China has moved to censor and control online video websites under new measures that could block YouTube and other services in China.
Under the new regulations that will be in place starting January 31, sites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must have a permit and be either state-owned or state-controlled. Permits for video hosting sites will be subject to renewal every three years and operators who commit violations may be banned for up to 5 years.
Chinafilm.com, a site run by the state-run China Film Group said that the majority of online video providers in China are currently privately owned.
To be forbidden specifically under the new regulations (although most are banned already) are videos that involve national secrets, hurt the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promote pornography. Providers will be required to delete such content if it is uploaded and to report each incident to the State.
A spokesman for YouTube told the Sydney Morning Herald that the new regulations “could be a cause for concern, depending on the interpretation.”
Cool…
China is building an internet of their own.
Chinternet….
yeah! china is very populated country!
they must have a birth control seminar!
Cool.. though China is not alone..
Well it doesn’t come to me as a surprise that China is doing this.
You currently need to be registered to run a blog or host your own website from China. That has not stopped Chinese based bloggers such a s Danwei, Wangjianshuo, Shanghaiist, Sinosplice or the infamous Chinabound from hosting elsewhere using services like Dreamhost or even Blogger. Of course, The Great Firewall could block your domain and Blogger is usually inaccessible here.
This new policy about video sharing sites may or may not be a big deal. Youtube was blocked for several weeks at the end of 2007 after a Chinese version of their site was launched, but normally there is no official notification or justification that a service has stopped working. One day, you can access it and the next day it is blocked. Perhaps Youtube will become semi permanently blocked like Wikipedia, but Google has a history of adapting itself to be compliant with China’s culture of Internet censorship. It is more likely that the China’s Youtube copysites like tudou.com will have to register with and be subject to more control from the Chinese government.
I love how they justify everything by using the word “social stability”… the only way they are achieving stability is by keeping their “socials” ignorant as to what the government is doing to them. Same thing with North Korea… these leaders would be strung up a pole in two seconds flat if people knew what most of us know.
The internet is more of a threat to communism then any nuclear weapon… it’s just a matter of time.
Jon
Chinese internet needs to be cleaned! there are nudities, porn, adult jokes almost everywhere!
The youtube has many clones in China, such as Youku.com, Ku6.com, 6.cn, 56.com,ouou.com, Tudou.com.
Who will jump into deadpool?
No one will die. They will find a way to solve this problem.
It’s not that bad.
2008 is 1984
Some video hosting site said that, “it’s just a little problem of cost increase”. Sure! We have a really *free* market here in China, within which you can buy whatever you want, including guanxi with a state-owned organization.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s common knowledge that China maintains control over all areas of media in the country. Coming out with regulations on video sharing sites is no different. You currently need an ISSN number for print publications. You need an ICP number for your websites. All traditional television and radio is state-owned. It makes sense that they’d bring video sharing sites into the loop.
Does this mean we’ll be seeing nothing but state sponsored Commie propoganda coming out of China via the internet. Um, no. It just likely means that companies in this space will need to apply for a permit and stay clear of content related to porn, religion, politics (which they already do anyways).
Get real people. Some of you talk like CNN Lou Dobbs groupies. Propoganda goes both ways. I spent 5 years in China correcting stupid misconceptions many Chinese have about Americans based on the idiots in our capitol and white house. And 3 years back on the ground in the US and all I’ve come back to are reruns of different variations of the same xenophobic Panda punching stories. It would be nice if people formulated their own opinions based on a remote interest in having a more balanced viewpoint.
Yes. The country is Communist. It regulates its media. It’s been that way since 1949. Hello? What’s new here. It’s funny how people outside of China are making a bigger deal out of this than those in China who are used to working within and around the grey areas. I worked for a multinational TV shopping company during a time when both retail sector and of course TV were off limits for foreign companies to invest in. It doesn’t stop business from happening there.
Youku.com, Ku6.com, 6.cn, 56.com,ouou.com, Tudou.com, is youtobe clone? what china need is child seminar program for each of their civiliant. ?? http//www.bwm-financial.com
Youku.com, Ku6.com, 6.cn, 56.com,ouou.com, Tudou.com, is youtobe clone? what china need is child seminar program for each of their civiliant. ?? http://www.bwm-financial.com
Maybe Hu Jintao and Kevin Rudd can hold a Sino-Australian summit on how to stop their respective populations looking at naughty videos.
I agree with mr.silencewolf. Those companies are pretty heavily funded and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to them.
I recently watched a BBC film ON YOUTUBE form China entitled “The Corporation” and it reinforced y belief that massive censorship in the US exists though mostly driven by special interest groups and corporate advertisers. Monsanto for example can,and has, manipulated investigative reporting and blocked facts from getting into the media by threatening to pull ad dollars from newspapers and TV stations–among hundreds of large-budget companies–that would save lives! Google is well known to the gay blogging community for unfair adjudication of standards when it comes to adwords account approvals and we know them here in China to be a partner and advocate of censorship as long as currency, American or Chinese, is involved.
