China’s drive to have independent websites shutdown ‘registered with the government’ is not an idle threat. Rebecca MacKinnion cites RSF:

A China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders on condition of anonymity that the Shanghai police recently rendered his website inaccessible because it had not been registered. He then phoned the MII [Ministry of Information Industry] to ask what he had to do in order to register, and was told that in his case it was "not worth bothering" because "there was no chance of an independent blog getting permission to publish."

China Snippets noted that the last such drive, in 2002, was more words than action. What’s different this time? Possibly technology (Interfax via China Herald):

Meanwhile, by May 23 of this year, the MII had already received registration applications for approximately 430,000 domain names. However, the new "Night Crawler System" has already located 573,755 websites operating with Mainland Chinese IP address, the MII said, meaning roughly 26% of websites remain unregistered.

Fons says: "Unclear what is next, but I do expect a small exodus to non-Chinese IP-addresses, if that option is open."

The "Night Crawler," it seems, is only targeting China based IP addresses, which means that Chinese blogs hosted outside the country cannot (presently) be targeted. However, the Great Firewall prevents many from accessing free blog-hosting sites such as blogger,and a nonconvertible currency and lack of foreign-currency credit cards prevents many Chinese from buying hosting.

With that, volunteers for the below project are welcome.:

UPDATE: More on Night Crawler here. (link via Global Voices.)