China Shut Down Huge Movie Hub

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.

Facebook Created International Incident

Facebook faced some troubles after the company refused to remove a fake page claiming to be the Aussie ambassador to the European Union. Ex-Aussie Liberal leader Brendan Nelson is furious after Facebook refused to remove the page that claimed to be written by him.

Facebook page attacked Aussie Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. Although Nelson thought it was quite lame, he was still worried, because he knew people interacting with the fake account believed it was really him.

Brendan Nelson wrote to Facebook in the United States specifically drawing the account to their attention and asking to take it down. Taking into consideration that he was ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, NATO and the European Union, he was concerned about the potential for the page to cause damage to the reputation of Australia.

However, it turned out that even in his position of relative official seniority, Nelson couldn’t do anything about it. Actually, Facebook didn’t even respond to the request. Nelson admitted that the social network was frankly the least responsive entity he had ever dealt with. The experts point out that coming from a person who has dealt with Aussie government officials before this is quite a bold claim.

Brendan Nelson forced the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and intelligence security agencies to take a look at his problem, but they couldn’t do anything about it either. It seems that the only way to get Facebook’s attention is to declare war on the former colony. Although a touch drastic, no Aussie can ever let a diplomatic slur pass it by.