You wouldn’t think that a website dedicated to streaming cartoons would be a likely place for sedition and law-breaking. But apparently in China, it can be. On Thursday, China’s Ministry of Culture announced a new crackdown on illegal websites, with a dual focus on animation and gaming sites.
On the animation side of things, according to Techweb the Ministry is focused on several specific (but unnamed) animation websites. These sites include commenting features but that do not censor or filter user comments. Any website in China that allows user-generated comments is legally obligated to filter them for illegal content like politically sensitive talk, pornography, etc. The Ministry of Culture’s Li Qiang says that on these animation sites, illegal comments with that sort of content have become commonplace.
See: China’s censors ban TV shows and ads from using internet slang
On the gaming side of things, the Ministry says it has a list of 11 gaming websites that are providing gamers access to games with illegal content. Specifically what sort of illegal content isn’t clear. Any game released in China must be officially approved by the Ministry of Culture, so technically speaking any game that hasn’t gone through that process is illegal, even if the actual game itself is completely innocuous.
It’s not clear yet exactly which sites are implicated, or how the Ministry plans to handle them. But it’s clear the government is looking to strengthen its oversight of any content that’s on the web, whether it’s generated by talkative animation fans or foreign game developers.
(Source: Techweb)
Editing by Jeff Quigley
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