For the second time, Tencent is hailed as China's most valuable brand. (Photo : REUTERS)
China will punish local Internet companies for showing Japanese animation videos suspected of containing violence and pornography that supposedly causes juvenile delinquency.
According to the Ministry of Culture, the offending companies were Tencent, Youku Tudou, iQiyi, Sohu.com, Inc and Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp. Beijing (LeTV).
The programs involved--"Blood-C," "Terror in Resonance" and "Highschool of the Dead"--include scenes of pornography, terrorism, violence and crimes against public morality.
"Highschool of the Dead," which is about a group of high school students caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, features borderline pornography. "Blood-C," a 2011 anime/manga series about a girl fighting monsters with a sword, depicts heavy blood-letting and mutilations. Meanwhile, "Terror in Resonance" is about two teenaged male terrorists that launched an attack on Tokyo.
The ministry said that it would dispatch agencies to carry out punishment according to the law, even though the companies are merely suspected of hosting pornographic content.
The so-called "blacklisting" that includes eradicating material deemed damaging to society is part of the ministry's broader campaign to control Internet content that included attacks on overseas websites deemed a threat by the government.
China's online video sites were subject to new regulations of foreign content beginning April 1.
Websites that have not been approved for foreign programs will be prohibited from broadcasting the media.
An ongoing cyberattack on U.S. coding site GitHub includes attempts to paralyze the site by using distributed denial of service attacks.
The attacks target two GitHub pages that link to copies of websites banned in China, including a Mandarin-language site from the New York Times Co. and Greatfire.org that assists Chinese users on how to thwart Chinese government censorship.