When Yahoo! put an Internet activist in prison by rolling over and giving up his private communications to Beijing without even the hint of a fight many Americans here on Techcrunch, instead of blasting Yahoo, called for a general boycott of Chinese products to force China to clean up its human rights act…
These were voices from the same country that has kids imprisoned without benefit of counsel in Guantanamo,two wars ongoing for oil, and instead of individual registrations on the Internet and 30,000 Internet cops, pays untold numbers of law enforcement personnel to surf the Internet and pose as little children and pedophiles (meeting each other a lot in dark parking lots) to keep people safe from government defined standards of morality.
YouTube was censored here during the party congress and then unblocked shortly thereafter. The Chinese government must agree with American Corporate Blogging Guru Debbie Weil who doesn’t think “live blogging” of an event is a safe practice for industry and she advocated the same in public when Sina.com refused to be interviewed at Beijing’s AdTech conference by a blogger. Crawl HER frame boys!
Any kid in school here can tell you how to find and download a YouTube video to their desktop as a mp4 file even if the site is blocked. 18,000 violent protests by Chinese citizens made it clear last year that censorship and too much government will probably have less of a future in China than say in Australia aye mates?
If every person who comments negatively about China on this thread would send $100 to Bloggers Without Borders or donate some computer space to one of the Anti-Great Firewall Projects I could almost accept their ethnocentric crap. Get the mote out of your own eyes before you make judgments about splinters (that have not even been created yet–YouTube is alive and well for now) in a country you know little about.
China seems trying to dictate people to use their own product and services and trying to develop their own network cutting off from world.
@18
Don’t think so.. in fact a lot of major built-outs, to date, have been deployed based on products and services imported from around the world, with U.S. and Europe in particular..
The problem isn’t that serious. The problem stems from the fact the government wanting more control on what’s shown across those online video site. As long as those online video sites play along, I don’t think there would be any serious problem. One thing I am not clear is whether the subsidiary of the government agency (such as stated owned tv stations) want a piece of the online video pie. If so, there is potential conflicts of interests which could post some problems with existing players in the field.
@Christine -
I dont have preconcieved notions of Chinese people. They are fine, hard working people with a great and proud history. The govt, however, is another story.
They are a closed off, marxist and have a dangerous distrust in its own people. Any govt that locks down the people in order to protect itself is a govt that should be removed by the people.
I have never said - or advocated - that “live blogging” an event is a bad thing. To the contrary, it’s one of the strategies I endorse in my book, The Corporate Blogging Book. My comments about whether or not executives of Sina.com should submit to interviews by bloggers at Ad-Tech Beijing were misinterpreted. End of story.
It feels a bit like everyone is crying “wolf” or “totalitarian”a bit early.
The government has not said anything specifically about Youtube yet. In the case of Skype a few years ago China openly threatened to restrict access because they perceived Skype as a threat to China Telecom. But in the end, when CTC’s stock kept blowing through the roof, the saber-rattles ceased. I use Skype daily.
The Chinese video share sites are not pulling in a lot of revenue and costs are high, so part of this new mandate may be in part protectionist.
Christine is right: this does not differ from controls already in place for websites, individuals and portals. China is choosing to regulate the Internet in much the same way the FCC controls TV and radio in America.
I think it is too soon to get hysterical. And my guess is the average Chinese netizen is going to prefer Chinese content–censored or not–over lots of Youtube offerings. And as stated above: any savvy user here knows how to bypass the controls. Also, Youtube loads terribly slow here on this developing system of relays and bandwidth, so a lot of Chinese just avoid Youtube anyway. I no longer assign Youtube videos to my students to watch because the school servers are just to slow to make it a reasonable request.
Google videos have been blocked here for as long as I can remember. How will this be any different?
And this is news? China does all kinds of things that if the U.S. did them we would be excoriated in the media. It’s because people expect it of them.
As an American citizen, and as a Native American too; I am thinking that the whole point here is to be thankful for ALL of our own little freedoms…
help~~~ i can’t bear the stupid govt any more! they block wikipeida, blogs, and now… videos! i’ve no idea why. but simple face is that: all chinese people hate it.
It looks like the Big Bad Wolf is alive and well and living in Beijing.
I have just read a blog post from David Feng (formerly of Blognation), which confirms the need for Techcrunch to hire a writer based in China. David is based in Beijing.
Otherwise, you seem doomed to keep writing posts that miss the mark by dwelling on the stereotype that the Chinese government just wants to shut down the Internet. The reality is not so straightforward and David’s post about this issue debunks a few myths.
Here is the link: ‘Mind the Gap Saturday: Demystifying the “Video Ban” in the Pipeline’ http://www.techblog86.com/?p=13
We are an online karaoke sites, and we got a lot video content, is that going to say we may also get banned? god help us!