Remember that scene in The Breakfast Club where Principal Rooney tells bad boy John Bender he can plan on spending the rest of his life in detention? What started with one future Saturday in the high school clink is multiplied everytime Bender opens his sassy mouth. "And that's another detention!" Rooney hollers, jabbing at the air. "And that's another one! And the Saturday after that too!"
The internet is the Bender to Chinese regulators' Principal Rooney.
Last year's development in CHINA vs. ONLINE FREEDOM is the country's smackdown on video websites. Early last February, the government imposed new rules requiring purveyors of online videos to seek a license if they wanted to keep their sites up - a license which, conveniently, only state-owned companies could obtain.
Pretty standard for other Chinese media (all of which - yes, all - is state-owned). But until then, private companies on the web could operate on their own, albeit with enforced censorship.
No word yet on how the regulators would treat user-generated content when the Globe and Mail published the story last January.
Youtube does have a Chinese-language website, by the by, although its computers operate outside that country.
Good thing, because everyone should have the right to watch things like this.
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