China's Internet Giant Sina.com Loses Publication License For Publishing Pornography — 20 Articles And Four Videos
from the red-line-of-law dept
One of the shrewder moves of the Chinese government was to allow home-grown startups like Alibaba, Baidu, Sina and Tencent to stand in for US Internet companies that were blocked in China. Sina is best-known for its Weibo service, the leading microblogging platform in China, and has featured several times on Techdirt as the Chinese authorities have tried to rein in the discussions there when they started straying into forbidden areas. Surprisingly, it’s another division of Sina, its online publishing arm, that has just been hit by a serious punishment from the Chinese government:
China’s Internet giant Sina.com will be stripped of its online publication license, a penalty that might partially ban its operations, after articles and videos on the site fell prey to the country’s high-profile anti-porn movement.
According to a statement released on Thursday by the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications, 20 articles and four videos posted on Sina.com were confirmed to have contained lewd and pornographic content following “a huge amount” of public tip-offs.
As of result, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television decided to revoke the company’s two crucial licenses on Internet publication and audio and video dissemination and impose “a large number of fines.”
People suspected of criminal offenses in the case have been transferred to police organs for further investigation, the statement said.
That comes from an article published by Xinhua.net, the Chinese government’s official news service, which therefore lends the following comment extra weight:
Last year, Sina.com received administrative punishments twice for spreading online publications with banned contents, and its latest offense seems to have pushed authorities over the edge, with the statement describing the website as “having not learned a lesson at all and turning a cold shoulder on social responsibility.”
“[The website] overstepped the red line of law… and it must be punished in accordance with laws and regulations,” it said.
Well, that may be, but it does seem curious that such a high-profile and popular Internet company should be so severely slapped down in public over just “20 articles and four videos” — a tiny proportion of its total holdings. It’s hard not to see this as a warning to all China’s Internet companies to be careful. That interpretation is bolstered by another comment reported by Xinhua.net:
Meanwhile, the office warned other Internet service providers against similar errors, telling them to set up a comprehensive online info management system and check themselves for banned content.
Earlier this week, the country’s “Cleaning the Web 2014” campaign saw 110 websites shut down and some 3,300 accounts on China-based social networking services as well as online forums deleted.
The office vowed to maintain a persistent crackdown on online pornography and hand down whatever punishments violators deserve, whether it be fines, license removals or pursuit of criminal liabilities.
This makes it clear that there is a crucial quid pro quo for China’s giant Internet companies, no matter how big they have now become (in 2012, Alibaba’s sales were bigger than those of Amazon and eBay combined): feel free to make big capitalist profits serving the huge demand for online services in China, but just remember never to overstep the state’s “red line of law”.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, pornography, publication license, weibo
Companies: sina
Comments on “China's Internet Giant Sina.com Loses Publication License For Publishing Pornography — 20 Articles And Four Videos”
The office vowed to maintain a persistent crackdown on online pornography and hand down whatever punishments violators deserve, whether it be fines, license removals or pursuit of criminal liabilities.
Every time I read about people leashing out against porn it makes such individuals look like some frustrated morons that wouldn’t be able to get sex from regular human beings at all.
Ah, yes, the book-burning movement in full swing
The Minitrue says this never happened.
Re: Ah, yes, the book-burning movement in full swing
well.. tbh they seem to have taken a page out of USA’s nanny state manual and filled in the missing blanks.
I don’t see how this would affect Sina’s USA servers. Their USA servers are only subject to USA laws. Sure, the Chinese government could make them shut down their Beijing servers, but their servers in Middletown, New Jersey are not subject to Chinese laws.
Re: Re:
The USA expects foreign countries to act according to its laws, as Kim Dotcom will testify, so what are the chances of it acting on similar requests from foreign countries?
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Slim to none
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I don’t see how this would affect Sina’s USA servers.
They can probably block access to those from China. I doubt they’re too concerned about people outside China being able to access them.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27191500
“Internet companies will have to hand over users’ data even if it is held abroad, a judge has ruled.”
That’s how it affects the USA servers. The US can’t have it both ways.
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They could punish the parent company for not complying with Chinese laws, even if the content isn’t accessible to Chinese residents.
This is my favorite quote:
“If you don’t have Internet order, how can you have Internet freedom? Anyone enjoying and exercising their Internet rights and freedoms must not harm the public interest and cannot violate laws and regulations and public ethics,”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/28/uk-china-internet-idUKBREA3R0G420140428
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How are people supposed to enjoy their freedom with all this freedom around?
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Exactly. I couldn’t have said it better myself. 🙂
China servers located WHERE?!
Okay, so this part I don’t get. You are China, the (at least) independent republic, you always brag about how you don’t need the rest of the world, and such, and what do you do? You host your things on US soil ? Am I missing something here or is that pure non sense?
I’m smelling shenanigans from Chinese competition, which may have “uploaded” the “offending” material, then used this to report “multiple” times of the “infraction”, forcing the service to close.
Please...
Let the USA try to restrict porn. I’m praying for it. I can gorram guarantee that DC will be overrun by revolutionaries screaming “freedom!” Honestly, it might be the only way to get the Constitution back from the NSA. Plus hey, porn.
Re: Please...
Many Republicans are doing exactly that. But, you know, the First Amendment. Plus legal precedents set by cases against Larry Flynt…
Never gonna happen.
That should be happend
This is the thing destroying the normal school going student. It should be banned. Not only the search engine also the website.
That should be banned on world
This is the thing destroying the normal school going student. It should be banned. Not only the search engine also the website. This is the time to banned this.