China’s VeryCD deletes download links
p2pnet view Music:- VeryCD.com, China’s largest P2P file-sharing website, has taken down its music download links, replacing them with a note saying the move was done “to meet copyright owner requests.”
Founder Huang Yimeng says he’s “known this day would come,” raising concerns the website faces a probable permanent shutdown, says Beijing Review, going on:
“Later Huang explained to the Shanghai-based Youth Daily the move was a temporary self-adjustment rather than a shutdown.”
Launched in 2003, “VeryCD.com was carrying on eMule technology, which is a file-sharing program also known as a ‘Peer to Peer’ client created by Hendrik Breitkreuz, a German also known as Merkur”, says the story, continuing >>>
In May 2002, together with some other developers, Merkur created eMule because of their dissatisfaction with the “eDonkey2000″ client, which was originally developed by MetaMachine Inc., a New York-based producer of some of the most popular file-sharing applications.
The eMule-tech-based VeryCD.com does not carry files, but offers links, which spawn into the program. During the past few years, the site grew to include links for music, movies, software, books, magazines and educational materials. The website remains very influential among Chinese netizens and attracts at least 3 million hits every day.
However, the site has never been licensed to distribute videos and music online and the unauthorized contents on the website have got it into persistent troubles.
In 2008, the SARFT issued a warning to the website because it provided downloads of pirated movies. Last July, the China Film Copyright Association sued Verycd.com over its distribution of the kungfu film Ip Man 2 and demanded compensation of nearly 12 million yuan ($1.8 million).
“We had considered charging the users for downloading and making ourselves agents between the copyright holders and the users. But it will surely meet with little acceptance among users,” the story has VeryCD chief product officer Zhang Gan, sating, adding:
“How to charge Internet users who are long used to enjoying online sources for free is still a challenge.”
A recent survey shows the number of online video watchers reached 284 million in China by December 2010, “but only 6 percent of them had paid for the service”, says Beijing Review, adding:
“Among non-paid users, 72 percent said they were used to watching online videos for free and they were not willing to pay in the future.”
Beijing Review – Free Doesn’t Come Easy, February 27, 2011
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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