Starting From Next Year, China Wants Music Services To Vet Every Song Before It Goes Online

Techdirt has reported on so many different aspects of China's online clampdown, that it's natural to wonder if there's anything left to censor. Surprisingly, the answer is "yes", according to this Tech in Asia post:

all Chinese companies operating any sort of internet music or streaming platform will be required to set up internal censorship departments. These departments will have to approve all songs before they're posted online, in strict accordance with the Ministry [of Culture]'s guidelines for permissible song content. Censors will also have to create and maintain a "warning" list and a blacklist for content creators and uploaders whose songs repeatedly fail to pass inspection.

As the article explains, online music companies are expected to bear all the costs of setting up censorship departments and training staff to vet all the songs, and will be punished if they fail to implement the new policy properly. At least some will have had practice, since a similar approach has been applied to online posts for some time. Tech in Asia has the following thoughts on how effective the censorship is likely to be:

The Ministry's decade-long console ban was very poorly enforced, as have been most of its bans on video games. But online games have been easier for the Ministry to restrict because they typically require China-based servers, and the [Ministry of Culture] might similarly find that it has an easier time genuinely restricting online music than it has policing the offline music.

That seems likely. The real question raised by this latest move is: anything left to censor, or have you finished now, China?

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