56.com Incurs Wrath of SARFT?
Guangzhou-based video sharing site 56.com, one of China’s triumvirate of “YouTube clones,” has been temporarily shut down by the Guangdong provincial branch of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), acting on orders from SARFT’s national leadership, according to a highly-placed industry insider who declined to be named. The closure seems to have been in effect since 6pm on June 3.
The site’s IP address had been replaced with a non-routeable IP address, effectively preventing access to the site. The shut down — the second to impact a top-tier video sharing site — was in discussion for a few weeks, the insider said, and the timing of the outage “probably has nothing to do with” the anniversary of the suppression of the student uprising of 19 years ago. 56.com rival Tudou was shuttered for 24 hours from midnight on March 14 earlier this year. There has been no indication as to when 56.com’s service will return to normal.
A Tencent news story reprinted on Hexun.com here cites an explanation issued by 56.com at 10am this morning saying that the site experienced server malfunctions that are currently being addressed. Tudou had similarly announced that it was moving servers, though the company’s appearance at the top of a “black list” issued by SARFT led many to assume the company was being punished for failing to filter content to the satisfaction of regulators. 56.com’s name has not appeared on any of the black lists thus far issued by SARFT.
“A server going down wouldn’t explain a non-routable private IP address in the DNS record,” said Andrew Lih, author of the forthcoming book The Wikipedia Revoluion, casting doubt on the company’s explanation.
Richard Wang, deputy general manager of Neo@Ogilvy, OgilvyOne’s media planning and buying arm, says that Neo has bought small volumes of advertising with 56.com on behalf of clients but was not given any warning that a temporary shut-down of the site was in store, and was surprised to learn that the site had been shuttered.
9 comments thus far
What a surprise！
Posted by Jimsang on June 4, 2008 at 4:38 pm
While a total pain in the keister for management to deal with, occasional punitory episodes merely serve to cement the “triumvirate” status of the leading Internet companies.
It’s not like the risk of this eventuality wasn’t factored into their absurd valuations — even as early as their seed rounds — so VCs shouldn’t be shuddering, at this stage.
And it’s also not like they are raking in the big bucks from advertisers yet, as you allude to above. A temporary shutdown shouldn’t cost too much, in the grand scheme of things.
…as long as it is, in the end, temporary.
So really, what’s the harm in a little “bad” publicity?
I am thinking that Mr. Koo is the square peg now, without a slap-on-the-wrist to call his own.
Posted by sage on June 4, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[...] Koo — yes, it was past the cut-off — because I was naturally curious, in light of the troubles being experienced by 56.com, whether this could be related. He told me that this was in fact a simple technical problem and [...]
Posted by Youku goes down - but only for routine maintenance on June 4, 2008 at 10:34 pm
[...] The Chinese government appears to have shut down 56.com, starting yesterday. More from Ogilvy blogger Kaiser Kuo, who has been following the video-shutdown story for some time: [...]
Posted by Leading Chinese video sharing web sites are having trouble staying online » VentureBeat on June 5, 2008 at 6:33 am
Possibly related to 56.com being one of the few video sharing sites up/with content during the 3 day mourning period?
Posted by Alex on June 5, 2008 at 12:01 pm
@Alex - I wasn’t aware that 56.com hadn’t complied; are you sure about this? I remember doing a quick tour around major sites, and seeing uniform compliance, and I thought 56 was one of the sites I checked.
Posted by Kaiser Kuo on June 5, 2008 at 2:52 pm
on a related point since you mentioned the June 4th anniversary… I was watching TV5 the french channel which I receive via cable at home and they had a big story on the anniversary which contained some pretty graphic TV footage of the event. It is strange that as soon as CNN mention the word China someone hits the button and the screen goes black until Larry King is on whereas on TV5 there seems to be no censorship at all - maybe they didnt find a bilingual french/chinese censor?
Posted by scott on June 5, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I heard that from 5.19 to 5.21 they showed a ‘yellow’ cartoon. I’m not 100% this is the reason though.
Posted by Thijs (Shenzhen) on June 6, 2008 at 9:45 am
[...] site can take such a long time just for data maintenance, or because of server malfunctions. According to Kaiser Kuo, 56.com was “temporarily shut down by the Guangdong provincial branch of the State [...]
Posted by 56.com Down for Data Maintenance? : China Web2.0 Review on June 9, 2008 at 10:13 pm
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