Copyright regulator tightens grip on cloud storage

November 06, 2015 | BY

Katherine Jo &clp articles

Cloud computing service providers in China have to actively remove copyright-infringing content from their networks and put in place systems to prevent users from sharing such works. Rights owners welcome the development but data privacy concerns emerge

China has strengthened regulation against piracy in cloud storage by requiring service providers to actively look for and remove copyright-infringing material on their networks.

The Circular on Regulating Copyright Order in Cloud Storage Services (国家版权局关于规范网盘服务版权秩序的通知) (Circular) was issued by the National Copyright Administration (NCA) on October 20 2015, following a meeting the previous week attended by the country's leading online data hosts including Baidu, Qihoo360, Tencent and Huawei.

Baidu's cloud service, yun.baidu.com (“yun” means “cloud” in Chinese), is most popularly used in China, followed by Qihoo 360's yunpan.360.cn. Other services include Tencent's weiyun.com, Alibaba's aliyun.com and Huawei's hwclouds.com.

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