Catshanghai

There is a new story spreading around the Internet that video sharing sites are about to become inaccessible from China. Here is an extract from The Guardian:

It was the internet story of 2007, the website that brought you sneezing pandas, laughing babies, an epic battle on the African savannah and a guest appearance by Tony Blair in a video starring George Bush’s dog.But for any web surfers in China, these and other gems purveyed by the video-sharing phenomenon YouTube look likely to become impossible to access, after the authorities signalled yesterday that they would no longer tolerate the “broadcast of degenerate thinking” on the internet.
The Guardian

Here is the same story in Techcrunch.

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.
Techcrunch

Maybe it is a slow news day in the first week of the new year, but why is this so different to anything that has happened before? I follow technology news from podcasts on Techcrunch, Ziff Davis, CNET, Twit, The BBC and Revision 3. There was scarce coverage earlier in the year when Flickr images were blocked from within China. You rarely hear anything when Wikipedia’s status changes. Youtube does not work all the time and international podcasts continue to distrubute their content using Feedburner even though it will not work with podcatchers such as Itunes when you try to download using their feeds in China. The Internet outside of China has a tendency to ignores these issues or they jump to false conclusions. For example, Techcrunch erroneously claimed that search engines such as Yahoo and Google had stopped working in China. I have previously discussed the need for good quality English language technology news sources. (See my earlier post)

After I was burned by Techcrunch on the earlier GFW story, I have always been a little sceptical about their Chinese coverage. However, this story about new regulations for video sites has also been picked up by The Guardian. I am still waiting for some more rigourous perspective and look forward to further analysis about what this means from other sources including Shanghai Daily, Danwei, CWRblog and Shanghaiist. In the meantime, I left this comment on the Techcrunch post.

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.
Comment left in Techcrunch

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Tags: China, Internet