BEIJING, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's sport authorities have banned the
issuing of Internet domain names based on the country's Olympic gold
medal-winning athletes to anyone but the medalists themselves.
The move was aimed at preventing the commercial exploitation of sports
people's names and follows the public controversy over the commercial use of the
names of gold medalists at the Athens Games in 2004, said the China Internet
Network Information Center (CNNIC).
The General Administration of Sport (GAS) had demanded a veto over the
registration of domain names featuring the names of Chinese gold medalists, said
a CNNIC official surnamed Hu.
The GAS provided the CNNIC with a full list of China's Olympic team prior to
the Games opening on Aug. 8, and had registered all available domain names for
athletes in Chinese characters and in Pinyin.
"The move will better protect the interests of the Olympic gold medalists,"
said Hu.
The domain names would be given free to the gold medalists to build their own
sites.
Those who had already registered before the GAS order could keep the the
domain names, but were advised to give it to the medalist "as a gift", the CNNIC
said in a notice on its website.
The protection of domain names is especially difficult in China, where
thousands of people can share the same name or the same spelling of their name
in Pinyin.
More than 9,000 people are reported to share the name of diving diva Guo
Jingjing, excluding those whose names bear the same Pinyin spelling.
China has so far collected a record 43 gold medals at the Beijing Games.
The Beijing News has reported that domain names featuring at least 10 gold
medalists, including weightlifter Chen Xiexia, who bagged China's first gold
this year, and gymnast Yang Wei, were registered before the Games.
In 2004, a company in the southern city of Xiamen, Fujian Province,
registered the domain names duli.cn and wangyifu.cn, both after shooting
champions at the Athens Olympics, shortly after they won their medals.
The company surrendered the names two weeks later amid widespread
public anger.
