed when typing from non-german keyboards, mobile phones, etc.

However, I still don't see why they are trying to obsolete the "scharfes S" ß just because you can type 'ss' from any keyboard.

.

[blackops]

Originally Posted by sbe18

My strategy is that dot CN has political risk. It can taken away.
chinese dot Com's can get blocked or blacklisted.

I'm sure having both is the best strategy for speculators to have...

In the past, I have probably beaten up on Chinese .com more than I perhaps should have. Obvious issues aside, I now think that the Chinese market for IDN will become so great that there will be room for both - time will tell of course, but all of you are ahead of the curve anyway just by being involved with IDN :-)

[Rubber Duck]

Of course there will. Eventually China will need three times the number of names the US does!

Originally Posted by blackops

I'm sure having both is the best strategy for speculators to have...

In the past, I have probably beaten up on Chinese .com more than I perhaps should have. Obvious issues aside, I now think that the Chinese market for IDN will become so great that there will be room for both - time will tell of course, but all of you are ahead of the curve anyway just by being involved with IDN :-)

[blackops]

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Eventually China will need three times the number of names the US does!

Are you basing that on population alone?

But yes, that figure may well prove to be right. There is a lot of poverty in China, however, but my money is betting on China (literally) and not just in domains either ;-)

[touchring]

Originally Posted by blackops

I'm sure having both is the best strategy for speculators to have...

In the past, I have probably beaten up on Chinese .com more than I perhaps should have. Obvious issues aside, I now think that the Chinese market for IDN will become so great that there will be room for both - time will tell of course, but all of you are ahead of the curve anyway just by being involved with IDN :-)

Both are ok, you just have to acquire smartly. We're early in the game, still got plenty of chance to acquire names.