I've written elsewhere about the community of English-language China bloggers (see The China Blogosphere), a community of which the Berkeley Journalism School is a member via its ongoing China Digital News project.

Another prominent community member is Richard Burger's The Peking Duck, which appears on the blogrolls of and is often cited by China Digital News and many other China bloggers.

I now document, below, some particularly repugnant blogosphere action to which Burger has lent his name.

Why do I do so? A goal of urielw.com is to present unadulterated truth to readers, "without fear or favor." The China blogosphere is a topic of some interest, partly because it reflects broad media and cultural trends which can unfortunately be expected to continue. In the U.S., public discourse is increasingly uncivilized and unamenable to reason. A commentator wrote in BusinessWeek magazine last year that "all sorts of once-taboo language and personal invective" have recently become acceptable in political discourse (cited in Descending into Barbarism). There has been much commentary in recent years about increased levels of partisan rancor. And just today, the New York Times reports:

a pileup of recent cases and judicial decisions, including the Supreme Court's refusal yesterday to hear the cases of two reporters facing jail, which suggest a new hostility towards the media, one fueled by skepticism about the very value of the institutional press.

"We're seeing outright contempt for an independent press in a free society," said Jane Kirtley, who teaches media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. "The fact that courts have no appreciation for this is new, is troubling, and you cannot overestimate the impact it will have over time."

"We're in an era of great judicial skepticism regarding the reliability and professionalism of the media generally," said Rodney A. Smolla, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law, "and that atmosphere, I think, makes courts reluctant to recognize any special First Amendment protection."

"The federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court down, has grown very skeptical of any claim that the institutional press is deserving of First Amendment protection over and above those of ordinary citizens," Professor Smolla said. "The rise of the Internet and blogger culture may have contributed to that. It makes it more difficult to draw lines between the traditional professional press and those who disseminate information from their home computers."

[Edited excerpt from "Courts Grow Increasingly Skeptical of Any Special Protections for the Press," New York Times, June 28, 2005.]

Here, then, is a brief excerpt from a lengthy comment by "DD" of the talktalkchina.com blog, followed by Richard Burger's enthusiastic endorsement a few hours later:

DD, June 27th, 2005 at 7:45 am:

- [Uriel's] two email addresses are [...]. You can have some fun and impersonate him by setting up your email client with his name and email address and you can send mails to people saying things like "Hi, I'm Uriel. I want to molest your child."

- He's 47 years old and single. So this means he's gay. Be sure and tease him about that.

- I'm still trying to confirm that his current address is [...] and his phone number is [...]. If so, feel free to send him hate mail and crank call him. Oh yes, and he loves getting death threats too.

- Anybody up for doing web design? I'll register and host the website UrielSucksDick.com and I'll do the content if you come up with good site design and graphics.

Richard Burger, June 27th, 2005 at 10:32 am:

DD, where have you been all this time? I blogrolled you yesterday. I am incredibly impressed with your site and with your understanding of our friend Uriel.

Indeed, talktalkchina.com appeared shortly afterwards on Peking Duck's blogroll (where I've confirmed it was not shown a few days earlier).

The above excerpt appeared at http://www.talktalkchina.com/?p=26. DD's comments were removed in under a day (replaced with a "[delete]" notation), presumably because they are illegal as well as in violation of the "Acceptable Use Policy" of most internet service providers. At time of writing, Burger's response remains.

I haven't explored talktalkchina.com or "DD," but DD's identity appears to be a secret. One noteworthy point is that talktalkchina.com pays money for sponsored links on google, where it promotes itself with the following ad:

Are You Angry With China?
3 Angry White Guys Living in China
Complain About It to No End
talktalkchina.com

Sociopaths need their enablers. And on the web, merchants are standing by, ready to do what's needed (for a fee).

Vortech Hosting Inc. is the company whose computers provide webhosting services for talktalkchina.com. I sent an email to Vortech quoting the talktalkchina.com content sample shown above to let the company know its "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP) had been violated. (Vortech's AUP states that clients "are expected to use the Internet with respect, courtesy, and responsibility, giving due regard to the rights of other Internet users," and adds that Vortech "reserves the right at all times to prohibit activities that damage its commercial reputation and goodwill.")

Vortech's Craig Smith responded:

I cannot accept this as a legitimate abuse complaint for 2 reasons. 1) This is not one of our clients. They are hosting on our network, but under another hosting company. 2) This looks like a post on a public message board. If you have a legitimate email header or something that actually came from our network I could possible take action, but this is not enough for me to do anything for you.

