China’s latest censorship target: cloud storage

Image by TIA. Original server image: Wikimedia.

Dropbox, Google Drive, and other international cloud storage providers have long been blocked in China – and now a number of domestic storage services are facing a similar fate.

Vdisk, KuaiPan, and UC net disk – run by Sina, Xunlei, and Alibaba, respectively – have filled the gap left by the government’s censoring of international options, but now each one is partially or fully closing down.

Vdisk has posted a notice on its website saying that its free storage program will close on June 30 to comply with government regulations, and that users should download their documents ASAP. KuaiPan has posted a similar message. UC net disk (“UC cloud” in Chinese) is still up and running, but the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post reports that the service’s cloud storage will be terminated entirely.

A bigger crackdown

The Post says that this crackdown is being led by “The National Working Group Against Pornography and Illegal Publications” and cites concerns that cloud storage accounts were stock-full of porn, which is illegal in China.

The Working Group didn’t flat-out say that cloud storage accounts are illegal – Baidu’s, for example, is still chugging along – but providers will be liable for the content that is uploaded and shared on their platforms, and that’s a big risk. It’s also a labor-intensive requirement, and smaller companies aren’t exactly overflowing with staff that can be reassigned to content-monitoring and censorship roles.

Providers will be liable for the content that is uploaded and shared on their platforms.

The closures are more than just a prudish attempt by the government to shield the citizens of the People’s Republic from seeing some nudie pics – they’re part of an ongoing government rampage against unmonitored and uncontrolled data in general.

The closures come just a few weeks after viral video star Papi Jang was told to clean up her act and stop – gasp! – cussing on the internet, and lest we forget the headline from last fall when the Ministry of Culture announced that it wanted official approval before any songs could be uploaded for Chinese ears.

Late last month, Chinese president Xi Jinping gave a lengthy speech on the country’s internet policy, where he said that the government must “improve the management of cyberspace” in order to give the internet a “healthy, positive culture that is a force for good.”

So far, this has meant telling one of China’s most popular internet celebrities to stop swearing, and now it has resulted in the closure of many of the country’s biggest free cloud storage providers. And from the looks of things, it may just be getting started.