Chinese television viewers have expressed anger and frustration over the sudden disappearance of their favourite foreign shows from two of the country’s most popular video-sharing websites.
Chinese television viewers have expressed anger and frustration over the sudden disappearance of their favourite foreign shows from two of the country’s most popular video-sharing websites.
sudden disappearance of the favourite foreign shows Photo:Bilibili
Bilibili – one of the biggest of the YouTube-style sites in China with more than 150 million active users – removed most of its TV shows made in the United States, Britain and Thailand on Wednesday. Deleted shows included two British hits, the 1980s political satire Yes Minister and more recent sitcom The IT Crowd.
Another popular video-sharing website AcFun closed its whole page for TV series and films.
Photo:Verycd
Bilibili explained on Thursday on Weibo that to ensure that the contents on the website are in accordance with law and regulation, it would review TV dramas and films uploaded by users.
During the review, some videos cannot be accessed, and after that, the unlicensed videos would be removed, and the approved ones will be uploaded again, said Bilibili.
sudden disappearance of the favourite foreign movies Photo:Bilibili
On Bilibili and AcFun websites, individual users could upload videos, including animations, films and TV series to their own accounts.
The website is a favourite of young Chinese and is known for its wide range of videos and a real-time system that displays user comments as subtitles. Some 90 per cent of its users were born after 1990, state-run Xinhua news agency reported in June.
“All the Japanese TV series I bookmarked, from family dramas to costume dramas, have been removed,” said Bilibili user surnamed Zhang.
Another Bilibili user said that even some rarely watched Dutch, Swedish and German films she uploaded were also removed.
“Bilibili has removed all the series,” Tianfu Thai Drama, a fansub group translating TV series and shows of Thailand, posted on its Weibo account.
“It is actually a good trend that online platforms have begun to get a sense of respect and are more regulated,” said Xu Xinming, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in IPR.
Xu also noted that such livestreaming websites could commercialize the operation by buying the copyrights and charging users for viewing.
Photo:Bilibili
But some TV fans believe the shows were pulled from the websites as part of an ongoing crackdown by Beijing to “clean up” the internet that has seen celebrity gossip accounts shut down, video content restricted and virtual private networks closed.
“First they start shutting down VPN providers, now foreign TV shows have been taken off AcFun and Bilibili,” one commenter said.
At the same time, China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), denied barring domestic telecommunications carriers from providing virtual private networks (VPNs) services to individuals.
An official statement from the subordinate bodies of the MIIT detailing such bans does not exist, and foreign media reports are therefore untrue, the MIIT told domestic news outlet thepaper.cn on Wednesday.
