Los Angeles – Veteran Chinese file-sharing service VeryCD
stripped itself of copyrighted music and video files over the weekend,
TorrentFreak reported.
Launched in 2003, VeryCD had amassed "millions"
of users.
"7 years of hard work and accumulation, that will now shut off,
the end is the end. No one wanted this, but we had expected this moment would
suddenly come," founder Huang Yimeng wrote on the site’s official blog.
"Although we have been preparing for this event, the required adjustment
was very urgent. This lead us to adjust rather quickly to delete the content of
copyright-related disputes."
The Chinese government recently detailed new penalties for online copyright infringement, promising 3-7 years in
prison for those operating sites offering more than 500 copyrighted works;
serving more than 50,000 downloads of unauthorized copyrighted content; or
that count more than 1,000 members.
TorrentFreak reports that VeryCD intends to
seek an official license from the government to offer content licensed by
copyright holders.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4unvmjf
(TorrentFreak)
