China closes file-sharing sites in crackdown

BEIJING — China has closed one of the country's largest file-sharing sites in what it says is a fight against copyright infringement, but could be seen as another measure aimed at controlling what content the country's Web users can find online.

The file-sharing site BTCHINA — a major source of overseas movies, television shows and games in the country — has been closed since Friday, and another site, VeryCD.com, was down Wednesday. A report in the Southern Metropolis Daily said other file sharing sites would be closed in the coming days.

It is almost always too easy in the west to cry foul of any operations on the Internet by the Chinese government to be manipulation of free speech and access to content. In truth, while it remains to be seen if this is a token act meant at appealing to angry foreign copyright lobbies, there is a good chance that this effort is sincere in accordance with the Communist Party desires to build up a legal society and a domestic consumer culture for the sake of stability.

Up until now, it has been and still is inexcusibly easy to acquire copyrighted content in China on any major websites. In terms of crackdown on actual filesharers, there have been very few attempts that are mostly for show. What differentiates this act is that the Chinese government appears to be going after a service rather than a scapegoat, which would imply a sea change in how they are viewing copyright infringement in their country.

In terms of a domestic consumer culture, an assault such as this on pirated content is an absolutely neccessary huge first step to take. By making everyone who uses the Chinese Internet take notice, the government will then proceed to target additional resources and start issuing threats to hosting companies that find themselves in violation of copyright. How effective this will be will remain to be seen, as even in the United States copyright law is frequently ignored in favor of the convenience and speed of illegal digital downloads. However with the ability to impose as high a sentence for copyright infringement as they please, this aspiration toward legal society via arbitrarily set punishments may be met with an ironic series of unprecedented court battles over individual and corporate rights. Though the path will be hard, such an act might just be what China needs to focus itself on legal reform and promote a prosperous domestic economy.

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