Chinese government recently banned 10 video sharing and streaming websites in an attempt to sanitize the Internet contents. Accusing these sites of displaying obscene, violent, and derogatory materials, the authority had blocked the IP addresses of sites perceived to be offensive.
While some people would appraise this move, critics suggest that this may not prove to be sufficient since only one of the banned sites belongs to Internet piracy propagators which are frolicking in the country.
China’s State Administration of Radio Film and Television, the government entity responsible for controlling media contents, has also warned other 17 video sharing and streaming websites for making some “forgivable” violations. This department notified the sites that they will block the IP addresses if these would fail to rectify some of their violations by removing offensive videos and other contents that breach the copyright law.
VeryCD, a popular downloading resource in the country, is one of the website companies which was closed by the government. This site has been to a lot of controversy with its copyright infringement activities. The main reason why this company has been shut down is because this provides movies which are not being shown to the general public, resulting to millions of revenue loss in the movie industry.
Another controversial feature of this website is the MP3! which is a music sharing service that allows site visitors to download albums. With this service feature, some experts accused that this site has breached the international copyright law.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government blocked YouTube for few months for its video footages that promote Tibet’s independence. Another reason why the authority decided to shut down this popular video sharing site is that it has shown Taiwanese flags.
In October 31, this site has been unblocked by the government.