Smith was thus acknowledging talktalkchina.com's use of Vortech's webhosting services, but disclaiming responsibility because an intermediary (which Smith wouldn't identify) was involved, presumably a reseller. Moreover, even if Vortech was involved, Smith somehow understood Vortech's AUP (which he said he'd written himself) to apply only to email messages, not website content.

Smith did on further prodding take a look at http://www.talktalkchina.com/?p=26 , but by then the material had been deleted. He wrote again:

All I can do is check what you told me and its obviously gone. Theres nothing I can do about it.

OK. But talktalkchina.com was also in violation of global Internet rules requiring the public disclosure of the name and address of a website's registrant (i.e., the person to whom the site is registered). As of July 6, 2005, talktalkchina.com's registrant was listed as:

Organization Name: None
First Name: None
Last Name: Non
Address 1: None
Address 2:
City: None
StateProvince:
PostalCode: None
Country: US
Phone: +1.5555555

[The InterNIC whois facility identified eNom, Inc. as talktalkchina.com's registrar; and the above was the information reported by eNom's whois server.]

talktalkchina.com's breach of ICANN rules was current and verifiable, so I emailed Smith again:

talktalkchina.com is in breach of ICANN regulations because of its invalid registrant information, which you can see at:

http://www.enom.com/domains/whois.asp?DomainName=talktalkchina.com

Smith responded:

No its perfectly legal to hide who-is information. In fact, many registrars such as ENOM offer it as an option.

I responded, drawing Smith's attention to ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement, Section 3.3.1, which requires public disclosure of website registrants. Smith did not appreciate being edified:

Please contact ICANN or ENOM. I'm blocking your email from our system now.

I did also notify eNom of talktalkchina.com's various transgressions, including its invalid registrant information. And shortly afterwards, talktalkchina.com's status was changed to REGISTRAR-HOLD -- which made the site inaccessible. But only briefly. talktalkchina.com was back on the web a few days later.

It turns out it's ok to violate ICANN rules -- at least in spirit -- but you have to pay the premium. The cheapskates at talktalkchina.com had sought to evade this by simply entering dummy identifying information on their own.

Once talktalkchina.com had signed up for eNom's ID Protection Service (and, of course, paid the related fees), eNom was only too glad to welcome it back as a customer in good standing and restore its online accessibility.

The identity of whoever's really behind talktalkchina.com is still concealed. But http://www.enom.com/domains/whois.asp?DomainName=talktalkchina.com now names a registrant for talktalkchina.com: Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc., a Nevada corporation.

This is an obvious circumvention of the ICANN rule, if not a breach. The ID Protection Service contract makes it as obvious as can be who's really responsible for the website (or "domain"):

While You [the client of Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.] will not be listed as the registrant for the ID Protection (IDP) Domains, other than as described in this Agreement, Whois Privacy Protection, Inc. will not act to control the IDP Domain(s). You will retain the right to sell, transfer, or assign each IDP Domain; You will retain the right to control and set the DNS settings for the IDP Domain(s); You will retain the right to renew each IDP Domain name registration upon expiration (subject to your registrar's applicable rules and policies); and You will remain responsible to resolve any and all monetary or other legal claims that arise in connection with Your IDP Domain(s), subject to the remaining provisions of this Agreement.

[Edited excerpt.]

But this phony registrant practice is apparently accepted by the Internet's governing authorities.

It must be said that there can be legitimate reasons for registrant anonymity. As a 2003 letter to ICANN jointly signed by many consumer and civil liberties organizations argued,

compelling registrants to disclose personal information poses dangers to freedom of expression and privacy on the Internet. Some domain name registrants may have legitimate reasons to conceal their actual identities or to register domain names anonymously. For example, there are political, cultural, religious groups, media organizations, non-profit and public interest groups around the world that rely on anonymous access to the Internet to publish their messages. Anonymity may be critical to them in order to avoid persecution.

[Excerpted from WHOIS Letter to ICANN, 28 October 2003.]

Thus, anonymity can be worthwhile (though I'd have grave doubts about the security of anyone relying on registration anonymity to avoid being identified by government authorities). But extending a blanket grant of anonymity to anyone, for any purpose, sets free not just talktalkchina.com-type hooligans, but also seriously malevolent actors who will manipulate public opinion while avoiding accountability -- which seems likely to exacerbate the increasing chaos of our public discourse.