Online video hosts grandfathered

China Web2.0 Review comes with the latest on the SARFT/MII regulations that stipulated that all video hosting firms would have to be state-owned organizations, just like the traditional media. Officially in place from the beginning of this month, it did not make a huge difference for the current operation of the popular online video hosts.
Today, both governmental departments said the new regulations would not apply to already existing operations, a kind of grandfathering. That makes the regulations at least for now look a little bit more feasible than before: just nationalizing a whole internet industry seemed problematic considering the size of the current operations and hard because of the global nature of the industry.
That makes life tough for newcomers who are not yet in the market and have to pick one of the many grandfathered firms.
China Web 2.0 Review sees it as a step-for-step strategy of the censors to bring the industry to heel.

However, when I talked with some people in the industry, they think the future for video websites will still be hard, even though they can survive the new regulations. The regulators will continue to tighten the content control on these website. Anyway, it is a good news for Chinese video websites, we are eager to see who will be the first one to get the license.

I'm a bit more optimistic: I do think that regulating the new media is just not that easy.