VeryCD halts audio-visual download service
VeryCD, one of the largest P2P seed data website, halted its audio-visual download service on Jan25th, 2011, arousing a great response from Chinese internet users. One of the reasons that is being currently reported saying that Chinese authorities are stepping up their anti-P2P efforts with news of a joint declaration made by the country’s Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Ministry of Public Security earlier this month that anybody caught sharing copyrighted material without authorization will face criminal penalties of between 3 and 7 years in prison.(http://www.zeropaid.com/news/92299/china-authorities-threaten-bittorrent-sites-with-prison-time/) This new penalty has already led many P2P site operators to rethink how and what content is shared. As a result, Subpig.com and Uubird.com have also removed their downloading features. Interviewed by the Global Times, Huang Yimeng, the CEO of VeryCD.com said that “The regulations are getting stricter and we’re not able to legally provide a similar amount of content as before and That’s why we have to change our content offering”.
However, as we know that there is always a gap between the time when the new episodes of new American series are legally available and the time when they are actually released, forcing people to seek out elsewhere illegal alternatives to make up for a gap in the marketplace. Additionally, Online distribution affords a level of convenience that consumers want and yet, many copyright holders refuse to allow. But when considering the National conditions of China, there is no way that there would be lots of consumers actually purchasing those expensive DVDs. Therefore, as long as the gap exists, people will seek out the content on BitTorrent and via other P2P programs and services.
Furthermore, when it is not convenient to download freely from the website, people will seek pirate CDs for help and thus stimulating the whole pirate industry chain which won’t be a good thing for China. However, Chinese Internet users who are used to high quality audios and videos would go for Storm, PPTV and other large-scale video broadcast platforms and therefore leading to the large benefits flooding to those industry.
Further actions should be taken in order to better and fully regulate Chinese pirate industry. Halt of VeryCD’s audio and visual download service is just the beginning of the story and there is a long way to go.