Battles between domestic Internet firms may be coming to an end with the announcement Friday of a new draft to regulate the information service industry and ban unfair competition.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology draft will prohibit information service providers from slandering or vilifying their competitors, making incompatible software, and forcing or misguiding users to shut down or uninstall legal products or services of other firms for any reason.
Punishments will range from fines of between 100,000 yuan (US$15,180) and 1 million yuan to closure.
The draft also deals with the leaking of personal information.
It requires information service providers to be responsible for the security of private information, and whenever they collect such details they have to list the reasons why and how the information is going to be used.
Anyone leaking information would face fines of between 10,000 and 100,000 yuan, or being shut down.
It is believed the draft regulations were prompted by a lengthy dispute between Tencent QQ and Qihu 360.
The dispute, which has been nicknamed "The War of 3Q," has given millions of Chinese Internet users a dilemma - choosing between anti-virus software 360 or chatting tool QQ, but not both as the two are incompatible and would even uninstall the other, treating it as a virus threatening users' computers.
The "war" began last September when 360 accused QQ of scanning users' private information. QQ hit back by not allowing its users to log on to the chatting tool if they had installed 360's anti-virus software.
The dispute seemed to be resolved in November after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology got involved, ordering both of them to allow co-existence on computers, but the war of words continued.
The latest spat came in the form of an update on 360's official microblog on t.sina.com, blaming Tencent for placing a fake 360 official website, with a virus, on top of search results when typing 360 into the company's search engine.
Liu Chunquan, a Shanghai lawyer, said he was glad to see the administration's reaction to the dispute, but believed it might still take time before the draft was revised into a regulation because problems remained.
"For example, how can Internet companies make sure that their software can be compatible to others as the draft requires?" he said.
"It's a technical problem that cannot be fixed by regulations."
Another city lawyer, Wu Dong, said the draft could lead to confusion in law enforcement as some of the regulations in the draft could also be seen in the country's Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Protection Law.
Both laws are enforced by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
But according to the draft, the MIIT would be in charge of enforcing the new regulations.
The ministry is asking for public comments on its official website http://www.miit.gov.cn/ to revise the draft.
