internet - The nonsense of a "real name" discussion

It is very amusing to see how the Chinese bureaucracy can come up with proposals, cause a lot of upheaval among journalists and experts, while nobody considers the questions whether such a system would work. This weekend I had a go at the proposed new labor law, but the socalled "real name registration" for weblogs belongs to the same category of proposals that same to lack any relations with reality.
How many Chinese are sharing the same name? How would you check such a system? What about people who do not live in China? It does not stop the discussion. While I can see the pressure on government departments to come up with proposals to regulate excesses at the internet, this proposal just does not make sense. When serious crimes happen, it should be part of regular legal procedings and then it is alreday possible to indentify internet users; no needs to set up yet another registration.

Update: Danwei recalls the last time the authorities tried to register webloggers in June 2005. Of course: it was massively ignored. Jeremy Goldkorn intelligently combines this with an entry about a movie sex blog, so that is good for traffic too.