It is not often that there is an Internet censorship story with a happy ending.

The glorious Chinese People's Republic has banned the use of its Olympic gold medalists' names as Internet addresses by anyone but the athletes themselves. After companies registered the names of winning Chinese athletes at the 2004 Athens Olympics as Web addresses, there was an outcry by sports fans.

Government's China Internet Network Information Center has ruled that the move will better protect the interests of the Olympic gold medalists. The Chinese government only controls the awarding of Web addresses using the ".cn" suffix, but has no power over those assigned in other countries.

The General Administration of Sport gave the agency a list of Chinese Olympians ahead of the games and registered all possible domain names using their names, Xinhua said.