The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?
Rumors are flying: Tudou, a hugely popular streaming video site based in China, has been instructed to shut down by a Chinese government authority. Tudou is still online as of this writing, but if it goes down, a major haven for streaming television will be gone.
The rumor can be summarized quickly. China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) supposedly instructed Tudou to close its doors, and word is it's because the people responsible for taking down illegal material missed some porn.
Anyone who has looked through sites such as SurfTheChannel is probably familiar with Tudou, which means potato and is named with "couch potato" in mind. Whereas YouTube tends to take down copyrighted material relatively quickly, Tudou is less vigilant about copyright.
As for its potential shutdown, Danwei, one of the most reliable sources on Chinese internet news, tracked down some facts but nothing conclusive. One unnamed Tudou source told a Chinese source that they haven't been asked to shut down.
Meanwhile, Marbridge Consulting, whose staff watch the Chinese tech industry closely for a variety of clients claims to have confirmed with unnamed authorities that Tudou has been ordered to shut down, but they don't say whether the report they've translated is accurate in saying that the shut-down may be temporary.
Henry Jenkins, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is perhaps academia's leading fanboy, spent part of January in Shanghai and has been posting observations on his blog. I want to highlight one of his better contributions: on social responsibility in Chinese video game culture.
Video games, "freedom," and "addiction"
Jenkins was attending the International Games and Learning Forum, organized by MIT and Beijing University. There, the focus was on "serious games," those that might potentially be used to promote learning. His most frequently repeated observation was that, while U.S. experts on game learning tend to focus on pedagogy in game play, the Chinese experts he heard from focused mostly on creating historically accurate spaces for games to take place in.
Jenkins writes that some people were concerned that Chinese gamers would miss some measure of socialization in Chinese history when exposed to foreign-designed gaming spaces, and he contrasts the online gaming experience mostly concentrated in Internet cafes where there is minimal face-to-face contact between players with the commonplace sight of usually older Chinese playing chess, mahjong, and card games in the street or in homes. The older games happen face-to-face and often come with a small crowd of spectators remarking on strategy and shooting the breeze. Online games include a large amount of interaction through chat, but most of the non-text interaction is absent.
He also writes of concerns that game addiction, or hype about addiction, should require game designers to tread with caution, lest they be marked as unwelcome cultural influences. Jenkins is not a longtime student of China, but his observation is interesting, if not particularly well-supported by data. (He doesn't claim hard evidence.) He writes:
The addiction rhetoric, though, carries force within China where it is connected to a number of concerns which the Chinese have about their children's culture. First, at a time when aspects of capitalism are reshaping Chinese society (especially in Shanghai), addiction rhetoric gives the Chinese a way to talk about the impact of leisure culture and consumer capitalism on their lives. Playing games is problematic precisely because it is unproductive (or seen as such).
If corporate social responsibility were extended to the point of asking corporations not to contribute to unproductive activities, otherwise known as recreation or entertainment, I suspect corporate heads would fall nationwide. I'm also skeptical that this concern goes much beyond the realm of the rhetorical. Far more consequential to social change in China, in my view, are two factors: (1) the proliferation of direct and near-anonymous interaction online, including in gaming environments, among some Chinese youth; and (2) the divide between those Chinese with access to this sort of high-intensity Internet use and those with little or no online time.
Jenkins notes the latter concern as a challenge to using games as an educational tool: If you're not frequently in front of a computer, it's difficult to engage in learning with one. Research on the "digital divide" in China is at an early stage, but I suspect it will be of growing importance as times passes.
Internet-based copyright infringement is pretty much the only way people can keep track of TV and movies from abroad in Beijing. It's hard to even find legal DVDs, and if there aren't even illegal DVDs to buy, it's often trivially easy to find entire movies on Youku or Tudou.
Yesterday, a Chinese public-security ministry official asked for international help in copyright enforcement, noting that many infringers use Web sites hosted outside Chinese jurisdiction.
"Copyright infringements, by their very nature, are international crimes. To effectively curb such activities, (we) need enhanced international cooperation on law enforcement," said Gao Feng, the official.
I don't doubt that international borders are a challenge for Chinese enforcers, but they certainly could do more here. The illegal streaming versions of movies and TV series from Chinese video sites are even fueling viewers in the United States, where DVDs are no minor investment. The only sacrifices for viewers are the need to wait for buffering and some loss in resolution.
Until legal DVDs or iTunes-like download or rental services are available to the Chinese market, however, I can't imagine that people will stop watching the free or cheap pirated versions.
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