China Likely To Ignore Its Own New Rules For Video Hosting Sites?

from the don't-want-to-scare-off-the-money dept

Fri, Jan 11th 2008 1:55pm — Mike Masnick

Just last week we wrote about China's new laws for online video sites that would require those sites to be government owned, as well as actively censor any content the government would prefer not be online. There was some fear over what this meant for all of the Chinese YouTube wannabes out there. However, it appears that most of the companies aren't all that worried, as they believe that China won't do anything to scare off venture capital money coming in to the various startups. If anything, those firms may need to "partner" with state-owned television stations, but otherwise should be allowed to continue moving forward. Of course, that same article says that the reason for this policy is that China is upset that people are watching online video rather than state-owned TV. If that's true, then it doesn't seem to mesh with the idea that the government will let things slide. Perhaps it just comes down to which is more important to the Chinese government: bringing outside venture capital into China, or trying to get more people to watch official government propaganda?

Filed Under: china, great firewall, video

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Danny, 11 Jan 2008 @ 2:18pm

"Perhaps it just comes down to which is more important to the Chinese government: bringing outside venture capital into China, or trying to get more people to watch official government propaganda?"

If they function like any other bureaucracy, then the answer is both.

Different parts of the apparatus want different things - so conflicting messages come out (and conflicting administrative behaviors will follow).
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matt, 11 Jan 2008 @ 2:41pm

Re:
after the unintelligible stuff on the last post, its refreshing to see an intelligent response as the first reply. Well said, and I agree it is a likely alternative. It will be interesting to see what parts of the government and other parts of the bureacracy end up taking control of this aspect.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2008 @ 11:13pm

Selective Enforcement
So it sounds like they're counting on selective enforcement. That's pretty common with tyrants and totalitarian regimes. Good thing we don't have selective enforcement in the US.
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mike allen, 12 Jan 2008 @ 2:31am

Re: Selective Enforcement
yes you do have selective enforcment in the US RIAA sue the people who wont hit back policy springs to mind.
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Jamie, 13 Jan 2008 @ 9:52pm

Go to Shanghai and look at how many "illegal" satellite dishes there are on each building. All streaming 100s of channels from around the globe. While I was living there, I had more channels than I did in the US. Not to mention the 1000's of DVD copy stores...
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Neverhood, 14 Jan 2008 @ 2:13am

exactly...
I have been living in Beijing for over a year now, and it's not much of a surprise to me. In china there is the law (which in many cases look exactly like the law in Europe where i come from), and then there is the real world.

Many many laws are not used in practice simply because the authorities choose not to enforce them for one or another reason.

- And if people discover that the authorities don't follow the law, who are they gonna tell? The newspaper? Guess again.
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