Domain Host Ordered to Take Down Popular Film Website

Update: Movie Time is now accessible again (Nov 4, 2010)

A popular Chinese website devoted to providing a platform for users to discuss, rate and review films online has been unavailable since suddenly going off-line on October 14.

As users of Movie Time or Mtime (时光网 shíguāng wǎng) often uploaded critical reviews of domestically-produced films to the site, some web users speculated that perhaps the take down of the site was connected to the policy of protecting the domestic film industry.

But according to the Southern Metropolis, the website's domain provider HiChina (中国万网) stopped parsing the website's domain and thus forced the closure of the site. If you search the status of the mtime.com domain name, it is currently displayed as clientHold.

A representative from HiChina told a Souther Metropolis journalist that the company acted in accordance with a notice issued by the Beijing Communications Administration, which said that Movie Time had been "disseminating pornography and obscenity," and it was for this reason that they stopped providing parsing for the domain.

The representative also said that the notice did not set a time when services would be resumed.

"If they want to resume the service, they must seek out the Beijing Telecommunications Administration or the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology."

The official Movie Time microblog hosted on Sina's Weibo microblogging platform is still being updated.

In addition to a recent series of posts recommending the best horror films to watch over Halloween, the microblog has also posted multiple messages to users thanking them for their support, telling them that they are working hard to get the site back up again and advising them on certain methods that they can use to continue to access and use some functions of the site.

On October 23, a message was sent from the Sina Weibo account that thanked users for their messages of support and which concluded with the English phrase "I will be back!"

In related news, the Chinese-language website of the Wall Street Journal is once again accesible from mainland China after being blocked for over three weeks. An announcement that the website could once again be viewed from within China, was also made on the website's official Sina microblog account.

This article was edited by Paul Pennay

Links and Sources
Southern Metropolis: 时光网关闭据称与涉黄有关
Sina Microblog: Movie Time
Beijing Communications Administration: Official Website
Sina Microblog: Account of the Chinese-language Website of WSJ