According to the good people over at ReadWriteWeb, we here in China are just about to lose access to all our favorite torrent sites. To quote:
A document called Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Communication through Information, created by SARFT in 2006, was posted on its website late last week, just before the agency rounded up and shut down around 530 bittorrent sites, including the 50-million-users-strong BTChina. SARFT states that websites are not allowed to provide audio or video products without specific licenses.
SARFT rep Cao Yunxia told China Tech News that “illegal audio-visual service websites have brought great harm to the media industry and the administration will continue to seek and destroy illegal Internet audio-visual program providers.”
This would be understandable in countries that had a blanket policy on piracy and pirated products. As a matter of course, the Radar can walk in any direction from our front door and within 500 metres, arrive at multiple carts/ shops/ supermarkets selling Hollywood blockbusters, billboard top 100 CDs and TV classics, all for a fraction of the price that they are in stores outside of China. We are pretty sure (like 100%) that none of the money from sales goes to the content creators/ rights holders. It is also frustrating that there is generally little or nothing good in terms of DVDs sold, and certainly nothing on the music side. Which is why most of China turns to the Torrents…
If the Chinese government was truly committed to upholding these rights,Bittorrent is a funny place to start. You could try Dagu Lu in Shanghai or 3.3 in Beijing for starters. We suppose that it has happened this way because the powers that be don’t benefit in any way from downloaded torrents. Take that Swedish torrent engines!