I have a question for my geeky friends. I have been approached by the Chinese government regarding this website – http://www.badbeekeeping.com. A company inside China wants to register the domain name http://www.badbeekeeping.com.cn – I asked the Chinese government (actually, a director at their internet regulatory board) to deny the request, and told them I’ve had this domain name for 15 years and it is named after my book, Bad Beekeeping. But then I received an e-mail directly from the company. The Chinese spokesman wrote:

Our company based in chinese office, our company has submitted the “badbeekeeping ” as CN(.cn/.com.cn/.net.cn/.org.cn) domain name and Internet Keyword, we are waiting for Mr. Jim’s approval. We think this name is very important for our products in Chinese market. Even though Mr. Jim advises us to change another name, we will persist in this name.

Well, this sounds ominous. I can not stop anyone from using a domain name identical to mine if it has the ‘.cn’ extension. Does it matter? Except for the obvious fact that I myself will not be able to later register the same name in China, does it matter in terms of how internet users will access my current site? If you know the answer, please send a note to me at (miksha@shaw.ca). Thanks!