A website known as YYeTs.com popularly known as Renren Yingshi where millions of Chinese watch episodes of pirated American TV shows has been shut down by the Chinese authorities.
The site is one of China’s longest running and the last destination for pirated foreign content. The site was shut down on February 3 as part of the police crackdown on piracy. The website remain online but no services are available for visitors.
Police in Shanghai are reported to have arrested 14 people who allegedly ran the website and an application following three months of investigations into infringement of intellectual property.
At the time of being shut down, the website had an excess of 8 million registered users. Over 20,000 pirated movies and Television shows were available on the website.
The owners of the website made USD $2.5 million in the past couple of years from ads, selling hard drives loaded with pirated movies and subscription fees.
Intellectual property experts were happy for the crackdown as a good sign of China’s efforts to enforce copyright protection.
Fans of the website are not happy because they relied on the website for great content. There was a lot of public outcry and people thanked the site for “opening a door for us to the world.”
Chinese government has a tight control over foreign content. China joins Crimea, North Korea and Syria as countries which do not allow access to Netflix.
Despite the closure of the site, still there is a great thirst for foreign content and people are willing to pay the price.
The content that is allowed to be broadcast in China follows strict guidelines. Movies and TV shows which bad mouth China are not allowed in the country. Whichever content that is approved is first edited to remove scenes of violence and graphic sex.
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