TorrentFreak

Since late last year there have been rumblings that China would soon carry out another crackdown on piracy. During the last week reports suggested that the country’s actions were mainly in the physical domain but now, alongside reports that 4,000 people have been arrested, it seems China is conducting both a music and video piracy purge. More than 200 sites are under orders to remove music and some of the country’s leading video sites are deleting illicit content and cuddling up to Hollywood.

At a hearing yesterday, several experts told the US International Trade Commission that many of the estimates of piracy losses touted by the entertainment industries were inflated or misleading. Others claimed that current enforcement methods aren’t working and suggested they try something else.

Recently it became clear that Chinese authorities were going ahead with their planned video site purge. Many BitTorrent sites fell including some of the country’s largest, but of course none of this changes the demand for free or near-free media. So will the crackdown force those seeking cheap movies back onto the streets?

During the last two years the Chinese government has taken an aggressive stance against video sites they claim damage children’s health or undermine national security. In the last month they have taken further action, this time taking down several BitTorrent sites for operating without an appropriate government license.

China’s Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office has booked a huge victory by preventing the country’s youth from accessing more than 4 million copies of pirated teaching materials. According to the vice director of the office, such materials “harm the healthy development of the country’s youth.”

China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently however, several reports came in from China, indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu.