Video Sharing in China

China is to further tighten its grip on internet use by restricting the broadcast of videos on the web to only those run by state-sanctioned companies.

In the government’s latest clampdown on cyberspace, all sites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must obtain a government permit, with the only companies permitted to apply being those that are state-owned or state-controlled.

Executives at Chinese video-sharing sites spoke with caution but said the move was not unexpected and would likely have a much greater impact on new entrants to the market, such as Google’s popular YouTube.com that has yet to formally register in China.

The new rules, which come into force on January 31, mark a fresh attempt by Beijing to curtail the internet habits of an increasingly web-savvy population that has become accustomed to decades of state intervention.

The new regulations state that: Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism ... and abide by the moral code of socialism.

The policy will ban providers from broadcasting video that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography. Providers will be required to delete and report such content.

The Chinese government has decided to allow private video-sharing websites to continue operation as long as they do not broadcast illegal content.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) said on its website that all video-sharing websites established before Jan 31 are qualified for a license and can continue operation.

The license was needed for any website providing online video services and could have been granted only to State-owned or State-controlled enterprises, according to an earlier regulation.

But video-sharing websites established after Jan 31 have to be State-owned enterprises in order to get the license, according to the regulator.

On Dec 29, SARFT and MII sprang a regulation stating that websites that provide video programming or allow users to upload videos in China must obtain a government license and applicants must either be State-owned or State-controlled companies.

The regulation surprised many as most video-sharing sites in China are privately held and funded by foreign venture-capital firms.

The latest announcement thus saves hundreds of private video-sharing websites from closure or forced cooperation with State-owned enterprises.

One of the most popular video-sharing websites in China has been shut down.

The site, 56.com, which usually offers YouTube-style video, has been suspended for more than two weeks. A message on the home page blames a server upgrade, but it would be unusual for such routine maintenance to take so long.

Executives at the company refused to explain the delay, according to the Wall Street Journal, prompting concern that it may have fallen foul of regulators. 56.com is one of the three largest video-sharing sites in China, and along with similar sites has been closely scrutinised by the Government in recent months.

In December the Government issued new rules which held that in order to operate, video-sharing sites must be part state-owned. Regulators later issued guidance that some privately run sites may continue if they were given licenses and agreed to abide by content restrictions, but it has so far refused to give licenses to the three largest sites – Tudou.com, Youku.com and 56.com.

Most Chinese sites employ teams who comb through content as it uploaded - unlike YouTube, which waits for offensive or inappropriate content to be pointed out by users before it is taken down.

Plans to revolutionise internet television in the UK dramatically collapsed as reguators pulled the plug on the venture proposed by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The video on demand (VOD) tie-up, codenamed Project Kangaroo, is now dead in the water, according to insiders.

All three broadcasters yesterday signalled they were unlikely to appeal in the wake of the shock ruling by the Competition Commission.

There was general disbelief at the decision to block the project, designed to provide a catalogue of thousands of hours of programming, largely for free.

The Commission said it had decided to block the proposed VOD joint venture. It feared the broadcasters were effectively creating a cartel that would squeeze out rivals in the online market because the BBC, through its commercial arm Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 control the majority of UK-originated television content.

The broadcasters released a joint statement expressing their disappointment: While this is an unwelcome finding for the shareholders, the real losers from this decision are British consumers.

The big beneficiaries of the decision, said one broadcast insider, were companies such as Sky, Virgin Media, Five and BT, who were likely to have lobbied the Commission against Kangaroo.

Chinese censors at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) have shut down 131 unlicensed video Web sites and penalized a further nine for carrying supposedly pornographic videos as part of its continuing crackdown on Internet porn.

SARFT said that the crackdown, which began on Jan. 5 and will last until the end of February, has also resulted in the country's 307 licensed video Web sites deleting content from their platforms. Among these are Tencent, which has deleted 12,841 videos; Tudou, which has deleted 3,214 videos; PPLive, which has taken down 440 videos; PPStream, which has removed 85 videos; Joy.cn, which has deleted approximately 10,000 videos and posts; 6.cn, which has deleted over 2,300 videos and 2,500 comments; and Funshion, which closed its forum and picture-posting areas.

Although Youtube has been unblocked, the China administration is determined to control audio and video content circulated in the Internet.

On March 30, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) issued an administrative notice, Concerning the tightening of management on Internet audio-visual content, In the notice that the following content should be banned from the Internet:

1. against constitutional principle
2. damaging to national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity
3. disclosure of state secret, harmful to state security, national honor and interest
4. inciting ethic hatred, ethic discrimination, undermining ethic unity, culture and custom
5. promoting cults and superstition
6. disrupting social order and social stability
7. inducing underage youth to commit crime; rendering violence, pornography, gambling and terrorist activities
8. humiliating and slandering contents that violate citizen's privacy and rights
9. harmful to social morale and national culture and tradition
10. other contents that prohibited by other laws and regulations.

Internet audio-visual content providers have to edit and delete the following content:

1. maliciously distorting Chinese culture, history and historical fact; maliciously distorting other countries' history and disrespectful to human civilization and other countries' civilization and customs
2. deliberately ridiculing revolution leaders, heroic figures, significant historical figures, prominent figures inside and outside China
3. maliciously ridiculing people's army, armed police, police, and judicial bodies; contents that show physical abuse and torturing of prisoners and criminals
4. showing the arrogant and heroic side of criminal acts, details of crimes and investigation, image and voice of witnesses and whistle blowers
5. advocating religious extremism, creating conflicts among different religions, sects, believers and non-believers that hurt people's feeling
6. promoting fortune telling, fung-shui, exorcism treatment and other superstitious acts
7. depicting nature disasters, accidents, terrorist acts, wars and disasters in a spoofing manner
8. explicitly presenting promiscuity, rape, incest, necrophilia, prostitution, sexual perversion, masturbation and other similar acts
9. showing or implicitly presenting sexual behavior and bodily intimacy
10. deliberately exhibiting private parts of human bodies that covered up by body parts or small objects
11. inducing sexual fantasy
12. advocating unhealthy acts of extra marital sex, polygamy, one night stand, SM, exchanging partners, and etc
13. titled and tagged with seductive words or pictures that associated with adult films, pornographic movies, AV, hidden video, nipple slip, and etc
14. agitating content related with homicide, extreme violence, abduction, drug, gambling, and supernatural phenomena
15. excessive horrible image, subtitle, background music and sound effects
16. demonstrating slaughtering of animals, and human consumption (eating) of protected animal species
17. violating individual privacy
18. positive presentation or presentation that encourage fight, humiliation and vulgar languages
19. advocating negative and decadent life style, world view and value; exaggerating national backwardness and dark side of the society
20. video clips that have been banned by SARFT
21. violating the principle of relevant laws and regulations.