Squashing the Online Potato: Tudou to be shut down?

By Kenneth Tan and David Feng

Not good news: Tudou may be in for a squashing by the Chinese mainland authorities, specifically, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. A Sohu IT report claims that the presence of porn -- a big no-no on the Chinese Internet -- was all that it took for the potato (which is the Chinese translation of "tudou") to be squashed.

The squashing is long-term and has no set limit, which means that the "forever" limit could mean a permanent downing. Any chances of Tudou surfacing back to life would only be possible once the "yellow" (ie pornographic) content vanished. The shutdown is even scarier in China; the site would be taken offline -- for real. No amount of circumventing the Wall would bring Tudou back to the masses.

Tudou's partnership with CCTV came to an end after the Shanghai branch of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television received a command to squash Tudou from the national admin. In the circular, Tudou was found to host porn, and that the new Internet AV bills (which took effect in late January 2008) had no effect to squash porn on Tudou.

Interestingly enough, Tudou is still accessible, and no note of the shutdown can be seen. Also of note: Not mentioned anywhere in the Sohu IT report is the name Hu Ziwei, who to those who didn't blink in late 2007 or early 2008, could ring a bell...

Kaiser Kuo of the Ogilvy China Digital Watch says that a shutdown order has been confirmed by an unnamed SARFT source, but what hasn't been confirmed is that the "shutdown is to take place immediately without giving Tudou a chance to rectify the situation". He also adds:

Other industry insiders have intimated to me that Tudou had been somewhat cavalier in pursuing compliance with the new SARFT/MII regulations on Internet audio and video broadcast, but most believed that when the date of implementation, January 31, passed without incident, and when SARFT clarified the regulations in a statement the following week suggesting that non-compliant sites would be given a period to resolve problems and restructure so as to be compliant, and would be permitted to apply for a proper license, most industry insiders believed the worst was probably over. However, in conversations with highly-placed industry insiders earlier this week, this reporter was given strong indications that another shoe was yet to fall. Without mentioning Tudou.com by name, these insiders intiated that a “black list” was making the rounds and some form of punishment would be meted out.

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei doubts the whole thing will amount to much: