China’s authorities have shut down siluhd.com – one of the country’s most famous websites. The portal has over 130 employees, 1.4 million registered users, and over a decade of servicing the public with high-quality pirated films. Siluhd.com used to be amongst China’s favorites, but recently the website’s CEO and some of the directors were detained, and the portal was closed down.
The announcement was made through a local news portal known as Sina – the report said that Siluhd used to offer hundreds of thousands of HD films (in Blu-Ray format), TV series, music tracks and video games. The suggestion was that the portal was targeted by the Chinese authorities because it charged its members with about $8 per month. Still, it is yet unclear how much money the portal generated along the years.
China celebrates World Intellectual Property Day in the end of April, and this year the event came with a big, fat prize – according to statements of the country’s officials, the CEO and 7 of the portal’s directors were detained on suspicion of copyright violation. In addition, 30 out of the 139 employees could also be detained, because they allegedly uploaded copyrighted works.
Media reports confirm that police found in the CEO’s house over 190 1-TB hard disks with more than 10,000 pieces of films and TV series. Apart from Siluhd, a number of other popular websites, most of which offered free content streaming and downloading services, were closed down as well, according to Sina. Nevertheless, their predicament might appear temporary, because one of them, for example, simply resumed its business the next day after the popular event.
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