Chinese Cyber Café’s New Rules: 1

In China, there have been raids over the past months that were triggered by illegal online casino activity stemming from cyber cafes. There was a new plan of attack announced that will make it harder to access online casinos from those cyber cafes. Cyber café’s from the Chinese city of Nanchang will be required to have Chinese made operating systems in their business. This would prevent players at the cyber café from engaging in illegal online casino activity. This brings up concerns from the people of Nanchang that they may become susceptible to cyber-snooping by the local authorities. Although the new rules have been in effect for over a month, there is reasonable concern for privacy.

The new rules are not just being targeted towards the online casino player, they will also be used to prevent citizens from using the illegal pirating software. The spokesman for the Culture Bureau in Nanchang, Hu Shenghua, said that authorities will be cracking down on the illegal piraters and online casinos. They will be cracking down on these cyber café’s so much, that not only will they require them to change all of their operating systems, but they will also have to remove any pirated software and install legitimate copies of Red Flag Linux or Microsoft Windows. As if that was not enough, they will also have to pay a fee. There have been some mixed reports, but the Associated Press reported that Radio Free Asia said that cyber café’s will have to replace their software to Red Flag Linux even if they are currently operating with licensed copies of Microsoft Windows.