Chinese digital media company Xunlei Ltd has filed for an initial public offering with the SEC, accordind to a Reuters report. The company, which operates Xunlei.com, hopes to raise up to $200 million.
Xunlei (which I confess I have not used since my time in China) has been grouped among common P2P bit torrent clients in the past. According to Wikipedia, it uses something called P2SP, which is not “a P2P tool in its essence.”
Nevertheless, Xunlei has come under fire over the years, having been sued by six Hollywood studios in back in 2008. The company was also sued by China’s primary television station CCTV for infringing on its Olympic broadcast copyright.
Xunlei.com
The website’s video section, Xunlei Kankan, claims that it obeys copyright laws. And while I’m not in China, a quick scan of some of its video offerings makes me doubt this claim (particularly the abundance of Japanese anime).
We have reported recently about the efforts of sites like Youku and Tudou to clean up their act with regards to pirated content. It appears that both are making pushes to create original video to offer on their respective platforms.
The announcement of Xunlei’s IPO comes on the heels of fellow Chinese internet compant Renren, which IPO’d last month, Xunlei is the latest of a flurry of web properties emerging from the country into the international spotlight. Here’s a recent CCTV video report about this trend.
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