China stepping back from proposed blog rules

China will back down from a plan to require bloggers to use their real names when they register blogs, following an outcry over the proposal from the Internet industry, official media reported Tuesday.

Instead, the government will promote a "self-discipline code" that will encourage, but not mandate, bloggers to register under their own names, the report said, citing draft guidelines published by the Internet Society of China.

"The ISC, with the backing of the Ministry of Information Industry, is trying to rally industry players to sign up to the self-discipline code for the promotion of a less rigorous real-name system," state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

China, the world's second-largest Web market with some 140 million Internet users, already censors Internet content.

Some government departments had advocated the use of real names as a way to stop slander, pornography and the spread of what the ruling Communist Party sees as "harmful information."

China already routinely blocks Web sites for political content that runs counter to the government's views and restricts participation in online discussion groups.

Tracking an online trend, and a route to suicide

From their nondescript sixth-floor office, Kim Hee-joo and five other social workers troll the Internet to combat a disturbing trend in South Korea: people using the Web to trade tips about suicide and, in some cases, to form suicide pacts.

"There are so many of them," said Kim, secretary general of the Korea Association for Suicide Prevention, a private counseling group working to decrease the number of suicides, which nearly doubled from 6,440 in 2000 to 12,047 in 2005, the last year for which government figures are available.

One of the recent Internet suicide pacts involved two women who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a one-room apartment south of Seoul.

In another, five young men and women who made a pact over the Internet and had failed in two previous suicide attempts drove to a seaside motel to discuss more effective methods. There, one member of the group had a change of heart and slipped out to call the police.