Ministry moves on illegal music and gaming sites

The Ministry of Culture (MoC) says that it has punishing nine Chinese websites for offering illegal music download services of one kind or another. Some of the sites are being fined while others are also being blocked. The move comes after three months of an on-going operation conducted by the Ministry against illegal online activity. In relation to music downloads, some sites were illegally selling music for which they did not hold distribution rights while others had not applied for official permission to sell music online.

The MoC named some of the websites including www.9sky.com and www.music.sogua.com, both of whom were fined for not having permission to engage in e-commerce and ordered to stop their illegal activities. Meanwhile www.a8.com and www.music.tyfo.com, were fined for offering foreign music not officially approved by the Ministry. They too were ordered to stop their illegal operations and submit a list of all music available on their sites to the Ministry for inspection and approval.

As part of the same overall crackdown, local offices of the MoC have also banned games considered to be obscene or to contain gambling and excessive violence. These included BloodRayne 2 and Obscure. Meanwhile other companies were fined for selling FreeStyle Street Basketball and Legends of Empire without official approval. In addition 29 private servers have been closed in Sichuan, Hubei, Henan and Jiangsu provinces as well as the Chongqing municipality for illegally supplying online games.

CMI - 22/8/06