The venerable Internet Society of China has formally published the Blog Service Self-Discipline Convention, the first of its kind in China which has already been endorsed by over a dozen blog service providers including people.com.cn, Sina.com, Sohu.com, Netease.com, Tencent.com and Qianlong.com.

ISC released the Convention in May to solicit opinions. The final draft now comprises 19 clauses, including regulations on the implementation and management of real name blog mechanisms.

While encouraging blog service providers to adopt real name registration for the users, the Convention asks them to set up effective management mechanisms to protect users' personal information, and not disclose users' information to other parties.

Blogging has been growing rapidly in China in recent years. The latest statistics of ISC show that by the end of June 2007, there were 30.94 million blog writers in China.