Domain names, ICP licenses, and other fun in 2010

New rules are now in place that restrict applications for Chinese domain names (anything ending in .cn)

CNNIC issued new guidelines for registrars and hosting companies on January 6th / 2010.

Roughly translated, these state:

CNNIC (China’s Internet Domain Government Agency) wishes promote the standard and healthy application of .CN domain names.
CNNIC aims to coordinate with China’s review mechanism for domain name registration information and further crack down on registration of domain names with false information.

What this means in non-government-speak is that from now onward new .com.cn and .cn domains cannot be registered unless you are an officially licensed entity within China.
Existing domains can be renewed for the meantime though (pending verification of details/validity).

This has been in process since mid December, as individual registrations were the first to get blocked

Chinese domain name supervision organization China Internet Network Information Center announced that starting from 21:00 on December 14, 2009, it closed domain name registrations for individual users who are not purchasing domains on behalf of companies or organizations. Prior to this sudden announcement, China’s central television station criticized domain name registration service providers and agencies for false, inaccurate or incomplete information in the registration process.

More here on that here – http://www.chinatechnews.com/2009/12/21/11239-chinese-measures-will-regulate-website-domain-name-registrations

Entities wishing to register domain names for others will need an ICP许可证 (ICP Xu Ke Zheng).
The ICP许可证 is a commercial licence, which is different from an ICP备案 (ICP Bei An).
We will also be subject to new requirements for new domain registrations (China loves paperwork!)

The Notification about further enhancement of auditing domain name registration information

In order to further enhance the authenticity, accuracy, and integrality of the domain name registration information, now notify as following:

1. Domain name applicants need to submit the formal paper based application material when making the online application to the registrar. The application material includes the original application form with business seal, company business license (photocopy), and registrant ID (photocopy).

2. Registrar should carefully review the application material. When application is deemed qualified, registrar need to submit the application material via fax or E-mail to CNNIC, and withhold the original application material.

3. From the day of the submission of online application, if CNNIC does not receive the formal paper based application material within 5 days or the application material auditing is not qualified, the domain name to be applied will be deleted.

4. The above regulations will be executed since 9:00AM (Beijing Time), Dec 14th, 2009.

If you have any question, free to contact us at 86-10-58813000 or email to service@cnnic.cn.

Existing ICP Registrations
In addition to these new rules, all existing domain registrations are being scrutinized carefully, and all details are being verified.
As we have been quite proactive in ensuring that all clients have ICP licensing, and keeping our upstream ISP / contacts at Shanghai Telecom advised of anything information they require ahead of time, we expect that this will cause minimal disruption to our services.
If we do need to verify additional information from clients, please be prompt in forwarding them to us if we do request them, to avoid issues.

New ICP Registrations
Due to the above checks, new ICP registrations (which are required for any domain hosted in China) are taking substantially longer than the normal 2-3 days. We are currently seeing delays of up to 2 months for new license applications from the MII (Ministry of Information). We deal with the licensing bureau’s on a daily basis, and are notified quickly in case of issues, but the current checking requirements are just making everything take rather longer than is usual. We ask clients to be patient while their ICP registration is in progress. We are aware that it is not an ideal situation to have to wait for a few weeks, but we are dependent on the government issuing body, who are very very backlogged with work right now. License applications that are currently in process can be checked by clients at the government website here – http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/chaxun/ggcx.jsp.

Computer Solutions client ICP Registration site is here – http://icp.computersolutions.cn/. New clients can register a user account on our ICP site, and submit an application form from our site.