The Ministry of Culture (MOC) announced Thursday that live-stream performers will be held accountable for their content. Anybody who streams content deemed unacceptable will be put on a national blacklist, with the MOC conducting random checks on the country’s various live-stream video accounts.

Prohibited content includes pornographic and violent content as well as any live-stream video that displays deformed bodies or the torture of humans or animals. Presumably, it also includes anything politically sensitive. Content creators are being asked to employ supervisors that maintain strict control over live-streams and censor any offending material.

Some 20 live-streaming video providers already signed an agreement this past April. Under the terms of the deal, live-stream performers are required to register their real names, and all live videos must be recorded and saved for at least 15 days for inspection purposes.

This past April, the MOC cracked down on videos showing “predominately attractive women showing their cleavage”. As a result, performers seen eating bananas in a “seductive fashion” were banned from live-streaming videos.

China has some 200 million registered live stream video users, of which three-quarters are estimated to be young and male.

The post China’s Internet to be Even More Boring After New Live Stream Rules Introduced appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Ministry of Culture says all Chinese internet companies must start policing the music it offers online starting January 1. The plan calls for these companies to self-censor by hiring and training its own in-house staff to conduct detailed investigations of which songs are unacceptable to the ministry, which will then be added to a blacklist and removed from their servers.

The plan is similar to how internet companies in China are already forced to deal with other content offered online through the use of in-house censors.

The announcement comes at a time when music streaming apps and services are becoming popular with the public, with middle-class consumers paying for some of these services.

This past August, the Ministry of Culture put out a blacklist of 120 songs that are banned from all Chinese internet sites, the majority of them songs with “morally harmful” content from artists like MC Hotdog (pictured) that mostly featured sexist or immature content.

The post China is Tightening Censorship of Streaming Music appeared first on The Nanfang.

China’s Ministry of Culture has put 120 songs on a blacklist for promoting obscenity or violence, and ordered them to be removed from all Chinese websites. The ministry said the songs “trumpeted obscenity, violence, crime or harmed social morality,” and anyone that ignores the ban will face “severe punishment” that was left up to the imagination.

The blacklist contains a number of famous singers including Taiwanese pop star Chang Csun Yuk, Taiwanese actor Stanley Huang, and even Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong. For the most part, the blacklist targets the rap genre with certain rap groups like Yinsaner and the New Street Talk Assembly appearing multiple times among others like MC Hotdog.

The song titles give us some clues into why they might have rubbed Chinese authorities the wrong way:

• Getting a Hotel Room Together Does Not Mean We are Lovers by Yiran
• Cheap Women, Bad Men by the Internet Singers
• This is Not a Song About a One Night Stand by Guangguang
• No Sex, No Love by Guangguang and K-Bo
• Mistress, You Are So Cheap by Benkui
• Fuck Your Love by the Internet Singers

The announcement the songs were banned caused a sensation among Chinese people, with one person saying: “These song titles are shameful in and of themselves. Is it right to publish them the way they are?” Another person took exception to not extending the ban further, saying “Why don’t they ban Myth of the Phoenix (the singers of many popular square dancing songs)? Everyday they massacre my ears.”

And citing the Streisand effect, another netizen said, “I have never heard of these songs before in my life, but now I really want to hear them.”

Anyone else interested in what songs the Ministry of Culture doesn’t think you should be able to listen to can find a full list published on their website.

The post 120 Songs the Chinese Government Doesn’t Want You to Hear appeared first on The Nanfang.